Re: new Klingon spelling

Quoting "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>:

> Personally, aside from these issues, I find it disrespectful
> not to make an effort to pronounce the latter category of terms
> as it would be in the source language.  It's not "wrong", except
> insofar as it is "wrong" not to take into consideration other
> people's cultures as valid just as your own.  I find anglophones
> to be very insular in this respect.
I've never got why it should be disrespectful, but let's not go down that road.

Instead, I thought I ask what you feel about "quasitranslations". For example,
the traditional Swedish name of Belarus is _Vitryssland_, which is a perfectly
transparent compound meaning "White Russia"*. After the place got independent
in '91, some voices were raised what we should ditch that name and adopt
_Belarus_ out of "respect". No idea what the Belarussians would have thought
of it had it been done - likely they hadn't cared much at all - but I know I'd
be anything but happy if anglophones suddenly replaced "Sweden" with some
mangling of _Sverige_. What's your view?

* A Belarussian is of course a _vitryss_ "White Russian", but unfortunately we
don't translate the drink-name.

                                                         Andreas

PS Of course, _Ryssland_ itself isn't an adoption/corruption of _Rossiia_, but
simply the ethnonym _ryss_, variant of _rus_, plus _land_ "land". I would not
be entirely surprised to learn that someone would find even this politically
suspect ...

Tangentially, one of the more popular etymologies of _rus_ derives it from an
ancestor of _Ruotsi_, the Finnish for "Sweden", which in turn may be a
corruption of _Rodden_, the name of a district in central Sweden (and probably
refering to the organization of naval levies). Quite a career for a word.

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