WHBM wrote: ↑Mon Feb 08, 2021 21:23
This is exactly how the old Thomas Cook railway timetable of Europe used to do it, so it used Milano, Lisboa, etc, on the basis that when you got there, that's what the signs said. The editor did an explanation of this at the front. It seemed the most sensible way to handle international names in something used by people from many countries (ignoring different alphabets).
That's probably the best way to do it, as otherwise you're going to get places that change their names at linguistic boundaries. It fascinates me when the native name for a place is quite different from the name in other languages as that raises the question where the other languages got their name from (and even who was first).
One advantage of putting everything in English, of course, is that it doesn't unduly favour one language over another. Calling the capital of Belgium Brussels, for example, does remove the pretty much sectarian debate as to whether the Flemings or Walloons have the upper hand.
Milan is Milano in Italian and Mailand in German. Munich is München in German and (confusingly) Monaco in Italian. Marseille sometimes acquires a redundant, unpronounced terminal s in English, and Lyon once did the same. Rome is Roma in Italian, Rom in German and Rôme with the circumflex in French. Strasbourg is Straßburg in German. We used to call Frankfurt Frankfort, and the capital of Kentucky helps us to remember this. Nice is Nizza in Italian. All worth knowing if perusing European rail timetables.
Driving into Belgium from Calais or Dunkirk, the signs, IIRC, mention Furnes with its Flemish local name of Veurne in brackets. Bruxelles magically becomes Brussel as soon as you cross the border, and Bruges likewise turns into Brugge. On which subject, it's odd, isn't it, that we've historically used the French name for that city, but the Flemish name for its seaport, Zeebrugge.
Most of those are recognisable though. I guess the issue will be where you have a place name in English which is nothing like its counterpart in the actual native language, Milan/Milano is not massively different, nor is Munich/Munchen, of course Strasbourg like the rest of Alsace-Lorraine has been tennis balled around between France and Germany at various times, but you probably don't have to look far to find many place names which are natively nothing like what we call them. Croatia's football team wear "HNS" on their crests which stands for Hrvatski Nogometni Savez (I think) which basically means Croatian FA - because their country is called Hrvatska there (So why do we even call it nothing like...). Belgium's been mentioned plenty, but what about Switzerland, which has 3 official languages, and that weird part of Northern Italy where the tennis player Jannik Sinner comes from where they speak German not Italian (Sudtirol, which was part of Austria until after WW1 - and is still pretty German, Sinner was born as recently as '01 and is a German speaker).
In fact, as a slight aside, it's interesting how sometimes the common English transliterations of place names (mainly in China or India etc so hence actually using transliterations as opposed to translations) have changed over time - e.g. Chennai, Mumbai, Beijing.
C, E flat and G go into a bar. The barman says "sorry, we don't serve minors". So E flat walks off, leaving C and G to share an open fifth between them.
Never argue with an idiot. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
ForestChav wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 22:05
In fact, as a slight aside, it's interesting how sometimes the common English transliterations of place names (mainly in China or India etc so hence actually using transliterations as opposed to translations) have changed over time - e.g. Chennai, Mumbai, Beijing.
The Chinese ones tend to be that the English names are transliterations of Cantonese, as that was the main interaction between the outside world and China, the "new" names are Mandarin as that's the language of (the current) rulers.
ForestChav wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 22:05
and that weird part of Northern Italy where the tennis player Jannik Sinner comes from where they speak German not Italian (Sudtirol, which was part of Austria until after WW1 - and is still pretty German, Sinner was born as recently as '01 and is a German speaker).
Also in northern Italy is Val d'Aosta where they speak French as the main language. I visited Sudtirol some years ago. The main city Bozen/Bolzano seemed to be mainly Italian speaking but as soon as I went up into the mountains I found that everyone was speaking German with a strong Austrian accent.
ForestChav wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 22:05
Most of those are recognisable though. I guess the issue will be where you have a place name in English which is nothing like its counterpart in the actual native language, Milan/Milano is not massively different, nor is Munich/Munchen, of course Strasbourg like the rest of Alsace-Lorraine has been tennis balled around between France and Germany at various times, but you probably don't have to look far to find many place names which are natively nothing like what we call them. Croatia's football team wear "HNS" on their crests which stands for Hrvatski Nogometni Savez (I think) which basically means Croatian FA - because their country is called Hrvatska there (So why do we even call it nothing like...). Belgium's been mentioned plenty, but what about Switzerland, which has 3 official languages, and that weird part of Northern Italy where the tennis player Jannik Sinner comes from where they speak German not Italian (Sudtirol, which was part of Austria until after WW1 - and is still pretty German, Sinner was born as recently as '01 and is a German speaker).
In fact, as a slight aside, it's interesting how sometimes the common English transliterations of place names (mainly in China or India etc so hence actually using transliterations as opposed to translations) have changed over time - e.g. Chennai, Mumbai, Beijing.
The Hr in Hrvatska is a trilled 'r' with a bit of breath before it. Very like non Welsh speakers often pronouncing the 'll' as 'kl', most other languages have rendered it as 'Cr'. For the name proper, it has given its name to 'cravat'
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ForestChav wrote: ↑Tue Feb 16, 2021 22:05
Croatia's football team wear "HNS" on their crests which stands for Hrvatski Nogometni Savez (I think) which basically means Croatian FA - because their country is called Hrvatska there (So why do we even call it nothing like...)
There are a number like that. Finland is Suomi in Finnish; Finland comes from the time when Swedish was the "educated" language there.
Interesting one here on the Spanish French frontier in the Basque Country. The Basque Country crosses the frontier between the two states, and Lapurdi is one of the historic Basque provinces in France. The Basque authorities have put up a Spanish provincial boundary sign on the AP-8, here
You can see the French toll sign just behind, and the border is the 70 km/h sign on the bridge less than 100 metres beyond.
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WHBM wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:06
There are a number like that. Finland is Suomi in Finnish; Finland comes from the time when Swedish was the "educated" language there.
When I was a 10 year old stamp collector I always assumed that Suomi Finland was a compound name like Great Britain. No internet back then to look things up of course.
WHBM wrote: ↑Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:06
There are a number like that. Finland is Suomi in Finnish; Finland comes from the time when Swedish was the "educated" language there.
When I was a 10 year old stamp collector I always assumed that Suomi Finland was a compound name like Great Britain. No internet back then to look things up of course.
There's a cross border oddity much closer to home.
Where Scots and English disagree on how to handle Yough, either side of the Scots Dyke at Glinger/Glenzier
That's a well weird bit of border. Ok lads, the nobs have agreed to use the river as the natural border, hand me that quill, up we go, wiggle, wiggle, oh ****! wrong river. Welll if I just come across here nobody will notice.
Gareth wrote: ↑Tue Feb 09, 2021 11:31
Open Streetmap insists on labelling countries and locations within them in their local language. Even ones that use a different writing system. It's novel but not really practical for those of us who don't happen to be able to read every language in the world.
Google does the same, although in Wuhan in China, some street names are in English, some in Chinese!
That's a well weird bit of border. Ok lads, the nobs have agreed to use the river as the natural border, hand me that quill, up we go, wiggle, wiggle, oh ****! wrong river. Welll if I just come across here nobody will notice.
Basically the area between the rivers wasn't definitively in either England or Scotland, and was quasi-independent for much of the time, until the 1530s when both England and Scotland had had enough of it. And rather than give it to one country or the other, they split it up the middle.