It all comes down to historic practice. With old countries there are usually
various foreign versions of names for the capital, country, main rivers and
other cities. In Europe this may be becausde of a common Latin base, earlier
translation or transliteration attempts and errors, inability to say certain
sounds, etc.
Taiwan uses wade-giles, so its capital is called Taipei. China uses Pinyin
romanisation, so Taipei becomes Taibei. The actual sound is the same, though
Taiwanese dialect may be different to Beijing putonghua.
Hong Kong comes fomr the Cantonese, while the Mandarin pronunciation of
thesame characters is Xiang Gang.
Russians can't say the H sound, so say 'Gong Gong'.
I have seen various transliteraions of the Belrus city of Gomel. Some maps
show Homel.
There are two chinese versions for NZ:
one that translates the sounds: Niu Xi Lan
and one that translates the first word literally: Xin Xi Lan (Xin=new)
The French write Paris, so English say Paris, not Par-ee.
The English write London, so the French say Londre and write Londres!
Den Haag = The Hague.
South Africa/ Suid Afrika
BW
>From: "Grant Hutchison" <granthutchison@...>
>Reply-To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
>To: BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [BoundaryPoint] Re: holland n all oh
>Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 22:58:31 -0000
>
>Michael:
> > it seems to me
> > if a word has a meaning
> > especially a primary meaning
> > whatever the language & no matter how mistaken the derivation or
>meaning is
> > then it is not wrong but right to use that word in that universally
> > recognized sense in that language
>
>Is there not also some consideration of courtesy (as I think you have
>alluded to already in this thread) to call a country by the name "it"
>chooses for "itself"?
>The official name I find in various encyclopaedias is "Koninkrijk der
>Nederlanden" which to my Deutsch, at least (not Dutch), looks like a
>plural: "Netherlands".
>An odd exception to this direct-as-possible-translation rule is Cote
>d'Ivoire, the government of which have officially asked to be
>translated into English as, well ... "Cote d'Ivoire".
>
>Reminds me of a Richard Feynman story.
>Feynman once met Murray Gell-Mann (who is a linguist as well as a
>physicist) in the corridor outside his office.
>"Murray," said Feynman, "haven't seen you for a while. Have you been
>away?"
>"Yes," said Gell-Mann. "I've been to ..." and he here emitted a word
>that sounded to Feynman like "MOHNG-RRRHay-al".
>"Where?" asked Feynman.
>"MOHNG-RRRHay-al," repeated Gell-Mann, slowly and clearly.
>After a bit more to-ing and fro-ing, they established that Gell-Mann
>had been to Montreal, but was using the Quebecois pronunciation.
>"Tell me, Murray," said Feynman, putting his arm around Gell-Mann's
>shoulders. "As a linguist, don't you feel that the primary purpose of
>language is *communication*?"
>
>I don't know what the moral of the story is; I just like to tell it.
>
>Grant
>
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