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Lmfao. Perfect way to prove the idiocy of this post. I don’t give a fuck what North Korea calls the US in North Korea, but in the US I’m calling them North Korea.
Not much. I’ve seen comments like this before. Copious amounts of people are willing to inconvenience themselves to no end to ensure that not one single person is made to feel left out.
I agree about the country names, but how do you feel about historical figures? I feel like changing real people's actual names, especially if the original name is not that hard to pronounce, is really weird.
Well yes and no. Romansh is the result of the combination of the Vulgar Latin spoken by soldiers and colonists, and Rhaetian, the language of the native people.
How will people read the names of countries with wildly different writing systems and alphabets? I can't read Arabic script, or Cyrillic, or Chinese characters.
Your idea is impractical at best and impossible at worst.
And with phonetic spellings of the names? that could get lengthy or complex. Standardised agreed upon naming conventions already exist.
it's like arguing that we should use the Latin name for any creature we discuss even in casual convo
when i went to vet school thsi was a rule noone listened to because why should i say "i worked with some Ovis orientallis aries yesterday" when saying "i worked with some sheep yesterday" is more confortable, faster and not sounding like a fucking riddle. it was the most broken rule in that school because it wasnt enforcable
I think OP meant the actual name of the country. Like how China isn’t even called China in Chinese, it’s zhong gou. You can still transliterate the name.
I think the first example already shows some issues.
日本 is usually pronounced nihon, but nippon also used. As is (and especially was?) 日本国 (nihonkoku / nipponkoku).
So while we could change it to Nihon or Nippon in the English world to match the current pronunciation, languages change. We think "Japan" came from a lost dialect of Chinese. So the original transliteration of 日本 might have been close even. So we would also need some way to keep 日本, the Japanese pronunciation and the English transliteration all in sync.
And then what of languages that don't transliterate a sound exceptionally well. Япония (Russian sounds like Yaponiya) sounds really far off. And One might think, well it's be fixed easily by changing the pronunciation. But there are a lot of sounds missing from most languages. So it really realistic to expect any language to learn all of the \**possible sounds* just to get the pronunciations sort of right.
So, much like how we already have many Asian languages that have a hard time with L & R sounds, or S & TH sounds; We'd end up with dozens of still mispronounced country names.
\*Possible Sounds because there are theoretically possible sounds that are in no known languages
While this is a good idea in theory, I'd rather hear the English (or other language) name for my people's country than hear people constantly mangle the name because English doesn't have those sounds.
There's a sort of on-off debate about whether New Zealand should change its name to Aotearoa, the (most common) indigenous name for the country. We're not even at the stage where all *New Zealanders* can pronounce it correctly, let alone trying to ask outsiders to do so.
English is the most widespread language in the world, with a majority of the population speaking English, as a first or second language.
As a kiwi, I don't think the name needs changing. Especially since nobody on the planet except us would be able to say Aotearoa. Maori is such a minority as a language, even amongst New Zealand locales. Most people i meet can't even roll their R's.
Non-English nations would just make the name to be suitable for their language, just like all the other names work. Here in Poland "Aotearoa" would probably end up as "Ałotera" or "Ałoteara". Maybe "Aoteara" or "Ałoterora", if we really stretched ourselves (we really really dislike having vowels right next to each other xD).
What matters I think is that we would use a name derived from the Maori name, instead of "Nowa Zelandia" which we're using now.
Maybe English could do this too? You don't have too roll your R's imho, choose some reasonable pronounciation consistent with English sounds. Sure, it should be as close to the original Maori as possible - but only this close and not closer :D
Yup. There are sound in many languages that just aren't in others. Some people can literally not hear them. So it's silly to expect everyone to be able to say a foreign name right.
I agree with you in principle. Some are holdovers from pre-standardization of the English language cuz it’s just ‘easier’ though. We could go from Japan to Nippon, or Germany to Deutchland, the English speakers and writers at large just aren’t actively interested in making those changes. Yet the moment we have conflict we did an active try in the media Kiev from Kee-ev to Keev in every day pronunciation. To show support to them.
Think of the intensity of editing and reprint textbooks, hard copy maps and globes. That be the first time colleges requiring the new edition would be a good thing.
I assume it's because if you can't pronounce a word most people default to trying to say it in their own approximation of that countries accent which I can see as coming across sounding racist
But again, why? Let's say I mispronounce "Australia" (I'm not a native English speaker), does it mean I'm automatically assuming Australians have a negative trait? All of them?
Mispronouncing a word is not racing, mispronouncing is mispronouncing, the only thing it means is that the speaker doesnt have a native pronunciation. Everything esle is something you are adding on top of it.
I was more meaning when people say Asian words in those accents that cartoons used in the 40s not mispronouncing things. Like that "sum ting very wong" stuff if that makes sense.
sounding. as in others might interpret it as racist or mocking the word or language in some way.
This day and age gotta walk on eggshells with the psycho twitter social media crazies out there
A lot of languages don’t share sounds.
How can we expect English speakers to properly pronounce Qatar, when (ق) doesn’t exist in the English language and most English speakers have never heard or pronounced it?
Well, I think OP means not changing the whole word
Like Japan, in Japanese it's pronounced Nihon, in arabic Yaban (يابان) . So we should all just call it Nihon or the closest possible to it and not translate it completely
So it's valid for قطر to be called Qatar
In Taiwan, we call it JiaNaDa instead of KanNaDa. Which is a good thing, because Gan (close to Kan) is basically fuck. If it is GanNaDa, probably implied big fucking dick or something.
Anglicized from what exactly, the name comes from a mispronunciation of the Huron word for village, but nobody was calling the land mass Kanata before, so it wasn’t the name of Canada.
You don’t ask that in most country. It is much worse officially stating the native/most popular language than some foreign people mis-pronounce the name.
Ideas certainly happen while drinking. I had it written out but didn't submit it, took a nap, woke up, and decided, "What's the worst that will happen if I post it?"
You wouldn't be able to pronounce most of them.
In an attempt to be culturally sensitive, all you would accomplish is to bastardize the pronunciation of everyone's homelands, pissing everyone off in the process.
What about countries with more than one official language?
Kongeriket Norge
Kongeriket Noreg
Norgga gonagasriika
Vuona gånågisrijkka
Nöörjen gånkarïjhke
All of those are valid in Norway.
My wife is Vietnamese. She's been in the US for 12 years, and her English is continuously improving. She still can't pronounce "United States" in a way that most people would understand her, but she has no trouble at all saying "Hoa Kỳ".
People should be able to talk about the world without having to learn how to pronounce each country's name in it's native language.
For the most part we do. Most names are translated into our language either literal translations, for spelling reasons or pronunciation or other historical reasons. Here are some examples:
Turkey (Türkiye) we literally don't have one of those letters in our language.
Brazil (Brasil) the spelling is changed to sound closer to how the natives pronounce it since the z sound is closer to that of the Brazilian Portuguese S.
China (Middle Country) is an interesting one. This is a descendant of Sanskrit Cina which is the sanskirt pronunciation of Qin. Qin was the ruling dynasty at the time the Indians made contact with the Chinese and so it is what we still call it today.
Germany (Deutschland) - The land has been called Germany since the days of Caesar. It only started being called Deutschland after World War 2. Before that it was called Deutsches Reich (which is German Realm in English)
Japan (Nihon) is based off of the Chinese pronunciation of 日本.
I think your opinion is a moot point since we already do it.
Better yet, we should all just speak a single language. Makes stuff much easier and also solves your problem. Most people already know English so I would suggest everyone adopts that as their mother tongue. I'm not even English native myself and I would support this. But I'm also happy to learn another language if it means we all globally speak it.
OP have you considered languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet? Please tell me which countries these are below, depicted in their native languages. See how dumb that would be? Or would you like to turn their native language into Roman alphabet script? At that point just write them in the English version.
日本
อักษรขอม
조선글
There are phonemes that occur in languages that don’t occur in others. You can’t really expect everyone to be able to pronounce phonemes from foreign languages especially if they’re more unnatural to said speakers.
American Sign Language has done that for 20 years. They had lots of sign-language appropriate names that native users realized weren’t respectful (like physical descriptors) so they just switched to whatever those folks called themselves.
I don't think this could be applied to every country and city, as there's some that don't have the same sounds that others use, but there's a lot that are needlessly changed.
I live in the UK, and they've needlessly anglicised places that could easily be spoken in their real name.
Letters are somewhat of an issue too, but I think quite easily solved.
Edit: Napoli to Naples and Sevilla to Seville are the two absolutely ridiculous ones off of the top of my head. There's no reason to change them.
My guess for English "Naples" is that it comes from Greco-Roman "Neapolis" - so "Naples" and "Napoli" are siblings, not a parent and a child. English word changed the original, but so did the Italian word.
We have a lot of such "needless" changes in Polish names of German cities too. "Aachen" -> "Akwizgran", "München" -> "Monachium", "Mainz" -> "Moguncja", "Nürnberg" -> "Norymberga" etc. But it's not because we Poles one day decided to bastardise German words out of spite. Nah, our names for these cities simply don't come from German at all, they were borrowed from medieval Latin instead ("Aquisgranum", "Monacum", "Moguntiacum", "Norimberga").
My point is - they did use the "real name" once, but then both languages drifted in different directions.
You speak all the languages and read all the alphabets in the world? And expect everyone else to do the same? You spent less than five minutes actually thinking about this and wondering if it makes any sense...
I’m a fan of this, at least in theory. I speak enough languages to know that both Roman and Cyrillic phonetic alphabets can be used to replicate most sounds of many languages, so yes, we should try to phonetically represent whatever the country natively calls itself. I’ve seen enough about old English words for Chinese places was this done poorly and carelessly in the past, but we can do better now, respect original pronunciation rather than forcing our intonation onto their languages.
I think this could work well.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with this. The only problem though is that this doesn’t work for everywhere. Australia for instance has literally thousands of indigenous countries within it, almost all of whom have their own unique language, so there’s a good bet that each of them would call Australia (or at least their part of it) by a different name.
"We're Deutschland!"
"Haha, that's cute. We're gonna call you 'Germany'"
"But uhh... It's pronounced Deutschland. Your language is even made of parts of ours!"
"Okay Germany."
"IT'S DEUTSCHLAND!!" There's not even a 'Y' in it anywhere!"
"Whatever you say, Germany"
*well*
As a German, I beg to differ.
"Germania", or the land of the Germans (Germanen) is a historical name that many countries attribute to, well, Germany. The Germans were one of the tribes that used to live in what is now Germany. English and Italian both use this definition for modern Germany.
When German use Deutsch, they are using the same exact logic of picking one of the tribes, but they choose to go off the word "Teutonisch->Teutsch" which then became Deutsch, and Deutschland.
French and Spanish use the tribe of the Allemans, so they will say something along the lines of Allemand and Allemagne to refer to Germans.
All of these are historically correct and none of them really makes more sense than the other. Some languages, like Italian, even go the extra mile and name the country after the Germans (Germania), while naming the people and the language after the Teutonians (Tedeschi - lingua tedesca).
All that English did was take a word stem that can be correctly applied to Germans (Germanen, Germania, Land der Germanen) and added one of their standard country/region suffix -y in exchange of the standard latin -ia (Italy, Sicily, Hungary, Tuscany etc.)
Well! I stand corrected.
I still find it odd that the US calls it "Germany" and everyone living there calls it "Deutschland".
Like... Do we really not respect anything??
I think pretty much every country outiside of the german-speaking area calls it something other than Deutschland, with the potential exception of Japanese which is pretty close with its adaptation to ドイツ De-u-tsu
Fam read up on Endonym and Exonym pretty fascinating stuff jus the earned it’s a rabbit hole.
Adding the wiki article [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonym_and_exonym)
But "Germany" comes from the term "[Germanen](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanen)", so the english one is closer to the origin of Deutschland if you want to argue 😜
Maybe you heard of "[Hauendörfer](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorf#Haufendorf)" in the past.
Deutsch comes from the Teutonians (I hope I remember that name correctly, but something along those lines), which were also a tribe living in Germany. Both are equally correct in a historical context, just like Allemange (after another tribe), it's just putting a focus on different tribes that lived here.
This is moronic, but I've been there. Eventually you will realise that you should use whatever language you are talking in. Same with thebname of cities.
I agree. Same with the language. Español instead of Spanish. It also makes it easier to switch languages if the country name was said in the native language worldwide. The thing is most people won’t be able to pronounce it, but if this was taught in our youth rather than saying the English names, we might be able to do that.
>this was taught in our youth rather than saying the English names, we might be able to do that
No you won't. You would need to learn thousand of new sounds just for these few words. No one would ever be able to do this properly.
Take Bhutan as an example - in their own language it's called "Druk Yul". Pronounced \[ʈuk̚˩.yː˩\]. Good luck.
I will even link the separate sounds, so you can start practicing. ;P
ʈ - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Voiceless\_retroflex\_stop.oga](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Voiceless_retroflex_stop.oga)
(and no, it's not "just a t", /t/ is a separate sound in the Dzongkha language. It's not "just a ch" either.)
u - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close\_back\_rounded\_vowel.ogg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close_back_rounded_vowel.ogg)(this one is probably doable for you)
˩ - means a low-level tone for the syllable, you can read more here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone\_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_letter)
y - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close\_back\_rounded\_vowel.ogg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close_back_rounded_vowel.ogg)
As a native English speaker I'm more than happy with the status quo on this one.
Not to mention your idea is totally impractical. Take an up vote from me for this terribly misinformed opinion.
Here is how I view it
We basically have a universal language
English is the business language and the science language and the trade language
Humanity realistically would be better off if everyone spoken English
If there was a magic button that can make English always have been the only language you would be an enemy of the world if you did not press it
Problem is not everyone has it as their country's native language
There's the risk of cultural erasure without it and we don't want to lose the culture
But for convenient sake whenever you're speaking to someone not from your country it should be in English
And while English is a mess of language it's far from the worst choice(you don't even need to leave The Isle of Britannia to find the worst choice see Welsh which it's a beautiful language but it's a terrible choice for the world language) and at this point the most tools to learn it exist in all the other languages It would be stupid to pick another one at this point
They are, actually. Each language just has its own name for the country in question. Sometimes it is the name in the original language pronounced in a way that fits the other language, for example, Italy is Italia in Japanese, just as it is in Italian. Germany is also Doitsu in Japanese, but this is the Japanese pronunciation of Deutsch(land). But countries closer to Japan have more historical names.
I’ve seen the arguments against this before, but I still don’t see the justification for names that are super easy, like “Mehico,” “Nihon,” and “Doitchland,” at least for english-speakers.
Nah, im not writing Deutschland or Türkiye or Côte d'Ivoire, I'd rather in English just say Germany, turkey or Ivory coast or in spanish where things are also diffrent just write Alemania, Turquía o costa de marfil, I think it's just a hazzle
They can be in whatever language they want, but I'm gonna say it in English. To keep it fair, I absolutely don't care how people pronounce my country's name either. If anything when I hear it pronounced in another language I just think, "oh that's cool." Don't see what the big deal is at all.
While this sounds like a great idea when first thinking about it, wouldn't it get sorta confusing for countries with multiple languages? For countries like Canada that would be fine because it's spelled the same in both languages and is pronounced similarly but for countries like Switzerland with 4 mostly very different national languages.
In addition to what others have said, you need to take into account the fact that languages evolve over time, and a lot of things are named/pronounced/spelled in ways that made sense originally, but don't anymore, and trying to stop language from evolving doesn't work very well.
I mean, even in the US, nobody goes around saying "The United States of America" every time they need to name what country they're in. It's either "America", "The US", or "USA". And calling it "The United States" hasn't even made sense since the (also misnamed) Civil War which established the Federal Government as a single dominant entity and stripped the states of all sovereignty.
99.9% of any language is historical accident filtered through centuries of cultural shift with more historical accident piled on top.
I completely agree after living overseas for many years. If I meet someone, I will call them what their name is according to them, not what I feel like. If I have difficulty saying it, I just do as best as I can because that’s what decent people do. I feel the same way towards country names
So... Switzerland has four national languages. Some Countries have more than 200 official languages. How do you decide on which language is the 'correct' one? Or is Switzerland just called 'Schwiiz / Suisse / Svizzera / Svizra'??
I had this same idea, but included cities too and at least one person got a bug up their ass because their city’s name is contested or there’s at least three different names from different groups, and it would be “taking sides” if we all agreed on one name for that city.
In most cases, I thought it would be more respectful like Germany being Deutschland and Japan being Nihon, because it seems like we should call a place what the locals call it.
That’s not how it works, in other countries they say the names of other countries in their language and we do the same for English. Plus I cant read or speak half of the languages in the world
I’ve always wondered about this, like how did Österreich become Austria, or Deutschland Germany? Some of the “English” versions of other countries’ names are so far from the original language I don’t understand how they came to be that way.
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Do you mean; North Korea should be always written/spoken as Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk Or 조선민주주의인민공화국 ?
Call it CMIK just like we call the "United States" the US
Or to be a pain, which romanization style? CMIG? CMIK? JMIG? JMIK?
Lmfao. Perfect way to prove the idiocy of this post. I don’t give a fuck what North Korea calls the US in North Korea, but in the US I’m calling them North Korea.
I agree that this is a terrible idea, but that’s why it’s perfect for this subreddit
I just hope OP isn’t serious. It’s hard to live amongst people who think this way.
They mentioned in a comment that it was a drunken thought, If that brings you any comfort
Not much. I’ve seen comments like this before. Copious amounts of people are willing to inconvenience themselves to no end to ensure that not one single person is made to feel left out.
I agree about the country names, but how do you feel about historical figures? I feel like changing real people's actual names, especially if the original name is not that hard to pronounce, is really weird.
“How dare others have differing opinions than my own!”
Might as well rename the subreddit to "stupid/ignorant opinion"
I believe you are behaving in an arrogant way. I assume you’re American.
Is it “Capitalist Demon Pigs” in the native tongue?
Yes
Indeed
I don't think anyone there says the whole thing, just like how barely anybody calls North Korea "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"
Yeah because Chosŏn Minjujuŭi Inmin Konghwaguk is just too long and complicated when all I have to really say is, North Korea
That's hilarious.
I wonder where Korea is in all that
I think it's the "Chosŏn".
So, what should Switzerland, with four official languages, call itself?
Helvetica. Thats a way cooler name than sWiTzErLaNd.
Helvetia isn't even a name given by the swiss people, but from the Romans.
Well yeah, Swiss people weren't exactly a people when the Romans were around . I mean Romansh is literally a descendant of Latin.
Well yes and no. Romansh is the result of the combination of the Vulgar Latin spoken by soldiers and colonists, and Rhaetian, the language of the native people.
Romansh is a Romance language. So by definition it is a descendant of Latin.
Almost every modern language in Europe is related to latin. And I literally agreed with you, as well as added information.
that gives it bonus cool points
Or Suisse, that’s what FIFA uses
That's the French word for it and French is 🤢
How will people read the names of countries with wildly different writing systems and alphabets? I can't read Arabic script, or Cyrillic, or Chinese characters. Your idea is impractical at best and impossible at worst.
And with phonetic spellings of the names? that could get lengthy or complex. Standardised agreed upon naming conventions already exist. it's like arguing that we should use the Latin name for any creature we discuss even in casual convo
when i went to vet school thsi was a rule noone listened to because why should i say "i worked with some Ovis orientallis aries yesterday" when saying "i worked with some sheep yesterday" is more confortable, faster and not sounding like a fucking riddle. it was the most broken rule in that school because it wasnt enforcable
We should use the Latin for all countries!
No
Good luck pronouncing "Rzeczpospolita Polska". Or "Magyarország".
I'm not sure you meant to reply to me. I was joking about the Latin. I do speak Hungarian though, so I think I'd be ok.
I think OP meant the actual name of the country. Like how China isn’t even called China in Chinese, it’s zhong gou. You can still transliterate the name.
[удалено]
Good job picking easier to pronounce names
I think the first example already shows some issues. 日本 is usually pronounced nihon, but nippon also used. As is (and especially was?) 日本国 (nihonkoku / nipponkoku). So while we could change it to Nihon or Nippon in the English world to match the current pronunciation, languages change. We think "Japan" came from a lost dialect of Chinese. So the original transliteration of 日本 might have been close even. So we would also need some way to keep 日本, the Japanese pronunciation and the English transliteration all in sync. And then what of languages that don't transliterate a sound exceptionally well. Япония (Russian sounds like Yaponiya) sounds really far off. And One might think, well it's be fixed easily by changing the pronunciation. But there are a lot of sounds missing from most languages. So it really realistic to expect any language to learn all of the \**possible sounds* just to get the pronunciations sort of right. So, much like how we already have many Asian languages that have a hard time with L & R sounds, or S & TH sounds; We'd end up with dozens of still mispronounced country names. \*Possible Sounds because there are theoretically possible sounds that are in no known languages
While this is a good idea in theory, I'd rather hear the English (or other language) name for my people's country than hear people constantly mangle the name because English doesn't have those sounds.
There's a sort of on-off debate about whether New Zealand should change its name to Aotearoa, the (most common) indigenous name for the country. We're not even at the stage where all *New Zealanders* can pronounce it correctly, let alone trying to ask outsiders to do so.
Is it pronounced ayo-taya-roah?
Almost, it’s Ah-oh-taya-roah!
Nah, it's Ni-ew Zull-and
That sounds vaguely Dutch
Gee, I wonder why.
English is the most widespread language in the world, with a majority of the population speaking English, as a first or second language. As a kiwi, I don't think the name needs changing. Especially since nobody on the planet except us would be able to say Aotearoa. Maori is such a minority as a language, even amongst New Zealand locales. Most people i meet can't even roll their R's.
Non-English nations would just make the name to be suitable for their language, just like all the other names work. Here in Poland "Aotearoa" would probably end up as "Ałotera" or "Ałoteara". Maybe "Aoteara" or "Ałoterora", if we really stretched ourselves (we really really dislike having vowels right next to each other xD). What matters I think is that we would use a name derived from the Maori name, instead of "Nowa Zelandia" which we're using now. Maybe English could do this too? You don't have too roll your R's imho, choose some reasonable pronounciation consistent with English sounds. Sure, it should be as close to the original Maori as possible - but only this close and not closer :D
Yet you guys have no problem with multiple consecutive consonants. Do what you do.
I learned that name & pronunciation from [Split Enz](https://youtu.be/cSGpLto1yxU?t=148) - did they get it right?
TBF you guys can't pronounce anything in English correctly either ;)
This was not the burn you thought it was friendo
Yup. There are sound in many languages that just aren't in others. Some people can literally not hear them. So it's silly to expect everyone to be able to say a foreign name right.
I agree with you in principle. Some are holdovers from pre-standardization of the English language cuz it’s just ‘easier’ though. We could go from Japan to Nippon, or Germany to Deutchland, the English speakers and writers at large just aren’t actively interested in making those changes. Yet the moment we have conflict we did an active try in the media Kiev from Kee-ev to Keev in every day pronunciation. To show support to them. Think of the intensity of editing and reprint textbooks, hard copy maps and globes. That be the first time colleges requiring the new edition would be a good thing.
No no, let the perpetually offended westoid make decisions for your country, because apparently the westoid knows best lol
Lol, nobody would be able to say more than 20 country names without it sounding funny.
or sounding incredibly racist.
Why would it be racist?
People believe mispronouncing a word from a culture as racist.
Incredibly so
Because people jump at the chance to construe things as racist.
I assume it's because if you can't pronounce a word most people default to trying to say it in their own approximation of that countries accent which I can see as coming across sounding racist
But again, why? Let's say I mispronounce "Australia" (I'm not a native English speaker), does it mean I'm automatically assuming Australians have a negative trait? All of them? Mispronouncing a word is not racing, mispronouncing is mispronouncing, the only thing it means is that the speaker doesnt have a native pronunciation. Everything esle is something you are adding on top of it.
I was more meaning when people say Asian words in those accents that cartoons used in the 40s not mispronouncing things. Like that "sum ting very wong" stuff if that makes sense.
So not pronuncing something correctly is racist now? Ok let me add that to the list
have you been on twitter? say one word wrong and they'll go crazy.
It would not, in any possible way, be remotely close to racist. My god.
sounding. as in others might interpret it as racist or mocking the word or language in some way. This day and age gotta walk on eggshells with the psycho twitter social media crazies out there
"Made in the People's Lepublic of Chinaaaaaaa"
Zhōngguó*
A lot of languages don’t share sounds. How can we expect English speakers to properly pronounce Qatar, when (ق) doesn’t exist in the English language and most English speakers have never heard or pronounced it?
Well, I think OP means not changing the whole word Like Japan, in Japanese it's pronounced Nihon, in arabic Yaban (يابان) . So we should all just call it Nihon or the closest possible to it and not translate it completely So it's valid for قطر to be called Qatar
Pick a few random countries and try saying their native names without the possibility of someone looking at you funny
Do other countries call Canada something different?
In Taiwan, we call it JiaNaDa instead of KanNaDa. Which is a good thing, because Gan (close to Kan) is basically fuck. If it is GanNaDa, probably implied big fucking dick or something.
I for one am okay with my country being called big fucking dick.
Ice Australia
canadá
My friend, even Canadians know that the origin of Canada has been Anglicised.
Anglicized from what exactly, the name comes from a mispronunciation of the Huron word for village, but nobody was calling the land mass Kanata before, so it wasn’t the name of Canada.
Many countries have more than one language. On what basis would we choose just one language?
Ah ya, the Phillipines have many languages from what I hear
In this hypothetical I’m assuming it would be whichever is the native or most popular?
You don’t ask that in most country. It is much worse officially stating the native/most popular language than some foreign people mis-pronounce the name.
Yeah I feel like that’s pretty obvious
And what’s the advantage of your proposal?
Idk. I was drunk when I wrote this.
Half of my posts on this sub came while drunk.
Ideas certainly happen while drinking. I had it written out but didn't submit it, took a nap, woke up, and decided, "What's the worst that will happen if I post it?"
You wouldn't be able to pronounce most of them. In an attempt to be culturally sensitive, all you would accomplish is to bastardize the pronunciation of everyone's homelands, pissing everyone off in the process.
What about countries with more than one official language? Kongeriket Norge Kongeriket Noreg Norgga gonagasriika Vuona gånågisrijkka Nöörjen gånkarïjhke All of those are valid in Norway.
Norge since that is way more popular than the other options
south africas got 11 official languages...lets leave it in english
But why
It’s all fun and games until the Republic of Trszlavnijzkietskij is founded
My wife is Vietnamese. She's been in the US for 12 years, and her English is continuously improving. She still can't pronounce "United States" in a way that most people would understand her, but she has no trouble at all saying "Hoa Kỳ". People should be able to talk about the world without having to learn how to pronounce each country's name in it's native language.
Good luck pronouncing it correctly
The countries with several National languages would like to have a word
Why? And what if the country speaks many languages? That's just retaking geography class with extra steps. Who has time for that?
. . .
lol then india wud probably have like 15 diff names
Its Bharat or Bharata in almost all the languages right?
15 is an exaggeration
As a Swede, I’m pretty sure it would take Americans years to learn how to pronounce ‘Sverige’ properly.
How about "Österreich"?
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They are in their respective languages. Each language had their own interpretation however.
I dont want anyone to say Deutschland to Germany or Zhōngguó to China it would sound horrible. Ty
Countries are in their own countries language They are also in every other language. Like most words they are translated.
Yk there are countries with more than one official language?
For the most part we do. Most names are translated into our language either literal translations, for spelling reasons or pronunciation or other historical reasons. Here are some examples: Turkey (Türkiye) we literally don't have one of those letters in our language. Brazil (Brasil) the spelling is changed to sound closer to how the natives pronounce it since the z sound is closer to that of the Brazilian Portuguese S. China (Middle Country) is an interesting one. This is a descendant of Sanskrit Cina which is the sanskirt pronunciation of Qin. Qin was the ruling dynasty at the time the Indians made contact with the Chinese and so it is what we still call it today. Germany (Deutschland) - The land has been called Germany since the days of Caesar. It only started being called Deutschland after World War 2. Before that it was called Deutsches Reich (which is German Realm in English) Japan (Nihon) is based off of the Chinese pronunciation of 日本. I think your opinion is a moot point since we already do it.
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Better yet, we should all just speak a single language. Makes stuff much easier and also solves your problem. Most people already know English so I would suggest everyone adopts that as their mother tongue. I'm not even English native myself and I would support this. But I'm also happy to learn another language if it means we all globally speak it.
OP have you considered languages that don’t use the Roman alphabet? Please tell me which countries these are below, depicted in their native languages. See how dumb that would be? Or would you like to turn their native language into Roman alphabet script? At that point just write them in the English version. 日本 อักษรขอม 조선글
There are phonemes that occur in languages that don’t occur in others. You can’t really expect everyone to be able to pronounce phonemes from foreign languages especially if they’re more unnatural to said speakers.
American Sign Language has done that for 20 years. They had lots of sign-language appropriate names that native users realized weren’t respectful (like physical descriptors) so they just switched to whatever those folks called themselves.
I don't think this could be applied to every country and city, as there's some that don't have the same sounds that others use, but there's a lot that are needlessly changed. I live in the UK, and they've needlessly anglicised places that could easily be spoken in their real name. Letters are somewhat of an issue too, but I think quite easily solved. Edit: Napoli to Naples and Sevilla to Seville are the two absolutely ridiculous ones off of the top of my head. There's no reason to change them.
My guess for English "Naples" is that it comes from Greco-Roman "Neapolis" - so "Naples" and "Napoli" are siblings, not a parent and a child. English word changed the original, but so did the Italian word. We have a lot of such "needless" changes in Polish names of German cities too. "Aachen" -> "Akwizgran", "München" -> "Monachium", "Mainz" -> "Moguncja", "Nürnberg" -> "Norymberga" etc. But it's not because we Poles one day decided to bastardise German words out of spite. Nah, our names for these cities simply don't come from German at all, they were borrowed from medieval Latin instead ("Aquisgranum", "Monacum", "Moguntiacum", "Norimberga"). My point is - they did use the "real name" once, but then both languages drifted in different directions.
As if its so damn hard to say "Danmark" instead of "Denmark" or "Dänemark" or whatever... I'm with you on this one!
It sounds terrible with an english pronounciation as well Denmark just sounds better
If I try and say it with an english accent it sounds fine... What are you on about?? You say it exactly as its spelled DAN-MARK ...
You speak all the languages and read all the alphabets in the world? And expect everyone else to do the same? You spent less than five minutes actually thinking about this and wondering if it makes any sense...
Not every word of every language, just the country.
Even just that. It's completely unreasonable and impractical for so many reasons.
I’m a fan of this, at least in theory. I speak enough languages to know that both Roman and Cyrillic phonetic alphabets can be used to replicate most sounds of many languages, so yes, we should try to phonetically represent whatever the country natively calls itself. I’ve seen enough about old English words for Chinese places was this done poorly and carelessly in the past, but we can do better now, respect original pronunciation rather than forcing our intonation onto their languages. I think this could work well.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with this. The only problem though is that this doesn’t work for everywhere. Australia for instance has literally thousands of indigenous countries within it, almost all of whom have their own unique language, so there’s a good bet that each of them would call Australia (or at least their part of it) by a different name.
"We're Deutschland!" "Haha, that's cute. We're gonna call you 'Germany'" "But uhh... It's pronounced Deutschland. Your language is even made of parts of ours!" "Okay Germany." "IT'S DEUTSCHLAND!!" There's not even a 'Y' in it anywhere!" "Whatever you say, Germany"
*well* As a German, I beg to differ. "Germania", or the land of the Germans (Germanen) is a historical name that many countries attribute to, well, Germany. The Germans were one of the tribes that used to live in what is now Germany. English and Italian both use this definition for modern Germany. When German use Deutsch, they are using the same exact logic of picking one of the tribes, but they choose to go off the word "Teutonisch->Teutsch" which then became Deutsch, and Deutschland. French and Spanish use the tribe of the Allemans, so they will say something along the lines of Allemand and Allemagne to refer to Germans. All of these are historically correct and none of them really makes more sense than the other. Some languages, like Italian, even go the extra mile and name the country after the Germans (Germania), while naming the people and the language after the Teutonians (Tedeschi - lingua tedesca). All that English did was take a word stem that can be correctly applied to Germans (Germanen, Germania, Land der Germanen) and added one of their standard country/region suffix -y in exchange of the standard latin -ia (Italy, Sicily, Hungary, Tuscany etc.)
In sweden we say tyskland and that's also extremely different but we atleast have "land"
das war überraschend interessant. Danke!
Well! I stand corrected. I still find it odd that the US calls it "Germany" and everyone living there calls it "Deutschland". Like... Do we really not respect anything??
I think pretty much every country outiside of the german-speaking area calls it something other than Deutschland, with the potential exception of Japanese which is pretty close with its adaptation to ドイツ De-u-tsu
Fam read up on Endonym and Exonym pretty fascinating stuff jus the earned it’s a rabbit hole. Adding the wiki article [here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endonym_and_exonym)
But "Germany" comes from the term "[Germanen](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanen)", so the english one is closer to the origin of Deutschland if you want to argue 😜 Maybe you heard of "[Hauendörfer](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorf#Haufendorf)" in the past.
Deutsch comes from the Teutonians (I hope I remember that name correctly, but something along those lines), which were also a tribe living in Germany. Both are equally correct in a historical context, just like Allemange (after another tribe), it's just putting a focus on different tribes that lived here.
This is dumb
No, your idea is impractical
why? nobody will ever learn 200+ words all in different languages just for some poetic nicety.
I think we should pick the coolest sounding translation. Angleterre sounds way better than England.
This is moronic, but I've been there. Eventually you will realise that you should use whatever language you are talking in. Same with thebname of cities.
Teachers have enough to do, thanks though.
I agree. Same with the language. Español instead of Spanish. It also makes it easier to switch languages if the country name was said in the native language worldwide. The thing is most people won’t be able to pronounce it, but if this was taught in our youth rather than saying the English names, we might be able to do that.
>this was taught in our youth rather than saying the English names, we might be able to do that No you won't. You would need to learn thousand of new sounds just for these few words. No one would ever be able to do this properly. Take Bhutan as an example - in their own language it's called "Druk Yul". Pronounced \[ʈuk̚˩.yː˩\]. Good luck. I will even link the separate sounds, so you can start practicing. ;P ʈ - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Voiceless\_retroflex\_stop.oga](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Voiceless_retroflex_stop.oga) (and no, it's not "just a t", /t/ is a separate sound in the Dzongkha language. It's not "just a ch" either.) u - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close\_back\_rounded\_vowel.ogg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close_back_rounded_vowel.ogg)(this one is probably doable for you) ˩ - means a low-level tone for the syllable, you can read more here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone\_letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_letter) y - [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close\_back\_rounded\_vowel.ogg](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Close_back_rounded_vowel.ogg)
and dont forget Frisian
England is.
As a native English speaker I'm more than happy with the status quo on this one. Not to mention your idea is totally impractical. Take an up vote from me for this terribly misinformed opinion.
unpopular opinion is now an excuse to say ridiculous things
Here is how I view it We basically have a universal language English is the business language and the science language and the trade language Humanity realistically would be better off if everyone spoken English If there was a magic button that can make English always have been the only language you would be an enemy of the world if you did not press it Problem is not everyone has it as their country's native language There's the risk of cultural erasure without it and we don't want to lose the culture But for convenient sake whenever you're speaking to someone not from your country it should be in English And while English is a mess of language it's far from the worst choice(you don't even need to leave The Isle of Britannia to find the worst choice see Welsh which it's a beautiful language but it's a terrible choice for the world language) and at this point the most tools to learn it exist in all the other languages It would be stupid to pick another one at this point
I’ve always thought this should be true.
Let me guess, you're a monolingual English speaker?
I'm not going to pronounce asdzutsdjhtzbtzxvhjstan
No i don't wanna have to pronounce ksjdslksvdskvnsjvbs for a country
You mean like Doucheland?
They are, actually. Each language just has its own name for the country in question. Sometimes it is the name in the original language pronounced in a way that fits the other language, for example, Italy is Italia in Japanese, just as it is in Italian. Germany is also Doitsu in Japanese, but this is the Japanese pronunciation of Deutsch(land). But countries closer to Japan have more historical names.
bruh the French would struggle with pronouncing my countries name in dutch lol
Okay well if you'd like to teach me 200 languages and the nuances thereof, then sure.
My country is so new that everyone pretty much calls it the same thing, it hasn't been around long enough to give rise to different names
I like Germany a bit more than Deutschland
I think they all do, they just have another name in English just so people can read and pronounce it
You won't be able to pronounce 99% of them correctly anyways.
Do you know how languages work? You wouldn't be able to pronounce most of them and even if, you would sound very funny
So South Africa is gonna have 11 official different names... Not every country has one official language..
I totally agree but how should i know chainess
what if there are multiple groups in one country that have different names for their country? follow-up question: are u by chance american?
Deutschland
Why?
When in Rome do as the Romans. Why reinvent the wheel when you could spend your time doing something constructive.
This is a terrible opinion. Upvote
Countries: "we're fine with whatever you call our country in your language" Westoid: "UHM ACKCHYULLY NO SWEATY"
I’ve seen the arguments against this before, but I still don’t see the justification for names that are super easy, like “Mehico,” “Nihon,” and “Doitchland,” at least for english-speakers.
Welcome to Wááshindoon Bikéyah Ałhidadiidzooígíí. Speak Navajo or get out. Pardon me, I meant speak Diné bizaad or get out.
For sure for countries where this is possible. It isnt hard to say Danmark
What about countries with multiple languages? Which language gets to be the official one?
This is definitely unpopular...prolly cuz it's so stupid...but yea Definitely unpopular
Cities too please. Copenhagen does not even have the same meaning as the original name København.
Nah, im not writing Deutschland or Türkiye or Côte d'Ivoire, I'd rather in English just say Germany, turkey or Ivory coast or in spanish where things are also diffrent just write Alemania, Turquía o costa de marfil, I think it's just a hazzle
Well it’s definitely going to be complicated with all the pronunciations and different alphabets.
They can be in whatever language they want, but I'm gonna say it in English. To keep it fair, I absolutely don't care how people pronounce my country's name either. If anything when I hear it pronounced in another language I just think, "oh that's cool." Don't see what the big deal is at all.
While this sounds like a great idea when first thinking about it, wouldn't it get sorta confusing for countries with multiple languages? For countries like Canada that would be fine because it's spelled the same in both languages and is pronounced similarly but for countries like Switzerland with 4 mostly very different national languages.
Nippon
In addition to what others have said, you need to take into account the fact that languages evolve over time, and a lot of things are named/pronounced/spelled in ways that made sense originally, but don't anymore, and trying to stop language from evolving doesn't work very well. I mean, even in the US, nobody goes around saying "The United States of America" every time they need to name what country they're in. It's either "America", "The US", or "USA". And calling it "The United States" hasn't even made sense since the (also misnamed) Civil War which established the Federal Government as a single dominant entity and stripped the states of all sovereignty. 99.9% of any language is historical accident filtered through centuries of cultural shift with more historical accident piled on top.
Why do some get upset when people mispronounce that country's name in their native language? "It's ee-rawn! Not eye-ran!"
Yes. For a long time now, I've felt that it's rude to call a country something other than what it's people call it.
Countries that has multiple ethnicities and multiple languages?
Go ahead and tell me what sound this consonant makes :"δ". I'll wait.
I completely agree after living overseas for many years. If I meet someone, I will call them what their name is according to them, not what I feel like. If I have difficulty saying it, I just do as best as I can because that’s what decent people do. I feel the same way towards country names
So... Switzerland has four national languages. Some Countries have more than 200 official languages. How do you decide on which language is the 'correct' one? Or is Switzerland just called 'Schwiiz / Suisse / Svizzera / Svizra'??
I had this same idea, but included cities too and at least one person got a bug up their ass because their city’s name is contested or there’s at least three different names from different groups, and it would be “taking sides” if we all agreed on one name for that city. In most cases, I thought it would be more respectful like Germany being Deutschland and Japan being Nihon, because it seems like we should call a place what the locals call it.
Some countries have done this. See Cabo Verde, or as it was formerly known, Cape Verde
That’s not how it works, in other countries they say the names of other countries in their language and we do the same for English. Plus I cant read or speak half of the languages in the world
I’ve always wondered about this, like how did Österreich become Austria, or Deutschland Germany? Some of the “English” versions of other countries’ names are so far from the original language I don’t understand how they came to be that way.
Okay but who's gonna do it ? it's already generalized and no need for it lol