Date: Wed, 25 May 2022 18:09:00 -0700 From: Guy Harris via tz <tz@iana.org> Message-ID: <7CFFF7FD-D340-4317-A2D1-5AFADEABDB81@sonic.net> | I.e., "not spelled using a standard transliteration to English from | the primary language of the country, or region of the country, | that the city is in" doesn't mean "wrong"; other examples are | "Moscow" not "Moskva" and "Rome" not "Roma". And the wildest is perhaps Bangkok, which isn't even close to the transliteration of (the abbreviated form of, it is, in full, a very long name) Krungthep (phonetically, not in the standard way such things are written, which I neither know, nor could type if I did, so just an English approximation, Grungtep (where the 'u' is like in full, not in cup, or even further away lute)). And of course we do the same to country names, Germany, Spain, Austria Ivory Coast, (even Russia I think, not sure about Ukraine). And I kind of doubt that English is the only language/culture that does this, I seem to recall that in German, France, England (probably more) aren't the same as they are in English (or their native - but I picked France because that's the same in both EN and FR). I've never really understood the desire for wacky transliterations, with Krungthep almost no-one who doesn't even is going to pronounce it correctly (which is why when Latin script forms of Thai are used there are a zillion different forms, I live in Hat Yai also written Haat Had Haad depending upon the mood of the writer (the Yai part is usually unaltered). But where the translit is usually used, like on Ko (thai word for Island, as in Ko Samui) most foreigners pronounce it as koh, that correct pronounciation is "gaw" - the K is as in Krungthgep, a very hard K (which is a hard G believe it or not) and 'o' is used tra translit the Thai vowells for all of aw song and oh. (Thai has a much bigger character set than Latin langugaues, but compensates by having no upper/lower case, so the numkber of chars in the carset is about the same). Anyway, everyone (I think) (except apparently some ex US president) that Thai isn't thigh, but tie, and Phuket isn't Fuckit or anything like it, but poo... but few notice the lack of the h after the k and pronounce the 2nd syllable as "ket" where it should be "get". I have absolutely no idea how Kyiv is supposed to be pronounced, and will keep pronouncing it as I do Kiev (which I think most English speakers do, otherwise no-one would know what they're talking about) - but I doubt that is very much related to how someone speaking Russian pronounces it. kre