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From: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Subject: Re: Burmese by any other name...
Message-ID: <DyDBCt.FBx@scn.org>
Sender: news@scn.org
Reply-To: lilandbr@scn.org (Leland Bryant Ross)
Organization: Seattle Community Network
References: <52bkan$bbs@news.kth.se> <51melc$t7k@agate.berkeley.edu> <Dy5E3o.6Hr@tigadmin.ml.com>
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 1996 01:41:16 GMT
Lines: 68


Bertilo Wennergren <bw@e.kth.se> wrote:
>
>Julian Pardoe wrote thus:
>> 
>> What's wrong with "Czech Lands", "Czechlands" (like "Netherlands") or
>> even "Czechia" or "Czechy"?
> 

I say, what's wrong with all of them is that szilly izzard (`zed').  Why 
not spell it/them "Check(-...)" like it's pronounced [or "Cheque(-...)" 
as the British pronounce it]?  How many other cases of cz=ch does English 
sport?  We could keep the Z in the country code--it wouldn't be any worse 
than CH = Switzerland (another country that, Gott sei dank, hasn't yet 
tried to make the rest of the world name it their way(s)!)--every time I 
*see* CH I *think* "China"; luckily there are usually plenty of 
contextual hints to wake me up and reorder my synapses!  Incidentally, 
where *did* that Z come from??

>It is a bit strange that in some cases the long and formal name is for
>some incomprehensible reason used a lot (e.g. "Republic of Korea"),

Not *entirely* incomprehensible:  there are, after all, "*two* Koreas"--
the other being the (*tiel nomata*) "Democratic People's Republic of Korea".
Of course the less formal "South Korea" and "North Korea" are widely used,
but they're not wholly apt, as each government theoretically claims title 
to the whole peninsula...

>In some cases however there is no short alternative. What could
>one say other than "Central African Republic" ...

Well, for a little while it was "Central African Empire", which is two 
letters, and one syllable, shorter.  And if one were in the habit of 
speaking of it much and often, one could say "C.A.R."--much as we say 
"USA" or even just "US" for "United States of America", or "UK"* for 
"England" (in the American sense of the word--don't hit me, I'm of 
Scottish extraction myself!), or "USSR" ("CIS" has caught on much less 
widely), and as some say "UAE" for "Trucial Oman", "PRC" for "China", "ROC"
for "Taiwan", etc.

To return to CAR, another alternative is to revert to the status quo ante
and call it "Ubangi Shari" (Oubangui Chari for you francograph types), 
which has a nice exotic "Burkina Faso" feel to it, redolent of "Shangri-La"
and Lord Greystoke...

>... and "Dominican Republic"?

Occasionally you still run into somebody who calls it "Santo Domingo".

While we're at it, every time I hear (usually in my head) the Tom Lehrer 
lyrics,

     I say a bygone should be a bygone--
     Let's make peace the way we did in Stanleyville and Saigon!

I think, "Okay, I know what Saigon's called these days, and for that 
matter Leopoldville and Elizabethville.  But what the heck is 
Stanleyville going by in 1996?!

?

Leland

--
Liland Brajant ROS'                "Preferindas dormi kun sobra kanibalo
P O Box 30091                       ol kun ebria kristano."
Seattle, WA 98103 Usono                                --Herman Melville
Tel. (206) 633-2434                 
