Beijing, Zhongguo, etc
| From: | David McCann <david@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, August 20, 2008, 14:10 |
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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?
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