Re: OT: Parlez vous Kazakh?

 --- Joe Fatula skrzypszy:

> I've seen the same sort of thing as well.  Lake Balkhash is always spelled
> with a KH in English (for those who spell it at all), and Kazakh is
> variously spelled with a K or a KH.  And yes, it's "qazaq" in Kazakh.  So
> no, I don't know what's going on.
Simple: before 1991 it was common practice to follow the Russian version of a
place name rather than the local version, even when the former was nothing but
a Cyrillic transliteration. Republican languages (let alone the smaller
languages) were hardly known among people other than specialists.
For the same reason, the West-Ukrainian city of L'viv is almost always called
"L'vov" in older atlases.

Jan

=====
"Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones

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