Last week at dinner, a friend raised the following question:"If a native English speaker is called an anglophone and a native French speaker is called a francophone, what is the term for a native Spanish speaker?"My immediate wise-ass reply was: "A yo-phone."
Flippant answers aside, none of us knew the answer. The question is a good one -- are there similar "-phone" words for other languages? I decided to hunt for answers in the Source of All Knowledge™, i.e. the Wikipedia. A quick trip there this evening turned up the answer to our original query -- "hispanophone". I also found a few more "phones" there:
| "-phone" | Usage |
| Allophone | any language other than English or French |
| Anglophone | English |
| Arabophone | Arabic |
| Danophone | Danish |
| Dutchophone | Dutch |
| Finnophone | Finnish |
| Francophone | French |
| Gaelophone | Gaelic |
| Germanophone | German |
| Gramophone | Phonographish |
| Grecophone | Greek |
| iPhone | Appleish (term for yo-phone) |
| Italiophone | Italian |
| Lusophone | Portuguese (derived from Lusitania) |
| Mellophone | French (horn variant) |
| Persephone | Hadean |
| Russophone | Russian |
| Sinophone | Chinese |
| Swedophone | Swedish |
| Ukrainophone | Ukrainian |
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