Name That City
Why do we Americans insist on changing the spellings of foreign cities? The latest is Kiev/Kyiv, as reported on Yahoo News today.
When our family traveled around Germany many years ago, I was always perplexed by the different names. Munich/Munchen, Cologne/Koln (sorry, I don't know how to make the umlaut O or U here!), etc.
It just seems so arrogant of us! They are not American cities. We shouldn't be Americanizing their names. Why can't we just go with what the native language uses?
When our family traveled around Germany many years ago, I was always perplexed by the different names. Munich/Munchen, Cologne/Koln (sorry, I don't know how to make the umlaut O or U here!), etc.
It just seems so arrogant of us! They are not American cities. We shouldn't be Americanizing their names. Why can't we just go with what the native language uses?
posted by Susan | 7:46 PM
1 Comments:
Absolutely. My step mother's name is Ofira, and Israeli name, and she tells people to just call her "O." I'm always thinking, why can't people exert themselves to say her name right, which isn't that hard anyway.
Same with the cities.
Boy, sorry about all my blog drama as of late. thanks for your support, and I promise to return to writing about toddlerisms right quick.
Lisa
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