Re: New pronunciation of Bangalore

Emungo napisał(a):
> Peacenik wrote:
>> <sigh> Not another re-naming of a city.
>>
>> We don't insist that the French stop calling London "Londres" or England
>> "Angleterre". The Germans don't make official edicts saying from now on we
>> must call Munich "München" and Germany "Deutschland". So why is India
>> insisting we call Bombay "Mumbai", etc.?
>
> It's all to do with the dynamic, innit.
>
> Actually, anywhere in the world (including England or Germany)
> municipalities, regions etc can and do establish or alter their names
> for 'official' (i.e. their own) purposes. It's never made entirely
> clear in cases like this Indian one whether the place in question is
> really trying to impose the name on the whole world, except perhaps in
> the context of references to the municipality or region as presently
> defined.
>
> What is certain is that seemingly a large enough number of English
> speakers really do think it's rude or offensive or a hangover of
> colonialism to use Anglicized / English names for foreign parts for
> announcements like this one to result in the immediate dropping of the
> old form for all purposes. I blame the usual Anglophone monoglottism;
> my experience suggests that a large number of intelligent people really
> are unaware that toponym adaptation / replacement / translation is a
> phenomenon in all languages and not just a mark of Anglophone
> insensitivity. And since some of our most hardened monoglots are
> politicians and journos, well ...
>

Right. Such phenomenas are also common in Central Europe. The borders (and nations shifted many times), so many Slavic names became German, many East Slavic names became West Slavic, Hungarian - Romanian, and vice versa. For example, some Lusatian names have Polish versions, eg. Chóśebuz is in Polish Chociebuż (and Czech Chotěbuz), Budyšin is in Polish Budziszyn (the last one is known by historians as was a place of peace treaty between Poland and Germany in 1018). As long as such towns were known only for geographies or historicist, they were called with Polish names. But after the Iron Curtain breakthrough the German names ins these examples - Cottbus and Bautzen) occur in mass media quit frequently.
Another example is a country between Transsilvania (which is another such example, as Transylwania is rather new name in Polish for the country called for several centuries as Siedmiogród, ie. Seven Castle Land) and Ukraine. For at least 700 years it was called Mołdawia in Polish. Unfortunately, so it was called in Russian, so when this country (actually its east part) became independent from the Soviet Union, its government forced using the name of "Mołdowa" which is similar to original. Anyway, apart from diplomats and some journalists, everyone still uses the old name.
Of course, it may be can of worms. For example, Poles sometimes don't like, if anyone calls Wrocław with the name of Breslau, Ukrainians, if anyone calls Lviv - Lwów etc.
> (Recently I annoyed a German acquaintance, inadvertently but quite
> effectively, by referring to Aachen as Aix-la-Chapelle. Risk of such
> slips is high if you're thinking historically. Just as well I didn't
> call it Aquisgrana, the splendid Italian name for it.)

Well, I'd probably called it Akwizgran, and later, I'd realised I should had called it Aachen. ;-)

Anyway, I cannot see any reason, why should I call Bombaj with other name. (Although Bangalore doesn't have polonised name, so this shift doesn't affect Polish seriously.)


--
piotrek
.

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