Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2016 May 19

= May 19 =

Ý (Vietnamese)
Why is Italy in Vietnamese merely a single letter: Ý? --Davidøsk (talk) 17:54, 19 May 2016 (UTC)


 * It's a contraction taking only the first syllable of the literal Sino-Vietnamese transliteration. It's not unique - a number of other major countries are also known in Vietnamese as a single syllable.
 * It's similar to the practice historically common in East Asia of contracting the names of Western countries - which for example is why the United States is often called "Mei Guo" in Chinese ("Guo" being "country") and "Beikoku" in Japanese ("koku" being "country"). --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 18:11, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 * They also use 'Merika' in Japan. KägeTorä - (影虎)  ( もしもし！ ) 11:03, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
 * And in Chinese the full name is "Meilijian". --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 12:16, 20 May 2016 (UTC)