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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Burmese by any other name...
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Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 16:59:56 GMT
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In article <51hsrt$ihk@news.kth.se>, bw@e.kth.se (Bertilo Wennergren) writes:
-->I for one don't think the Burmese government should have much to
-->say about how Burma is named _in other languages_. I call China
-->"China", Spain "Spain", Japan "Japan" etc. (not "Zhong Guo", "Espana",
-->"Nihon"...), and thus I call Burma "Burma" in English. Similarly I
-->use the Swedish names of countries when I speak Swedish, and the
-->Esperanto names when I speak Esperanto. If I ever learn Burmese,
-->I will use the Burmese name of Sweden, whatever it might be.

What about Ceylon then?  "Sri Lanka" has certainly won in English.
(And what's that "Sri"?  Isn't the name of the island really
plain old "Lanka"?)

(Other examples where traditional English forms have been ousted
are Belarus and Moldova -- though in the latter case saying "Moldova"
does allow us to distinguish the independent state in Besarabia from
the region of Romania called Moldavia.  And of course the spelling
"Romania" pleases Romanians more than the traditional "R(o)umania".)

-- jP --

