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Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

As Fox aka (Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc.) got acquired by Disney yesterday and is in the HN news. This news (Fox-IT) is about a completely different company from another continent!

"Disney to Acquire Twenty-First Century Fox" (thewaltdisneycompany.com) 533 points by mxfh 23 hours ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15921692

Fox-IT is unrelated to Fox, so it's not the internal IT department of Fox. Fox-IT seems to be a company from Netherland.

@downvoters: what's your problem? I wasted 5min reading the news, until I found out that it's a minor known company, and not related to "Fox". And then I inform others on HN, but then I get downvotes, yeah right - toxic

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You get downvotes because of a probable combination of:

- You comment this on a comment that already describes exactly what Fox-IT is.

- You imply that anything that happens on another continent than yours is time "wasted".

- Which in turn implies that all HN readers should be from the same continent that you are from.

- There are many other companies with a name that contains Fox (pdf reader, apparel), this stuff happens.

- You ask downvoters what their problem is. Which, from my experience is a very good way to get more downvotes.

- The name of the country is the Netherlands, not Netherland.

> The name of the country is the Netherlands, not Netherland.

I disagree. I'm Dutch[0], and I find it stupid that English speakers always pluralise our country. We've been a unified country for quite some time now. Netherland is fine.

[0] Yeah, "Dutch" is another one of those weird things that English inflicts on us. Why?

The English version of "The Netherlands" is actually the correct way of saying our country's name (I'm Dutch as well).

Look at your passport or ID card: It says "Koninkrijk Der Nederlanden" not "Koninkrijk der Nederland".

I am Dutch and I think you are wrong.

The Netherlands ( English, plural ) Niederlande ( German, plural ) Les Pays Bas ( French, plural )

The Netherlands -> "The low lands" -> Plural

edit: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlanden ( plural, it was a republic once )

It was a republic of somewhat independent provinces once, but not anymore. It's a single country. In Dutch nobody calls it "De Nederlanden". We live in Nederland. The only reason other languages refer to it in plural is because those languages are still stuck in the 18th century in how they refer to us.

Singular is fine.

It's cool that you're Dutch :)

But "Netherland" is not an English word, and is likely to lead to a double-take in conversation, if not outright confusion.

English, like all languages, retains a lot of legacy for a very good reason. Some changes are inevitable, but maintaining continuity is very useful in keeping the language readable in the future.

As for the label "dutch", what do you propose for a substitute?

> But "Netherland" is not an English word, and is likely to lead to a double-take in conversation, if not outright confusion.

It's not a word, it's the name of a country. Peking got changed to Beijing because it as more accurate, right? This is the same thing.

Netherlander ;)

As an adjective as well? As in, "Nederlander chocolate"?

Ages ago I saw someone propose Netherlandic. Similar to Icelandic.

"Don't be snarky. ... Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

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