I am curious, what are these -phones

SagaSon   Saturday, January 03, 2004, 20:44 GMT
Lusophones are Portuguese Speakers
Anglophones are German speakers
Hispanophoness are Spanish Speakers
Francophones are French Speakers
Italophones are Italian Speakers
and other languages .... English speakers, Polish speakers, dutch speakers, japanaese speakers, chinese speakers etc, are what phones?
Jordi   Saturday, January 03, 2004, 21:05 GMT

Anglophones would have to be English speakers and not German speakers. After all the Angles gave their name to England and not to Germany and the place is still called Angleterre in French. I would say that these "phone" tags have no tradition at all in good English unless you've read that in Brussels "Euro English". In English the normal thing would be to say The English-Speaking Peoples, the French-Speaking Peoples and so forth. "Phone" is added in French and "fono" in Spanish and maybe in other Romance languages. If I'm wrong please correct me. A classic would be the book "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples" by Sir Winston Churchill.
SagaSon   Saturday, January 03, 2004, 22:03 GMT
yea, cool, but it wasn't that what I asked for?
Jay   Saturday, January 03, 2004, 23:22 GMT
I see those terms much more often in Canadian news and lit than in U.S. media. I think they serve a purpose to differentiate between Anglophones and Francophones, but could cause problems because those two groups aren't necesarily exclusive and certainly aren't monolithic. They also use the not very descriptive term "allophone", meaning speakers of other languages. I don't think I've ever heard the term "hispanophone".
Jim   Monday, January 05, 2004, 01:12 GMT
Don't forget "microphones" and "telephones". The "phone" is from Greek and has to do with sound. There are other words with "phone" in them, e.g. "phonetic", "phonemic", "phonograph", "phonon" and "phonology".
wassabi   Monday, January 05, 2004, 04:37 GMT
yeah, in S.S in Canada, we are usually specific about whether we're talking about anglophones, francophones...etc, it's with the whole bilingualism bit