To detract from the confusion the European Union is Union Européenne (UE) in French.
this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2025
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I thought it would be so funny if any of the EU employees would go to a bar in Brussels (majority French-speaking) and have an aneurysm explaining what they do to a local in broken French. Not that it would ever happen... but it would be funny
ITT: Americans struggling to comprehend languages other than their own
In Polish, "United States" is Stany Zjednoczone, but the acronym is USA, even though that doesn't match up at all
But Unia Europejska is UE
Union Européenne as well, and French is one of the languages they actually care about
That's why they use EUA (États-Unis d'Amérique) for the abbreviation.
I have to say I had never encountered this abbreviated form
Fake french. Get 'em, boys.
But we tend to forget de A so just ÉU
Um..... It is an acronym my guy. How do you think French people write USA?
In Spanish you can see EEUU for «Estados Unidos». The letters are doubled because they're plural.
I still pronounce it as Eeeh Eeeh Uu Uu. Its just fun to say.
I’ve always wondered why spanish speakers online use EEUU for the US. I once asked a friend of mine and he said “that’s just the way it is”; this is a much better explanation lol
A bit like how we used to call the CCCP the USSR?
The official name for the country was "Unión de Repúblicas Socialistas Soviéticas", hence URSS
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So “Etats” is “State”… just written backwards?
🤯
If you want to be serious, the word state and état are both coming from an older version of French when it was written estat. French replaced ES with É because it wasn't pronouncing the S, while English dropped the E and kept pronouncing the S. It happened to multiple words, although some also come from Latin.
Étrange - Strange. Époux - Spouse. École - School. Épice - Spice. Éponge - Sponge.
It also happened with circumflex.
Hôpital - Hospital. Forêt - Forest. Pâte - Paste.
Here's a whole video about exactly this.
"États" is "States" ☝️🤓
Ah alors tu as découvert comment est-ce que le français fonctionne. Désolé pas désolé
ah so you have discovered in your comment how french functions.
what's Desole?
It's when you remove the bottom of a shoe.
Sorry.. it says sorry not sorry 😅😅
is the rest of my translation correct?
Not too bad overall if you don’t know any French though!
no i learnt french in freshman year college... 15 years ago
It quickly gets dissolved into the abyss of the mind, I get that! I lived in Japan for 4 years and can only remember a few useless bits.
No, but close. Comment means how.
So you have discovered how french functions.
comment means how
damn should have guessed
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I am forever annoyed that every language has the audacity to rename other countries to something that is not their name.
Germany? It's called Deutschland
Spain? España.
Russia? Rossiya.
It's everywhere and it's weird.
The Netherlands, but in English the language is called Dutch.
But I prefer when it happens to cities. Aix-la-Chapelle or Aachen. Liège or Luik or Lüttich. Ghent or Gand or Gent.
Because no one can say Magyarország, and it's easier to make fun of being Hungary for Turkey.
Oman, Iran, with Chad, to Chile bc I was Hungary for Turkey 😋
Dunno, as a German, I'd find it ahistorical if everybody was using "Deutschland" ... the nation-state as an idea, and a unified nation state, are relatively young. Before that, what we call Deutschland today was a mess. It's no surprise that romance languages use some or another variation of "Allemagne" ... the german dialect spoken around the southwestern border is still called "Allemannisch" even in Germany, same with "Saxon" and the variations "Saksa" to the east ...
I kinda prefer it the way it is in this case, honestly ...
And while we're at it, why do languages have the audacity to use ANY words different from other languages!
See how this sounds?
I'm annoyed by the inverse. I speak English, why shouldn't I use English words? I use English words for everything else in life. Does every other country say "United States of America"?
"Because that's what I call it and so should every other language!"
See how that sounds?
And honestly, some of them do just translate (more or less). Like España vs Spain, pretty much any Spanish word that starts with es(consonant) drops the leading e when translated to English (estado, estudiante, and escuela for state, student, and school). We also don't have the same o/a suffices. So that leaves spañ, except I don't think any Spanish word ends with ñ (it makes a "ny" sound to bridge with the next letter, for those who don't know) and Spain comes pretty darn close.
Not too mention that pronunciations and even alphabets are bound to change. Just how much do you want to stay authentic? Because if I start talking about عُمان (Google says that means Oman in Arabic, and looks about right from what I remember seeing on license plates there) I'm going to lose a lot of people.
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Im happy with it. Better than 中国 or .مصر No idea how to read nor how to speak it out.
A transliteration would be fine, eg Nihon, Zhongguo
Is that what my wife was trying to say?
https://old.lemmy.world/comment/20033856
Fuck it. Japan it is.
In Serbo-Croatian, the acronym is САД. It transliterates to SAD.
Shouldn't Spanish have the same problem? I've seen them abbreviate it to EEUU though, which I assume must help prevent confusion?
Same as another user said, in Spanish European Union is Unión Europea, so abbreviates to UE, and you’re right about EEUU, because it’s the United States
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