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English: Franconia or Franken?

Posted by Nick B. on 2016-11-22 02:32:02

So much fun on a grey Tuesday.

I purposely asked Juergen about 'Franken' and 'Franconia' and which might be the proper word to use.

Scratching my head here. Were you asking Jürgen which word, a German or an English one, to use when speaking German?

I think (don't want to misrepresent you here, Juergen) he said that Franken was the way that the region was called in modern German and that Franconia, coming from Latin, was an old name.

"Franconia" certainly sounds Latin. Like Mancunium, Londonium, or whatever all the old Latin names are of the places them Romans got round to. But it is, like Thuringia or Swabia, also the modern English name of the region. For better or for worse, your native language has retained an old Latin place name here.

Consider the modern Czechs and their (apparent) desire to have us English speakers call their country "Czechia" instead of "The Czech Republic". I'm personally all for that, and say and write it as often as possible. It correlates well to the German name "Tscheschien". Germans seem to have little trouble calling their neighbour country by that name, in addition to "die Tscheschische Republik".

You are correct to say that English dictionaries do contain the words Franken and Franconia, so, apart from not knowing every word in said book, I have no excuse for not knowing them.

I do not say that English dictionaries contain the word "Franken". Online translating dictionaries contain the word "Franconia" in their English parts, and "Franken" in their German parts.

See the two I use most often:
dict.leo.org/ende/index_de.html#/search=franconian
http://www.dict.cc/?s=franconia
All "c" on the English side, all "k" on the German side. No English "Franken", no German "Franconia".

What you are missing is that, like me, most native Br Eng speakers have not memorised a dictionary, so, when they come to need an adjective, they commonly use a proper noun instead.

And so, as I wrote in that other post a month ago, l can understand your using the name "Franconia" in place of "Franconian". You have, however, visited Franconia umpteen times now over how many years? And you haven't learnt in the interim what the English adjective for the place is?

There was a time in my life too, before I'd encountered the term "Franconian" as an adjective. This was presumably some time after I'd first encountered the term "Franconia". But I adapted. Just as I learnt the terms "Lancastrian" and "Mancunian" from friendly natives of those grim places.

So, if you want to describe (in English, not German) a beer that comes from Franken, it makes sense to call it 'Franken beer'.

But in English, not German, Franconian beer comes from Franconia, not Franken. So it makes *no* sense to call it "Franken beer". Just because the place itself was originally called "Franconia" by the Romans and the German term "Franken" descended from that, doesn't mean "Franken" and "Franconia" are interchangable in modern English.

If you were to say "Franken beer" in a conversation with, say, my dad, who knows very, very little about either German geography or beer, he would think you were referring colloquially to a "monster beer" because of Frankenstein. I've certainly explained that we live in Franconia to him, why would I ever say anything about "Franken", since I speak English (well, colonial) with him?

Heh-heh. Googling "Franken beer" yields German websites about "craft beer in Franken". I.e., that dastardly concept infiltrating German.

Nick, what you seem to be missing is that we're not talking about the grammatic rules of German but common English usage. So, how do inflected and pure forms of place names as adjectives come into it?

No, not at all. Again, one of the two things I have said about grammar in these conversations is that I ORIGINALLY THOUGHT that you were using the German word "Franken" because I thought you were trying to use it as a German adjective.

I had no idea that you didn't know "Franconian" was a real English word, nor did I know that you thought "Franken" was an English word (Oxford says it ain't). I have since come to understand what your purpose was though.

The other thing is how our English adjectives for place names seems more mixed than German ones...sort of. I erroneously used the word "inflected" yesterday when I should have used "modified". We modify place names as adjectives, as I explained in that enormously entertaining post a month ago. And as Gunnar says.

But basically, with English place names that end with "-ia", the adjective form for them has an "n" appended. Bavarian, Austrian, Australian, Asian, Thuringian, Swabian, Franconian. Also Oregonian and Washingtonian, should you ever be interested in visiting those savage parts.

What concerns me about your use of "Franken" in English here is that there may be non-native English speakers who might be misled into thinking that it is an acceptable English term. (Not necessarily Germans though, IME as a Sprachtrainer.)

What do you make of Britons who say they "really like to drink Belgium beer"?

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