China doing something I think is a good idea.

Now I'm not one but pro-china. The people are great but their government is bad, like great red dragon of revelation bad. However, their subway stations each have two names, one English name and one Chinese name. They're removing the English names and replacing them with the same Chinese name but written in the English alphabet. I've always been against deculturaling words, like saying what ones name is in another language, I argue it's the same name, just spell it in their alphabet.

edition.cnn.com...

a reply to: Jeremiah33three

I wholeheartedly agree. This is something that's bothered me since I was a little kid and discovered that other countries have different names for what they call themselves. Like "Germany" in German is "Deutschland". Why are we using additional names for countries etc?

Good. Now they should replace their entire ridiculously-overly-detailed writing system with readable characters. This is what Chinese looks like on a website. God forbid someone doesn't have perfect eyesight.

That's one of the big ones for me. Endonym and exonyms are stupid. What the natives call their stuff is it's name.

originally posted by: EventideExpanse
a reply to: Jeremiah33three

I wholeheartedly agree. This is something that's bothered me since I was a little kid and discovered that other countries have different names for what they call themselves. Like "Germany" in German is "Deutschland". Why are we using additional names for countries etc?

a reply to: EventideExpanse

We don't use additional names for places we have different languages. I'm from Angleterre which is land of the Angles or Angle Land = England. Same name from the same root words that have phonetically evolved with their respective languages.

I'm not going to call Gerard Gerald because he's in England. Personally I feel like if there's any kind of subliminal compliance one can do to a one world government and mindset it is to trivialise the uniqueness of one's language, it's identity. Something to consider no?

a reply to: RAY1990

I'm just saying that the English word for "Deutschland", should be "Deutschland", not Germany. The Chinese name of a Chinese station, is it's name even in the English speaking world. And the English name of a place in an English speaking area should be it's name. We don't call Moscow "Russian DC".

a reply to: RAY1990

You missed the point entirely. Sweden is not Sweden, it's Sverige. Finland is not Finland, it's Suomi. Spain is not Spain, it's Espana. Three should be plenty for highly recognizable countries most non-natives have zero idea the actual names of. I can, however, list more

Pen-pal hobby in my teens paid off bigger than crap in this regard, I got the stamps in their languages to reference in a collector's book.

Also totally agree it's time to cut the crap & recognize the real (local) place names (countries, rivers, some cities) instead of making up lazier new ones.

a reply to: Nyiah

Exactly

a reply to: Nyiah

I don't think it would be as funny to hear Bluto ask, "Did we surrender after the Deutchfolk bombed Pearl Harbor?".

originally posted by: EventideExpanse
a reply to: Jeremiah33three

I wholeheartedly agree. This is something that's bothered me since I was a little kid and discovered that other countries have different names for what they call themselves. Like "Germany" in German is "Deutschland". Why are we using additional names for countries etc?

In the South Park movie I read about how in the German version of the movie, the German porno scene was changed to be British.