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Well, that certainly explains how "Japan" came about as a word/name...but it doesn't explain how the Japanese, themselves, feel about this foreign designation for their country(and it's people/culture, for that matter).
Hey, I had even wondered how Germany was called as such...when isn't the real name for it "Deutchland"(I know this isn't right...) or something to that effect?I wonder how Chinese people feel about "China", how Sri Lanka people feel about "Ceylon", or how British people feel about "Igirisu", which is the Japanese name for the UK. Personally, I, a native Japanese, don't feel anything about "Japan". I've never thought it should be called Nihon or Nippon at all. It's just called so in English.
Ah, that's it. "Doitsu". Thank you. ^^ I've heard of Kankoku before, though.Germany is "Doitsu" (from Deutsch), Neitherlands is "Oranda" (from Holland), Korea is "Kankoku" (from Japanese pronunciation of the kanji name 韓国 for Korea) and so on. (And yes, the US is アメリカ "Amerika".)
That's just a proper transliteration for the German language. German, unlike English, has consistent pronunciation for its letters, since Germans don't have a history of importing foreign words without adapting them to their own language (unlike English). That's something I like about that language; it means you can look at a word and know right away how to pronounce it. In this specific example, I'm not exactly sure what the the letter "C" is used for by itself, or if it even is (I only remember encountering it in the "ch" combination), but I know that "K" is the letter used for that hard "K" sound found in "America", hence the spelling. It also uses the native German pronunciation for the rest of the letters, hence why it sounds a little different. (Worth noting: it's different from the Japanese pronunciation because the German "R" sound is more like an English "R" with a gargle-type thing that I was never able to vocalize).It's interesting how both Japan and Germany call America, "Amerika".