VYAKARAN: South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net
Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse University, New York
John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany
Details: Send email to <a href="mailto:listserv@listserv.syr.edu">listserv@listserv.syr.edu</a> and say: INFO VYAKARAN
Subscribe:Send email to <a href="mailto:listserv@listserv.syr.edu">listserv@listserv.syr.edu</a> and say:
SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME
(Substitute your real name for first_name last_name)
Archives: <a href="http://listserv.syr.edu" target="_blank">http://listserv.syr.edu</a>
<HTML xmlns:v = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:x =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel" xmlns:p =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:powerpoint" xmlns:a =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:access" xmlns:dt =
"uuid:C2F41010-65B3-11d1-A29F-00AA00C14882" xmlns:s =
"uuid:BDC6E3F0-6DA3-11d1-A2A3-00AA00C14882" xmlns:rs =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:rowset" xmlns:z = "#RowsetSchema" xmlns:b =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:publisher" xmlns:ss =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:spreadsheet" xmlns:c =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:component:spreadsheet" xmlns:odc =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:odc" xmlns:oa =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:activation" xmlns:html =
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40" xmlns:q =
"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:rtc =
"http://microsoft.com/officenet/conferencing" XMLNS:D = "DAV:" XMLNS:Repl =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/repl/" xmlns:mt =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/meetings/" xmlns:x2 =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/excel/2003/xml" xmlns:ppda =
"http://www.passport.com/NameSpace.xsd" xmlns:ois =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/ois/" xmlns:dir =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/directory/" xmlns:ds =
"http://www.w3.org/2000/09/xmldsig#" xmlns:dsp =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/dsp" xmlns:udc =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc" xmlns:xsd =
"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:sub =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/2002/1/alerts/" xmlns:ec =
"http://www.w3.org/2001/04/xmlenc#" xmlns:sp =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/" xmlns:sps =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/" xmlns:xsi =
"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:udcs =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/soap" xmlns:udcxf =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/xmlfile" xmlns:udcp2p =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/data/udc/parttopart" xmlns:wf =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/workflow/" xmlns:dsss =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig-setup" xmlns:dssi =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2006/digsig" xmlns:mdssi =
"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/digital-signature" xmlns:mver =
"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" xmlns:m =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns:mrels =
"http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/relationships" xmlns:spwp =
"http://microsoft.com/sharepoint/webpartpages" xmlns:ex12t =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns:ex12m =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:pptsl =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/sharepoint/soap/SlideLibrary/" xmlns:spsl =
"http://microsoft.com/webservices/SharePointPortalServer/PublishedLinksService"
XMLNS:Z = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:" xmlns:st = ""><HEAD></HEAD>
<BODY dir=ltr lang=EN-US link=blue vLink=purple>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 12pt">
<DIV>This is obviously a can of worms. Yes, there is no reason why
Anglophones should not use Deutschland, after all, they seemed to have given up
Rhodesia and Salisbury and started using Zimbabwe and Harare without too much
difficulty.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As to making it phonetic in current English spelling, that is surely a
joke. A village near my home in England has a name spelt ‘Cogenhoe’ , but
is to be pronounced ‘Kugnoo’. There are so many examples of this.
English is hardly phonetic and carries so many words from its ancestry sometimes
with and sometimes without changes to spellings or pronunciation. Its
hardly worth bothering. Whether English should become phonetic is another
question. My answer would be yes, but GBS and many others have failed to
reform English spelling. So, I see little possibility of that.
Perhaps, one would wish for an International Spelling restricted to proper names
using a phoneticised and enhanced roman script (only because so much of the
world is familiar with some form of it) that could more nearly represent the
sounds of those words in their original form. The English script as used
by many native speaking communities fails to represent the sounds in the same
way across these communities.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As I said, this is mainly a European habit to call someone else’s
place by a completely different name. If others do it, they do it because
they hear the sounds differently or their scripts don’t accommodate the
sound. And so the French should use the word England. And they don’t
need to say the’England, l’England wii do as the article is a function word of
the French language.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As to the local people issue, that takes us into politics. But,
this was never an argument between local communities. But about people who
are not local in any sense to the place feeling aggrieved about such
changes. Would you accept the Dutch continuing to use ‘New
Amsterdam’ for ‘New York’? Placenames and Maps have always been
instruments of international politics. Google maps show different
boundaries and placenames in China to those shown by them in India. This
will always remain. And of course it is a political issue whether the
local people (and who they are) have the right to name their own places.
Colonial and Imperial political frameworks say ‘No’, Democratic ones should say
‘Yes’. If the region has democratic institutions, then the process of
determining who is local might be democratic also.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Dileep Damle</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none"></DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt tahoma">
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #f5f5f5">
<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=athr@LOC.GOV
href="mailto:athr@LOC.GOV">Thrasher, Allen</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, May 20, 2011 11:45 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
href="mailto:VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU">VYAKARAN@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Re: Question about city names that are being
renamed</DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">VYAKARAN:
South Asian Languages and Linguistics Net Editors: Tej K. Bhatia, Syracuse
University, New York John Peterson, University of Osnabrueck, Germany Details:
Send email to <A
href="mailto:listserv@listserv.syr.edu">listserv@listserv.syr.edu</A> and say:
INFO VYAKARAN Subscribe:Send email to <A
href="mailto:listserv@listserv.syr.edu">listserv@listserv.syr.edu</A> and say:
SUBSCRIBE VYAKARAN FIRST_NAME LAST_NAME (Substitute your real name for
first_name last_name) Archives: <A href="http://listserv.syr.edu"
target=_blank>http://listserv.syr.edu</A>
<META name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 12 (filtered medium)">
<STYLE><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:simsun;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:simsun;
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
@font-face
{font-family:calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
@font-face
{font-family:"\@SimSun";
panose-1:2 1 6 0 3 1 1 1 1 1;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.msonormal, li.msonormal, div.msonormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}
a:link, span.msohyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.msohyperlinkfollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.emailstyle17
{mso-style-type:personal-compose;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
.msochpdefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;}
@page wordsection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.wordsection1
{page:wordsection1;}
--></STYLE>
<DIV class=WordSection1>
<P class=MsoNormal>"<SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"> But surely, it is for
the people of a place to determine the name of their city and if they want to
throw off the place names imposed on them by foreign invaders then who should
deny it. It is a European custom that a city is given a different name by
each foreign nation, vis London=Londres, Munchen=Munich ,Firenze=Florence,
Venezia=Venice. It is certainly not a world-wide phenomenon. We are
now in the post-clolonial period and perhaps it is time to stop such
arrogance."<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black">Actually, it is this
attitude I personally find a bit arrogant. Are Anglophones really supposed
to start talking not about Germany but about Deutschland, and if so, should we
preserve the German spelling or rather make it phonetic in English, something
like Doichlahnt? And should France be Frahns, or rather Lah Frahns?
And the same question for speakers of other languages. Should the French
stop talking of Angleterre and the Italians of the Tedeschi? I suspect
that different names for the same place in different language is in fact NOT a
world-wide phenomenon. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I presume the
traditional Arabic names for various Indian ports are not an attempt at
transliteration to Arabic of the current (21st c.) standard names in the local
language whether Gujarati, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil, etc. What the local
government wants to do is another thing, as is the policy of the U.S. Board of
Geographic names or similar government bureaus elsewhere, but is there really a
sort of universal moral obligation to follow it? And of course, the
Chinese versions of foreign placenames are pretty unlikely to be anything
immediately recognizable to a native of the place in question; many
languages have a lot of consonant clusters Chinese and some other languages
can't deal with.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black">Also, of course, what
is meant by "the people of a place?" Speakers of the majority or official
language of the state currently controlling it, whether or not they are regarded
as legitimate or desirable by the locals? The local people? What if
there are several ethnic groups locally who use different names for the
place.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black">Allen
Thrasher<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Allen W. Thrasher,
Ph.D.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Senior Reference
Librarian and Team Coordinator<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">South Asia
Team<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Asian
Division<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Library of
Congress<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Washington, DC
20540-4810<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">USA<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">tel.
202-707-3732<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">fax
202-707-1724<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">The opinions
expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Library of
Congress.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; COLOR: black"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN> </P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></BODY></HTML>