why not? sometimes i do. maybe i'll even start calling it Lake Leman from now on. maybe Lake Leman, Swiss.

Well, it is a Swiss lake.

I thought it was in Indiana...

I'd never bothered to compare maps in different languages (or look at any of Switzerland produced here) so had no idea that Lake Geneva and Lac Leman were the same.

As the Swiss German name for Geneva is "Genf" (right?), the lake then in Swiss German is called... what?

(Not being a wise-ass, am honestly striving to learn something... )

To be honest, I've never heard anyone say 'Swiss' instead of 'Switzerland'. Yes, I would say something or someone is Swiss, just as I would say someone or something is French or Irish or Belgian etc. I agree, I think this person's 'Muttersprache' isn't English.

It's Genfersee.

I think it is mainly a written problem.

I'm Swiss, but I'm from Switzerland ...

OH! Now I understand....the country is SwitzerLAND and the people are Swiss

Job done. Thanks

It's a good job the people of Suisse Romand clearly differentiate between the noun and the related ajective, isn't it?

This thread is about words in ENGLISH. Who cares about wherever Suisse Romand is.

More or less. The battle "Elle est suisse" vs "Elle est Suissesse" is still going on... no clear winner yet.

I had no idea this would be a 4 pager. I expected somebody to say something like "Coz both are right" or "its called that in America"

Or DB to dig up some piece of archaic cobblers to explain it

I was curious what my Swiss husband would have to say about people referring to Switzerland as "Swiss," so I asked him:

"Have you ever heard anyone refer to Switzerland as Swiss?"

His reply was: "Yeah, but it's usually just because they're being lazy and abbreviating."

Who knows...

It's relevant because many of our members are not native speakers of English and may have been confused by the fact that the adjective 'suisse' and the name of the country 'Suisse' are pretty much the same in French (they're also the same in Italian, at least for the feminine form of the adjective).

Add that possible source of confusion to the fact, mentioned above, that speakers of some other languages refer to the country as 'Swiss' or something almost identical, and we might have something resembling a convincing answer to the question posed in the OP.

Except the abusers (or "totally mentally retarded" as categorised earlier) tend to be American or Indian :-)

Like I said: not native speakers of English.

There were quite a few pages last time as well

Poo...sorry....I would have searched but "Swiss / Switzerland" kinda clogged up the system a little bit

I have to confess that as much as people calling Switzerland "Swiss", what bothers me more, oh, much much more, is when English native speakers call Lake Geneva "Lac Leman" or Geneva "Genf". grrr. lol

WTF!