Place names in foreign languages (was: Re: Peking/Beijing (Re: Burma/Myanmar))

From: Karl Pentzlin ([email protected])
Date: Sat Oct 09 1999 - 08:58:41 EDT


----- Original Message -----
From: John Jenkins <[email protected]>

> And I refuse to call it anything other than Peking myself.

Anybody out there who requests Shakespeare's play "The Merchant of Venice"
to be renamed "The Merchant of Ven�zia"?

Let's see it the other way round: If a country, city or place gets its own
name or spelling in other languages, this is because the speakers of that
language consider the country/city/place as important enough to integrate it
in their own language. This is a honor which the vast majority of smaller
and less important places never will get.

(With a few exceptions of course, where the name in the other languages
reflects discrimination or is caused by biased politics. In my opinion, only
such reasons justify a request to rename places in foreign languages.)

Regards
Karl Pentzlin
AC&S Analysis Consulting & Software GmbH
M�nchen, Germany



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