randomWalks

i don't understand what you mean by the "anglocentric tradition" of european place names. maps are translated into the language of their reader. sometimes these translations are transliterations of the original language and sometimes not. of course this is poltical. in what context is an english map of europe anglo-centric? i think the real issue is not anglocentricism but that language and geography play major roles in the formation of national identity, a huge issue for europeans (though they are not the only ones).

It seems tautologous to me. I'm having a hard time explaining it, but it seems that issues of respect and self-determination are involved. I was probably in middle school when I realized that the names I knew of various countries were English words and not "true" names, and I remember being bothered by that, as though I'd been lied to—which is probably why this resonates with me.

I understand this. Your comment brings to mind certain people who insist that Jesus spoke English. I do think, however, that language and cartography interact politically across various geographies, not merely the anglo-speaking world. this "real map" of europe could alter even a spanish-speaker's perception of the world.

when is language ever really true?

i can understand , then, why you felt the way you did in middle school

where i work we teach the children the mandarin names for things and spend an hour every day making sure they can interact in beijing.

which is not to say this is the only place where they receive this tutelage.

I, for one, was surprised to see a country called Helvetica. I wonder where Times New Roman is. That must be hell on earth.

Some map links:

Mindworld, at Douwe Osinga's site; Mappa Mundi's interactive maps, and Antonio Scarponi's map of the world according to internet users. I have a copy of The Mapmakers: The story of the great pioneers in Cartography - from Antiquity to the Stone Age by John Noble Wilford on my shelf but haven't got round to reading it yet. And the Nottingham Psychogeographical Unit site can tell you all about mental maps.

Or what about Comic Sans? Yikes.

Ban Comic Sans.

Actually, it was your previous posting of that link that prompted my comment.

A book you really must read if you have a child and you are concerned with the language of things. It's called "The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle." It's written by Jewel Grutman

The most touching drawing in it is when the white frontier teacher is telling the Native Americans their Christian names, and above the heads of each child is the fading image of their animal spirit, as they dream about it dying, and wonder why education means you have to mourn.

Geographical names depend greatly on the way they had been introduced into a given language. For example, Hungarians call their country 'Magyarország' and call themselves and their culture 'magyar'. Between many of their slavic neighbours, the word 'madziar' or similar can be understood as 'hungarian'. However, especially because the hungarian language is not of indoeuropean origin and is not related, their name in western Europe and less in eastern Europe had developed from a name given to the Hungarians by people not related to them, in the way of a nickname. A similar occurance happened with 'china': the roots 'chin' and 'sinn' are rather latin inventions.

There were simetimes cities with names formerly unknown to a given language and, upon introducing them into that language, they had taken on the name from a language geographically neighbouring that of the actual place, but not of the actual place. For example, the Polish city of Wroclaw, situated in Lower Silesia, had a history connected with the Germanic people (i.e. the Germans) as well as the Slavic people (i.e. the Poles). During the World Wars, due to occupation, the name of the city was 'Breslau', which is the German name for it and is still used today. Introducing the name 'Breslau' into English as the official name is, however, not an intelligent idea. The German name does not reflect English syntax nor does it reflect that Wroclaw is a Polish city.

Names of places cannot be uniform throughout the world. Outside of Europe and former European colonies, languages are written in many other alphabets and simetimes even different form of writing (e.g., the Chinese writing does not use letters from an alphabet). Even amoung alphabets, transliteration (i.e. ideal leter-for-letter transcription) is imposible. Finally, even amoung languages that use the same alphabet (e.g., latin or roman), the different orthographies do not allow for freely capturing a name. For example, the Hungarian capital in Hungarian is 'Budapest' (pronounced approx. 'Budapesht'). Because of the 'sh' value of the Hungarian 's', the Polish name, e.g., of that city is 'Budapeszt', where the 'sz' represents that sound.

It usually is accepted that cities of great historical importance are part of a language vocabulary and, therefore, each language has different names for the same city (e.g., Polish 'Warszawa', English 'Warsaw', French 'Varsovie', German 'Warschau', or German 'Wien', Polish 'Wiedeñ', English 'Vienna'). With towns and cities that are unknown generally to a given language, their original local names are retained.

Indeed, Europe is very proud of its cultural backgrounds. It is very diverse, although Europeans have many things in common. After the great disasters of dictatorships in the twentieth century, many cultural and ethnic group have emerged into countries. Such countries are built upon what is most cherished by Europeans: folklore and culture and customs and traditions. Therefore, it is esential that these countries have support from more established members, such as and especially England. English is a world-wide language where words originate from diverse pools of other languages. It is not and should not be a problem to use local names in English texts. What should be omitted greatly is the use of names given by former occupants. Some examples of names that should not be used in English come from languages like German and Russian.