I say Myanmar, you say Burma

[David Borowitz]

Wikipedia, as it often does, tells a good story about the various names of
Burma:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Burma

Except for the fact that one of these transliterations is of recent origin
and has been seized by the ruling party as some sort of nationalistic
symbol, this seems a lot like plenty of other phonetic English
pronunciations of historic or sloppy transliterations. (Think of the foreign
policy impacts if Russia started getting mad at us for not saying /rasiya/.)

On Mon, May 5, 2008 at 8:10 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      I say Myanmar, you say Burma
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The newscasters I heard today all said "Myanmar"; the Executive
> branch persons I heard today, including Laur Bush, all said
> "Burma".  I am waiting for Myanmar to be silent about aid from the
> U.S., since they offered it to Burma.
>
> Joel
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
It is better to be quotable than to be honest.
-Tom Stoppard

Borowitz

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