Franconian Beer Message Board
Fränkonia |
| Posted by Barry on 2016-11-21 09:12:34 |
| Yes, seems to be going round in circles! What I was referring to was the non-inflection of adjectives in British (or probably any other) English and the explanation given to Gunnar. I purposely asked Juergen about 'Franken' and 'Franconia' and which might be the proper word to use. 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. 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. 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. Just think of what an adjective is: simply a word (or could be an adjectival phrase) that adds a characteristic to a noun. So, if you want to describe (in English, not German) a beer that comes from Franken, it makes sense to call it 'Franken beer'. 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? |