The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0325  Wednesday, 19 April 2006

From: 		Thomas Le <
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Date: 		Wednesday, 19 Apr 2006 06:47:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: 17.0314 Monsieur La Far
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0314 Monsieur La Far

Syd Kasten is right in saying that the Chinese word for France  "Fah 
guo" is just a phonetic rendition of the country's name.  This Chinese 
loanword exists in Vietnamese as "Phap quoc." with 'Phap' representing 
the phonetic part and the generic 'quoc' meaning 'land',.'country'. 
Likewise, "My quoc" comes from the phonetic aMErica, and "Anh quoc" from 
ENGland.

There is no basis in attributing any 'meaning' to what basically is a 
universal phonetic phenomenon.  People name foreign countries according 
to the sounds of their names, not their meaning.

Thomas Le

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