Ian Ish

[Latrinsorm]

Did you ever notice how a lot of countries' peoples end in -ian, and a lot end in -ish?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/Europe2_zpsc7741c5c.png

Red - ian
Russian
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Norwegian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Estonian
Hungarian
Romanian
Bulgarian
Albanian
Slovakian
Austrian
Italian
(Yugoslavian and almost all of its successor states)
Slovenian
Croatian
Serbian
Macedonian
Bosnian
and Belgian

All geographically contiguous except for stupid old Belgium!

Green - ish
English
Scottish
Irish
Spanish
Danish
Finnish
Swedish

Not quite contiguous but you can draw a very good U shape whose tips are in Poland and Spain. France messes it up but they should be Frankish anyway.

Blue - ch
French
Dutch

Gray - an
German
Moldovan

Orange - miscellaneous
Icelander
Welsh
Portuguese
Swiss
Montenegrin
Czech
Greek
(Although Czech and Greek end in the same sound to the ear, they are clearly different.)

.

Now let's look at a map of the Eastern Bloc.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/Europe3_zps35022907.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v456/johnnyoldschool/Europe2_zpsc7741c5c.png

Is that cool or what? The correlation is mostly because the Eastern Bloc was almost entirely Slavic (although not all Slavs were in it), the only weird one is Poland which might just be because their tribe name Polan happens to lend itself to the English word land. Otherwise, our names for almost every Slavic land ends up as -ia, thus -ians. (Note how Italy and Hungary are not Slavic and therefore end in -y. Austria isn't Slavic either, but for some reason we kept the Latin name for that.) Gelly pointed out that -ia is the traditional Roman province suffix, which makes sense for English users to use regarding distant (to them) lands, and it also makes sense to simplify the names for nearby lands: so Hispania becomes Spain, Germania becomes Germany, Britannia becomes Britain, and they all lose the -ian.

So now you know that.

[Tgo01]

Russian
Ukrainian
Belarusian
Norwegian
Latvian
Lithuanian
Estonian
Hungarian
Romanian
Bulgarian
Albanian
Slovakian
Austrian
Italian
(Yugoslavian and almost all of its successor states)
Slovenian
Croatian
Serbian
Macedonian
Bosnian
and Belgian

I'd be worried if I were those countries.

"Russia must protect the Ian people!"

[Gelston]

I prefer Cans anyways.

[Tisket]

Isn't "ian" Latin for anus or something?

[Tisket]

Hah: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ian

[Tisket]

hmm, ish: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=-ish&allowed_in_frame=0

[waywardgs]

I thought you were gonna tell us who this Ian Ish fellow is.

[Gelston]

I thought you were gonna tell us who this Ian Ish fellow is.

There is a little Ian and Ish in us all.

[Methais]

http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/1/4/1/9/9/1/3/1/orig-14199131.jpg

[Latrinsorm]

I thought you were gonna tell us who this Ian Ish fellow is.I was going to do a whole thing about Ian Smith and Ish Smith and how racist white regimes (Rhodesian or Soviet) will always lose to multiracial meritocracies (America or the Suns) but it was too much even for me.

[Atlanteax]

Personally, I'm wondering what took Latrin so long to notice this.