Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc

I loved your typo “third-word countries”! I agree with the points you
raised…

Dan 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: David McCann
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:08 PM

 

On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 23:58 -0400, Dana Nutter wrote:

 

> I have to admit though I'm guilty of using some of the older
> names for places.  I still say Bombay and Saigon even though
> they were Mumbai and Ho Chi Minh City at the time I was there.
> It's really just a habit because those names were used for so
> long.  
 

Don't feel guilty! If speakers of English and Hindi are allowed different
languages, why can't those languages have different placenames in them?

 

This seems a very Anglo-Saxon thing. I've got a German book on the shelves
nearby that consistently uses Libau, Dünaburg, Wenden, etc for Liepāja,
Daugavpils, and Cēsis (Latvia) and I'm sure it's authors didn't feel guilty.
And the passion for local names only seems to be applied to third-word
countries. People who'd never sully their tongues with Bombay are still
content with Athens and Copenhagen. Political correctness strikes again?