I think this question is a real slippery one, and honestly depends on where the listener is from, the history between your nations, and the differences between your languages.
Due to the wide variance in Indo-european and indo-european derrived languages in relation to each other, places like France and the
UK can have tremendous differences, despite being visable to one another across a piddly little patch of water. I've got plenty of French and German friends, who will gleefully pretend to have no idea what you're talking about if you say "the Loo-arr valley" or "Myuunick", but the second you drop a "Vallée
de la Loire" or "München", they totally get it.
Those friends, however, knew I could speak at least a navigable bit of their language, and it was usually a bit of friendly ribbing. Most languages in Europe have quite a lot of cross-polination, and so getting your mouth around them isn't so difficult. For that reason, a Spanish friend of mine had little patience for me using English for anything other than "Spain", because, in her words, it just sounded silly to pronounce those places with stumbly English, when I could manage the spanish version with a bit of instruction. To be fair, she was from a part of spain with a lot of Gammon British tourists, who mangled place names, were rude and drunk and wanted all the local cuisine to be warped to accommodate some chips. So I could understand the fairly minor peeve.
Slightly more seriously, my family in Ireland were moderate Catholic Republicans in a majority Protestant part of Northern Ireland during the troubles. For decades they all got the short end of the stick from all 3 sides of the conflict, and we've lost relatives because of it. With them, I'm always extremely careful about my placenames. It's never not Derry. Sometimes people can get heated about it, but mostly it's just painful. Even when I'm not sure, I'd rather fumble an approximation of Irish pronounciation, and get an 'at-least-ya-tried' look, than sound like a cop or a paratrooper.
Likewise, when I went to meet an ex's family in Guangzhou, China (my Chinese has always been terrible, I just don't have the muscle strength to manage tonal pronounciations for more than a few minutes), I was always careful to ask first, and then carefully parrot, given that her Grandma could remember when my country used to call this place Canton, and had turned it into an opium-ridden nightmare.
It's worth noting, though, that not all of the anglophone names have been applied out of spite or ignorance. Korea comes from Goryeo - a historic name for the late ancient to early medieval kingdom that united the penninsula. Koreans are actually pretty fond of this, given that it's regarded as a bit of a golden age, nestled in an otherwise bleak and turbulent history. Most Koreans are pretty proud to call themselves "Korean". To boot, their English is pretty good for the most part across the board, and usually I was met with shock whenever I tried to pronounce things in Korean, moreso when it was getting people's names right.
As mentionned before in this thread, Japanese is a pretty good one for just phonetically echoing foreign words, though sometimes, because of history, it comes out a little wonky. Then for Korea and Japan, the word for China (and traditionally it's character) has the same meaning, but the pronounciation of "The Middle Kingdom" - which is what the Chinese call China - is the similar, but a bit different.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:On top of country names?
Do you feel it’s important to try to pronounce someone’s name properly?
Bearing in mind that due to Data Protection laws in the U.K., I need to ask you your name before I ask how you pronounce your name.
That's a thorny one, Grotsnik, but it sounds like you give it a jolly good go. Very noble of you. I do the same, and usually check if I've butchered the pronounciation, as most people living in the
UK are pretty used to having people flubb their names up, and are glad at least that you're trying, and not just dictating to them what thier names are.
theCrowe wrote:Is it more a question of perceived power dynamics?
The English speaking world is often in a more dominant position politically or economically. By not using the language in the names of non-English cultures do you feel you are exploiting a privilege you don't wish to be associated with? You don't want to reject or deny or dominate by your choice of words.
Because language is power, you would use it with some care.
The question is "should" as in ethically or ideally. In reality social habits, effective communication, language as used all factor against a strictly ethical ideal.
An excellent take on the subject, and certainly one I can relate to as someone of mixed parentage (half british military family, half empire) living in Asia, where, though most people regard the British well, still bear the marks of the trauma inflicted upon them by my ancestors.
I see nothing wrong with only using English place names if 1. they're the only name you know for the place and 2. You know the listener is comfortable hearing it.
I know. I took VG's post as a challenge to show how much worse it can get.