Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So OK, we don't say Spain we say Espania, we don't say Zhong Guo we say China, we don't say Bharat we say India etc, etc, etc.

Though we do say Cote d'Ivorie rather than the Ivory Coast these days...

But it's good manners to call people and places by their real names, when I meet someone from overseas I can hardly say 'your name's weird I'm calling you Fred'.

In the 80s we moved from older names for Chinese cities (mainly based on Cantonese pronunciations from the days when most trade was with the south the capital was in Nanking/Nanjing) to Pinyin/Mandarin-derived names. Peiking to Beijing etc.

India has also been pushing this, it's almost become a nationalist badge for politicians to rename (or de-rename) cities though in some cases the 'original' name is of dubious authenticity.

Anyho, my question is should English speakers (or at least opinion leaders like governments, publishers, newspapers) make an effort to call countries by their own names rather than the Anglicized versions we're accustomed to?

English is the defacto world language these days so things like the Olympics and UN order countries by their English names, ignoring their local names.

It would be hard to get used to new spellings and pronunciations but English spelling is such a cluster #$%^ already would Zhong Guo (pronounced Jung Gwo if you're wondering) really offend any delicate sensibilities?

Or does no one care? Deutchland after all has had plenty of time to object if it minds being called Germany. I'd love to hear from Dakkites from non-English speaking countries on this.

Some people have this very weird and misguided basic fear of embarrassment when it comes to speaking foreign languages... don't ask me why.. it makes no sense to me...

Its common sense if you are from a foreign place, and speak a different language, you will not be able to speak the natives language perfectly, everyone has to start somewhere.

Ive seen this time and time again, during education, work, and traveling. People just would rather anglicize a place name than attempt to learn the "proper way". And in a bizarre twist make themselves appear like dummies/lazy in front of the locals..

Even my own GF doesnt want to speak English with me because shes embarassed.. for some bizare reason.

I largely agree its good ethics and etiquette to at least try. Of course, you'll butcher it at first its a given. But the key principle is to try. I always learn basic things like "hello, thank you, can I buy a water please" everywhere I traveled. As to politicans? I think it it would largerly depend on circumstances. If he's addressing his own people, it makes sense to use the anglicized version. But if he's addressing the foreign body he should, in my opinion, learn how to pronounce the place he's talking about.

Some people just don't care and some are too arrogant to care.
There is a distinct difference between traveling/backpacking crowd and people going on holiday which I think cuts to the crux of the matter.

As a Brit, this is a thorny subject.

Whilst I wouldn’t dream of calling say, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, or use other colonial names since changed? I’d also feel awkward calling Japan Nippon.

I think it's a pretty irrelevant non-issue. It's also not just an English thing, at all. Every major language has different names for other countries.

English is currently the international trade language, and is used as the basis for international aviation language/designations, why? Because it's convenient. It doesn't matter what that generic trade language is. It could be Chinese in the future. All it does is make international communications easier and less of a fuss in paperwork and particularly in stuff like aviation (for emergencies, etc.).

If someone is offended because someone else refers to their country by another name...that's on them. They're either way too soft, or they have way too much time on their hands.

Whenever I visit a place, I have a really hard time with the ideal of calling it something other than what the locals do. The main issue is that most of the world, I only know by what I was taught, which is sadly rarely what I feel it should be, but all I have until I learn better.

 Elbows wrote:
I think it's a pretty irrelevant non-issue. It's also not just an English thing, at all. Every major language has different names for other countries.

Exactly this, not sure why this is presented as an 'English-speaker' thing, as most languages I've come across or studied do the same thing, and I can't really think of any that don't. I'm sure there might be some, but definitely not German, French, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Welsh, Irish, Turkish or Latin.


That's not to be said for that the English don't need to answer for the pathetically inaccurate way they Anglicized other languages (even their neighbors), but that's more a basic spelling issue than 'using local names'

If you’re speaking English use the English for clarity. If you’re speaking another language use the other language’s version as best you can. Otherwise it gets confusing, especially when native English speakers can’t possibly pronounce every foreign word correctly. There are also too many sounds English doesn’t use. Americans can’t even agree on how to pronounce Qatar, and you expect them to make an effort for all foreign words?

Just as an example, in your OP, you already misspelled Côte d’Ivoire.

There’s also the consideration for people who learn English as their second or third language. If you start throwing out a bazillion ways to pronounce words you’re going to make it very hard to speak English internationally.

So I believe such a motion would be overall detrimental to communication, with no real benefit. When you learn a foreign language it’s expected that place names will change so it’s not a big deal.

No. Every language has localised names for other countries. When the Spanish stop using Inglaterra I’ll stop saying Spain.

I’m all for learning languages of places you go, at least a little, but changing the name used in my language for another country? No, not unless there is some international agreement to change them all to the local name.

Context is everything. I speak two languages beyond in English and can muddle by a bit in a third so I'm comfortable saying placenames in those but I never pronounce the nations names in their native languages when I'm speaking English. I do pronounce Turkish towns and regions as if I were speaking Turkish when I'm in English but that's mostly because very few actually have Anglicised versions. I don't do the same with Israeli placenames, for instance, because most do have English versions and it sounds pretty jarring to say 'I'm headed to Yeh-roo-sha-lie-yim this weekend'.

Tl;dr I don't really think it matters much when it's just an Anglicised version of a word. I don't say Scotland instead of İskoçya when I'm speaking Turkish either.

I feel a little differently when the Anglicised names are specifically colonial terms - though, that said, I have an Indian friend who insists British people use Bombay etc because he feels it forces people to confront colonialism.

What does get my goat, is news media not bothering to spell names correctly. The president of Turkey's surname is Erdoğan, for instance. It is not Erdogan. Diacritics are not optional.

The purpose of using words is clear communication. So you should use the name most likely to be understood by the person you are talking to.

If you're a British person talking to a fellow Brit about your recent holiday in Spain, you're going to, at best, sound like a pretentious twit calling it "Reino de España".

But while you're actually in Spain, you should probably use the local name while talking to the locals.

Considering alot can't pronunce CH, ü, ä, ö i am Of the opinion that you'd not even be capable to do so if you'd wanted.

And many languages have these pitfalls.

So even if you wanted you'd probably use too much time for it.


Then there are shared cultural regions, for a Swiss german Tessin is Tessin Vice versa suito Schwyz for someone from the tessin.

Same with milano, which is for us just Milan.
History has a wierd Way of influencing.culture and language and cultural exchange.

nfe wrote:

What does get my goat, is news media not bothering to spell names correctly. The president of Turkey's surname is Erdoğan, for instance. It is not Erdogan. Diacritics are not optional.

But they are meaningless to non-speakers whose languages don't use them. Or worse, contradictory and confusing to non-speakers whose languages use them in a different way.

I worked for years with people who couldn't manage to pronounce my last name correctly, and it isn't, by the standards of such things, particularly foreign-looking. But explaining the concept of a short 'o' sound to people in that part of America wasn't worth the effort.

Being from Ireland, some of us get a bit touchy about people refering to Ireland (the state) as "Eire" for two reasons.
1. It began as an attempt to deny the legitimacy of the 26 county state, even if the person using it that way does not know this.
2. "Eire" is the Irish language word for "burden". Éire is the Irish language word for Ireland.

Irish people refer to Ireland as Ireland in English and Éire in Irish. In general we do not refer to ourselves as "The Irish Republic" or "Southern Ireland" or "Eire".

The word "Spain" is just a direct English approximation of "Espania". A word that was derived by English speaking people who tried to call people in Spain what they called themselves.

If its insulting to not use the exact word that the people of a place call themselves, then Spanish is far ruder than English at this. Inglaterra directly translates to "English Land", or "Land of the English", which sounds incredibly weird to an English speaker. At least English just did a direct approximation of the Spanish word. The Spanish word is just weird. Though of course its not incorrect, as the origin of England is "Angle-land" or "Land of the Angles". The same even going back to the older name of Britannia, which is what the Romans called the place where the Britons lived. The closest we can get to a self-described word for the British Isles is Albion. Prior to that, its all a series of names placed upon it by a different people group.

What's really annoying is when foreigners (most notably Americans, but it's not just them by any means) refer to the whole of the UK as 'England'. It'd be like us calling the US 'Virginia' or calling Spain 'Castille'.

Do Spanish people say ‘England’? Do the French? How about Germans?

No?

Then why should we use the national name for their country when they don’t for our own? Seems very odd.

Well if I'm speaking English it makes sense to use the English names for things. Trying to mix it is just drawing an arbitrary line; the names of countries, why not the names of ethnicities? Why not use the language-appropriate term for gender? For age? Profession? Where one decides to stop simply becomes a measure of how much of the language they know... Which is largely how things work in a casual sense, without needing any extra rules to govern it.

"Do you have a flag"

and anyhoo I'm so myopic I can only be bothered to upset the next shire over by referring to it as West Wales, until they correct their view on scones

Use whatever language you're speaking. It's London, France, and China when you're speaking English; Londres, Francais, and Chinois when you're speaking French. And so on.

I hope you didn’t just pronounce that scones.

Everyone knows it scones.

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Do Spanish people say ‘England’? Do the French? How about Germans?

No?

Then why should we use the national name for their country when they don’t for our own? Seems very odd.

England is England in German too...

The primary purpose of an English name is for English speakers to understand each other. Non-native English speakers who want to learn English need to learn the English names for things, in the same way that an English speaker learning a foreign language would need to learn the native name, to be understood by the people you're talking with.

It's worth noting that foreigners don't call each other or English places by their local names. The Italian for German is Tedesco. The Japanese for the UK is Eikoku or Igirisu.

And so on.

Don't get me started on Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Do Spanish people say ‘England’? Do the French? How about Germans?

No?

Then why should we use the national name for their country when they don’t for our own? Seems very odd.

England is England in German too...

And America is simply Amerika.

The humorous thing can be if/when you can get a local to mispronounce a city name in their own home. Case in point. When I was living in Germany, I lived in Wiesbaden, and we took a long weekend trip to Berlin. While there, apparently the hotel we were staying at was hosting a conference for the Bundeswehr (and whatever the navy is called). Ended up, in the lobby, talking to a German admiral attending the conference (my daughter was playing with this floor projector fish pond thing. . . she was under 2, and it was cute as feth). Anyhow, long story short, Herr Admiral asked what city I was living in, and when I said Wiesbaden, he asked how "Wees-bad-en" was (anglicized, it's Veez-bad-en).



One of the things I particularly don't like, even though I find myself doing it in certain situations is the deliberate mispronunciation of places such as Iran/Iraq. . . So many americans pronounce it Eye-rack or eye-ran, instead of ee-rock / ee-ron

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Do Spanish people say ‘England’? Do the French? How about Germans?

No?

Then why should we use the national name for their country when they don’t for our own? Seems very odd.

England is England in German too...

You're seizing on a coincidental exception and assuming its universal.
German has its own version of most place names: Ungarn, Russland, Italien, Frankreich

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

One of the things I particularly don't like, even though I find myself doing it in certain situations is the deliberate mispronunciation of places such as Iran/Iraq. . . So many americans pronounce it Eye-rack or eye-ran, instead of ee-rock / ee-ron

That's ignorance and poor education more often than it is deliberate. In some cases its just the speaker's local accent.
In the cases it is deliberate, the point is to be insulting, so there's not much to be done about that.

You're just going to sound like the worst kind of pretentious tool if you start dropping Deutschlands, Rossiyas and Italias all over the place.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
As a Brit, this is a thorny subject.

Whilst I wouldn’t dream of calling say, Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, or use other colonial names since changed? I’d also feel awkward calling Japan Nippon.

Would Nihon be any better

This is a non subject, mostly. But with some exceptions as listed below.

There will be snowflakes who insist on other people calling other countries by their internally recognised name, but those snowflakes would likely register this as only binding in a one sided fashion, and due to a hysteria on cultural appropriation or colonial speak or other bollocks.

We can draw the line at calling Zimbabwe, Rhodesia, as this has a direct racial dynamic. Similarly those who insist on calling Israel, Palestine, when not specifically talking about a Palestinian state in separation to Israel have a direct racial dynamic.
Similarly there are those who want cultural revisionism and insist on calling Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, when it was historically Rhodesia. The refusal to mention Rhodesia in a historical context is also ill. Normally these are the same snowflakes who insist on using local names.

The last category is when a foreign name is imposed on a people group without their consent. This is rare but there are topical examples.
China's successful bid to force Taiwan to complete in the Olympic games under the title 'Chinese Taipei', is the best example of this.
But there is also Argentina's insistence that Falkland Islanders can only represent themselves internationally as Islas Malvinas, which has not gone down well with Falkland Islanders. While unlike Taiwan the Falklands Islands don't have much to offer in the way of sporting competition, the recent attempts to ban their badmington team from international competition for refusing to compete as 'Islas Malvinas' were still ongoing and it is not yet concluded as per last press reports.

Checking........It appears on an updated reading that Argentina was not able to prevent the Falkland Islanders from competing under their preferred name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Pan_Am_Badminton_Championships
Good. They can feth right off.

Voss wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:
Do Spanish people say ‘England’? Do the French? How about Germans?

No?

Then why should we use the national name for their country when they don’t for our own? Seems very odd.

England is England in German too...

You're seizing on a coincidental exception and assuming its universal.
German has its own version of most place names: Ungarn, Russland, Italien, Frankreich

I'm well aware, but when the rationale is "they don't name us properly so why should we bother?" it doesn't help that they DO call England "England".

Whats the issue. You only need two terms.

Texas, and Not Texas.

Also I thought the proper term for the UK was Old Blighty?

The whole planet is buggered when it comes to Finland.