Note: for any future commotion, this was supposed to be purely educational. Okay the question should be why do countries have to do this and why is it so hard not to? Wouldn’t it make sense to add this to the list of things the youth can learn at an early age?
Why can’t they just allow kids in schools to learn the true names of things no matter how hard they may be to pronounce? I understand the difficulty but computers and the Internet exist so we can translate and better implement this. Like some words in English where we have no single word translation like ‘Dejavu’ (pardon non autocorrect), I understand. But places were changed to make it easier to produce in a native tongue. I am sure it is not only America, or English, but wouldn’t we be better off respecting the culture and not changing the name, like we changed our map to the correct pronunciation of Turkey (Türkiye). So why don’t we change everything back to how the countries’ place names are pronounced by their citizens out of respect? We can learn how to pronounce things better. Would it make things harder or would it allow us to grow? I am genuinely curious.
Note: I understand some people won’t be able to pronounce them but why did they decide it would be better for a country/language than to just try to pronounce them correctly.
I think a lot of this is due to colonialism. Back when the Brits were sailing around pointing cannons at people and being delightful they didn’t respect local culture and dialects enough to bother with a “tricky” word so replaced it with an easier version. Unfortunately due to that expansion and the proliferation of English as the most common trade language the English versions tend to stick.
Every language does this. It isn’t colonialism, it’s convenience and practicality. Some sounds don’t exist or are awkward, so a different name is used instead.
This is the correct answer. But I agree with the part it is unfortunate that they didn’t respect and America doesn’t respect enough to say España or ‘la France’ hopefully I am spelling that right.
Ah, so you just wanted to stand on a soap box and let everyone see how virtuous and moral you are. Got it.
Lol, what? It was educational. For me and anyone else who might want to know. The problem right here is I don’t get sarcastic over a question asked in a community called no stupid questions. However, I am stupid for asking the wrong one. So, thank you. Sincerely, tho.
No it’s not. Plenty of countries that never had any colonies are doing the exact same thing in their languages.
Yeah, but why are Americans doing the same thing as everyone else!?
I really want to know. Cuz America is a Poser?
Its not respect or lack of it.
Its just human culture and how it works. If a place is so common that its names very often, it gets a local name, or it got it in the past.
Changing that would bear no consequence on how we see that country/culture/place at all.