What is Western Europe? Does Austria count?

[Jack]

I'd call Austria Central Europe. Although as Martin points out, that's far from the heart of Europe.

That's true. The heart of Europe is quite obviously Liechtenstein.

[Darwin]

What does 'Japan' mean?

<BR>
Japan is a mutation of Nippon which is a regional pronciation of nihon, which means
sun's origin, or more poetically, 'land of the rising sun'.<BR><BR>

Grabbing a random image from google image search 'nihon kanji', it is spelled like this:
<IMG SRC="http://www.niten.org.br/riodejaneiro/ga ... ihon-s.gif">

Not bad, but...

"Nippon" is almost surely the original Japanese pronunciation (allowing for historical changes in the language). "Nihon" is a bit of an anomaly. I've never seen any solid explanation for it, though I can think of a couple of possibilities. (It would have been "Nipon" in Old Japanese.)

"Japan" is probably based on a Chinese pronunciation of those two characters. For example, in one Southern Min dialect, it would be something like "Jit-pun". The most likely candidate, though, is Early Mandarin, spoken in the Chinese court during the Yuan Dynasty. Marco Polo wrote the name as "Cipangu" (and, occasionally, "Zipangu"), where "gu" is probably the equivalent of modern Mandarin "guo" (Japanese "koku"), meaning "country". There's no sign of the Japanese initial "n", nor of the Southern Chinese "t" at the end of the first syllable, which became a glottal stop in Early Mandarin.

It's funny, because "Jippon" would be another possible Japanese pronunciation, but I don't think it's ever been used.

(By the way, Chinese and Japanese characters are not generally considered to be "spelled", which implies alphabetic writing.)

[ChrisA]

I'd forgotten the Marco Polo story, and his pronounciation is almost surely the source of
the western name for Japan. I only speak modern Japanese, so the chinese and older readings
of the characters are vague at best to me. I don't know why Nihon is classroom Japanese
instead of Nippon. I have heard the Marco Polo history before, and should've remembered,
because it makes more sense than mutating Nippon into Japan.

As for spelling, I find it more concise to say 'spelled' than to try to work around the word.

--Chris

[Darwin]

As for spelling, I find it more concise to say 'spelled' than to try to work around the word.

I usually just say "written".

There's an old (1997) sci.lang.japan thread that touches on the subject. You might find it interesting, though there's not much new there. (And no one ever answered my question about the origin of the "Nihon" form.) I knew even less then than I do now.

[Nanohedron]

My understanding is that "Nihon", a comparatively recent form, is considered less formal than "Nippon". On documents, etc., the implied pronunciation is generally "Nippon".

[Wormdiet]

Wouldn't Austria usually be referred to as a 'Middle (or Central)-European' nation.

Quite possibly. I'm just saying what I would say, not that I'm right.

When I look at the size of Russia compared to everything else, three things spring to mind.

1. Napoleon didn't have a hope.

2. Hitler failed to learn from Napoleon's failure.

What I've heard on the subject suggests that, in reality, Hitler maybe should have followed Napoleon more closely. The logic runs that by concentrating the German army in a spearhead pointed at Moscow in 1941, rather than a broad, diffuse front, the Germans would have gotten the capital, which the Russians in 1941 probably would not have been able to recover from.

I'm not usually that bad about run-on sentences.

[Jim McGuire]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Western Europe is distinguished from Central Europe and Eastern Europe by differences of history and culture rather than by geography. However, these boundaries of Europe are subject to considerable overlap and fluctuation, which makes differentiation difficult. Thus the concept of Western Europe is associated with liberal democracy; and its countries have been considered to share many cultural, economic and political traditions with the United States of America and Canada — which have received millions of Western European settlers since the discovery of the New World.

Up to World War I, "Western Europe" was thought to comprise France, the British Isles and Benelux. These countries represented the democratic victors of both world wars; and their ideological approach was spread further east as a consequence, in a process not unlike the ideological effect of the Napoleonic Wars, when new ideas spread from revolutionary France.

During the Cold War, this ideological designation of Western Europe was supplemented with the aspect of market economies in the West versus the planned economies of Eastern Europe, reflecting the anti-Bolshevism that was aroused in Western Europe by the Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the remaining opposition to the Soviet Union in general. Thus Western Europe came to include both traditional democracies outside of NATO, as Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, and some market economy dictatorships, as Portugal and Spain. This is also why NATO members such as Greece and Turkey were generally considered Western European even though they are geographically in the southeast. The border between Western and Eastern Europe, the Iron Curtain, was securely defended.

Until the enlargement of the European Union of 2004, Western Europe was sometimes associated with that Union, although non-members such as Norway and Switzerland unquestionably were considered parts of Western Europe. Today the connection to NATO or to the European Union increasingly may be perceived as historical. A common understanding of Western Europe includes the following parts:

-the Nordic countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark)
-the British Isles (United Kingdom and Ireland)
-the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg)
-Germany
-France and Monaco
-the Alpine countries (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria)
-the Apennine peninsula (Italy, San Marino, Vatican City)
-the Iberian peninsula (Spain, Andorra, Portugal)
-in a political and economic context also Greece, Cyprus, Malta, and occasionally even Turkey.
It ought to be borne in mind that the concepts of Europe's division overlap. The Nordic countries being counted to Western Europe does not at all hinder their also being considered part of Northern Europe. Similarly, the Alpine countries may be considered part of Central Europe, and Italy, the Iberian countries, Monaco, Greece and southern France part of Southern Europe as well.

The Alpine country of Slovenia may by some be counted to Western Europe, similarly to how some would consider Estonia as a Nordic country, and hence maybe also to Western Europe.

[Wombat]

Jim McGuire's account is pretty up-to-date although a fluid idea like east and west is open to considerable dispute. For example, Turkey considers itself a part of Europe and therefore as belonging to the West. But I doubt that anyone would consider it a part of Western Europe.

The criteria for division go back at least to the latter days of the Roman Empire and have kept changing since. But old meanings hang on in certain contexts and also there is the added complexity of some people still talking of central Europe.

In the early years of Christianity, the divide betwen east and west was based on the division between the sphere of influence of the Eastern church centred on Constantinople and the Western church based in Rome. Later you have a division based on the furthest extent west of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and of the furthest extent westwards of the Ottoman Empire. More recently, the considerations Jim McGuire expounds come into play.

Depending on context, someone might draw the line between east and west on the basis of any of these criteria for membership. The alliance between Russia and Serbia goes back to the very earliest church-based definition.

[Jim McGuire]

I pulled that all in from the source named but had always assumed that western Europe, in the last half century, was countries aligned *toward the west* with the UK/US - modern, industrialized, democratic. That writeup shows quite a lot of flux in the exact demarcation.

Turkey is definitely trying to make that transition and is trying to join the EU. East certainly meets West in Istanbul; just west of Istanbul is known as Asia Minor.

[Jack]

That Turkey is Muslim also sets it apart from the rest of Europe.

[Jim McGuire]

Muslims are moving into Europe in two ways - they are/have already moved into countries like France, Belgium, and Italy and they are having children at much higher rates than the home population.

Turkey may be Muslim but, certainly in Istanbul, of the most tolerant, non-rigorous variety.

[Wombat]

That Turkey is Muslim also sets it apart from the rest of Europe.

Not quite. Albania is Moslem. Kosova is largely Moslem. Macedonia and Bosnia have large Moslem populations. Here I'm only including populations indiginous to the area in question and not relatively recent migrant populations.

[Flyingcursor]

That Turkey is Muslim also sets it apart from the rest of Europe.

Not quite. Albania is Moslem. Kosova is largely Moslem. Macedonia and Bosnia have large Moslem populations. Here I'm only including populations indiginous to the area in question and not relatively recent migrant populations.

I believe the Turks conquered a large part of the Balkin region at one time, thus the heavy Moslem population today.

Why do Greeks and Turks still hate each other?

Also, has anyone noticed the consistent historical trend of east vs west?
Greeks vs Persians, Romans vs Parthians, Byzantine vs Turk etc up to the cold war. Interesting.

[Jim McGuire]

All of those islands known as the Greek Isles should be belong to Turkey, for starters.

[Wombat]

All of those islands known as the Greek Isles should be belong to Turkey, for starters.

That's a bit harsh. Those islands have been linguistically and (to a large extent) culturally Greek for well over 2,000 years.

There was a crude population swap in the early 20th century which has a lot to do with lingering hostility. Turkish speakers were expelled from Greece and Greek speakers from mainland Turkey, regardless of their degree of cultural identification. Unsurprisingly, they didn't fit in very well in their new homes. Rembetika is the music of the Greeks expelled from Turkey.