Re: Bengali Script

From: Doug Ewell (doug@ewellic.org)
Date: Thu Jul 08 2010 - 23:54:35 CDT

  • Next message: William J Poser: "Re: Bangladeshi, Bengali, Bangla"

    "William J Poser" <wjposer at ldc dot upenn dot edu> wrote:

    > Actually, Bengali is called "Bangla" in Bengali but "Bengali" has been
    > and still is the usual English name, both in common usage and in
    > sources such as the Ethnolog. There is no disrespect in the English
    > name for a language or country not being the same as that used in that
    > language or country, as one can see from the fact that the English
    > name is almost always different from the self-designation. This is
    > true of every other language with which I am familiar, which of course
    > is to be expected since different languages have different sound
    > systems. If you know Bengali, you will know that "English" is not
    > called "English" in Bengali.

    Well said. I would add that the English name for this language in both
    ISO 639-2 and 639-3 is "Bengali," the English Wikipedia calls it
    "Bengali," and Ethnologue calls it "Bengali" and lists "Bangla" only as
    an alternate name, along with "Banga-Bhasa" and "Bangala." The French
    name in ISO 639-2 is also "bengali."

    If we are to require that the English name of a language be identical to
    the native name, then we have a lot of changes to make besides this one:
    français, Deutsch, español, nederlands, russkiy, nihongo, etc.

    --
    Doug Ewell | Thornton, Colorado, USA | http://www.ewellic.org
    RFC 5645, 4645, UTN #14 | ietf-languages @ is dot gd slash 2kf0s ­
    


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