Note: for any future commotion, this was supposed to be purely educational. Okay the question should be why do countries have to do this and why is it so hard not to? Wouldn’t it make sense to add this to the list of things the youth can learn at an early age?
Why can’t they just allow kids in schools to learn the true names of things no matter how hard they may be to pronounce? I understand the difficulty but computers and the Internet exist so we can translate and better implement this. Like some words in English where we have no single word translation like ‘Dejavu’ (pardon non autocorrect), I understand. But places were changed to make it easier to produce in a native tongue. I am sure it is not only America, or English, but wouldn’t we be better off respecting the culture and not changing the name, like we changed our map to the correct pronunciation of Turkey (Türkiye). So why don’t we change everything back to how the countries’ place names are pronounced by their citizens out of respect? We can learn how to pronounce things better. Would it make things harder or would it allow us to grow? I am genuinely curious.
Note: I understand some people won’t be able to pronounce them but why did they decide it would be better for a country/language than to just try to pronounce them correctly.
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As a 华裔-American, I agree, we should just use all the true names of places.
I mean, what kind of a name is “China”?
Its 中国, officially 中华人民共和国.
So… lets use the real names, shall we?
This is what class would sound like:
"Alright kids, it’s time to learn about countries. As you know, Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó¹ is one of the largest guó jiā² in the world…
Xiāng Gǎng³ is a tè bié xíng zhèng qū⁴ that has de jure autonomy. Just like guǎng zhōu⁵, and the rest of guǎng dōng shěng⁶, people generally speak guǎng dōng huà⁷ (aka: yuè yǔ⁸), as a fāng yán⁹…"
You get the idea. (The “I agree” part at the beginning is sarcastic)
I bet like 90% of the Western world has trouble even hearing the words with the tones. Tonal languages is very difficult to learn, I only know how to speak a bit because I was born into it, even I have trouble with words, since I grew up in the US, I haven’t spoken Mandarin in over a decade, and only still use the basics words of Cantonese at home (since political conversations is just a one-sided conversation, with parents spewing propaganda, not even worth talking about).
If I hear people attemping to use the native (non-Anglicanized) pronounciation and absolutely butcher it, I’m gonna feel so much 尴尬/cringe. (Sorry, I just feel like people are mocking me when they try to say 你好 (Hello) since the Tones feel so “off”)
Edit:
Translations in case you were confused:
- ¹ People’s Republic of China
- ² Country
- ³ Hong Kong
- ⁴ Special Administrative Region
- ⁵ Guang Zhou (City)
- ⁶ Guang Dong Province
- ⁷ “Guang Dong” Language (commonly known as “Cantonese”)
- ⁸ “Yue” Language (another name for "Cantonese)
- ⁹ Dialect (technically, Cantonese is a Language, but they didn’t have a flag and an army… so… 🤷♂️)
I think in this case, it’s the proper nouns that should be used. If we learned it as Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghèguò (or at least whichever part of that translates to “China”), it wouldn’t be too bad. There’s not much point in also using the Cantonese versions of “country”, “language”, etc., since most languages have their own analogue for these concepts
Endonym vs exonym is a universal truth of contact between speakers of different languages. It is in no way unique to English.
Glad you mentioned endonym/exonym are you be any chance a linguist or do you study/have you studied linguistics?
I think a lot of this is due to colonialism. Back when the Brits were sailing around pointing cannons at people and being delightful they didn’t respect local culture and dialects enough to bother with a “tricky” word so replaced it with an easier version. Unfortunately due to that expansion and the proliferation of English as the most common trade language the English versions tend to stick.
Every language does this. It isn’t colonialism, it’s convenience and practicality. Some sounds don’t exist or are awkward, so a different name is used instead.
This is the correct answer. But I agree with the part it is unfortunate that they didn’t respect and America doesn’t respect enough to say España or ‘la France’ hopefully I am spelling that right.
