[Wikipedia-l] Biography as a discipline

Sun Nov 25 20:31:49 UTC 2001

On Sunday 25 November 2001 20:29, Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> There is a current trend in the English speaking world to be overly
> politically correct in the spelling of foreign names.  Not only
> Beijing and Kampuchea, but also Göteborg, Hannover, Köln, and Wien
> start to appear in English texts.  This is a pity, because Gothenburg,
> Hanover, Cologne, and Vienna are well-established words of the English
> language since centuries.  And I find it unlikely that anybody would
> write Sverige, Deutschland, or Österreich in an English text anyway.

I agree in principle, but Beijing actually is not a good example.  It 
reflects the way the place's name is pronounced in the official dialect of 
Chinese. Peking OTOH is a pronounciation based on an out-of-the-way 
dialect where some missionary first wrote down "Chinese" words in the 
Roman alphabet.  It's as if the only Swedish a foreigner could learn was 
the way it was pronounced by the Finns, I guess <g>

-- 
Michel Clasquin, D Litt et Phil (Unisa)
clasqm at mweb.co.za/unisa.ac.za   http://www.geocities.com/clasqm
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