https://www.reuters.com/article/world/ukraine-passes-language-law-irritating-president-elect-and-russia-idUSKCN1S110Y/

Literally the whole media switched spelling around this time.

iRaq and iRan are silly but the "Kyiv" stuff is different.

  • DavidGarcia@feddit.nl
    ·
    16 minutes ago

    Iran should return to the good old times before the revolution when the country was still called Aynrand and literally every woman was wearing bikinis all day so I can oogle at them. It was objectively better back then.

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
    ·
    1 hour ago

    In the liberal mind, "Kiev vs Kyiv" is equal to "Beijing vs Peking" or "Myanmar vs Burma" or "Uluru vs Ayer's Rock"

  • Saeculum [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    57 minutes ago

    Rare British win.

    Also though, a lot of people seem unreasonably upset about English speakers pronouncing words differently to how they are in their native languages when that's just how accents work.

  • BeamBrain [he/him]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    When the media says or implies that Russian culture doesn't belong in Ukraine, don't take it as a statement of fact, take it as a statement of intent. They're priming people to accept ethnic cleansing.

  • Red_Sunshine_Over_Florida [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    7 hours ago

    I still call it Kiev because all the TV people switching words on a dime freaked me out. Real 1984 shit when the entire media class just decides for geopolitical reasons the geographic name for a place everyone was used to using isn't usable anymore.

    • Mindfury [he/him]
      ·
      5 hours ago

      they can do this one instantly, but scores of media outlets either took forever or haven't even got Turkiye down yet

      I still think a funny bit is just pretending to not accept the Cyrillic alphabet and calling it "Knib"

      • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 hours ago

        "Turkiye" would be fine, but that is not the official English name, it's "Türkiye" which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe we should start referring to Japan as 日本 in English instead too /s

      • mathemachristian [he/him]
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Tbh turkiye kinda weirds me out. I have never heard anyone complaon about it before.

    • DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      5 hours ago

      The grocery stores in my country all made a big thing about renaming their "Chicken Kievs" to "Chicken Kyevs" it was so funny.

  • newacctidk [none/use name]
    ·
    6 hours ago

    And from UK media it is the same people who will call you a baby for calling it Derry. Even though in that case blood has legit been spilt over it and it stems from colonialism.

  • anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    It's like the whole "Ukraine" vs "the Ukraine" in English that the media did the same thing for. Russian and Ukrainian don't have definite articles. There is no such thing as "the" in either language. The thing they argue over between Russian and Ukrainian is what preposition to use when talking about something in the territory of Ukraine saying 'на украине' (~"na ookrayeenye") versus 'в украине' (~"v ookrayeenye") meaning essentially "on Ukraine" vs "in Ukraine."

    Presumed to be a legacy of an assumed origin of the name Ukraine coming from

    • 'у' particle/prefix in certain contexts meaning kind of by/at/of/near
    • and край (~"krai" similar to English "cry") in contexts meaning 'ridge/edge/side,' with its adjective form крайний (~krainee) meaning 'outermost'

    so Украина ("Ookrayeenah") under this assumed origin meaning something akin to 'of the outer-edge (of the Russian empire)' kind of like "borderland." It is common place especially with older generations to use на украине instead of в украине, though it also often both get used interchangeably.

    That's its own whole mess of history, but US English doesn't have, at all, the historical quirk of "on Ukraine" so it would've always been normal and proper to just say "in Ukraine;" and by making a thing about "Ukraine" vs "the Ukraine" they invented a new problem to then argue about that has no corollary in Russian or Ukrainian to start with.

    Probably "the Ukraine" started in English because some anglo dipshit heard the preposition "na" as similar enough to "the" (and la/le for other romance languages if they even knew that) to just assume it was a definite article, and now they won't shut up about it. It's like the origin I heard from a Korean friend that yanks originally made the g*** slur for Koreans because anglos are so unworldly and pig-ignorant they heard "miguk" from Koreans, which literally means "USA/American," and thought it was the Koreans calling themselves the slur, because they assumed "mi" part is like English "me" because, and I can not stress this enough, they are dumb as hell.

    • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
      ·
      51 minutes ago

      The g-slur goes back to the Spanish-American War and then the Filipino-American War. Americans in the Philippines thought Filipino languages sounded like "guk guk buk buk" the same way they think Mandarin is "King Kong ling long." It got shortened down to come up with the slur, which became more widespread when the Philippines tried to gain independence.

      And because Americans are so racist, they used the same slur against Koreans and Vietnamese as though Asians are all interchangeable. Doesn't surprise me they thought "miguk" was Koreans using the slur in a "Well of course they call themselves that! They recognize the superior white man," kind of way.

    • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      edit-2
      5 hours ago

      There was the same debacle in Poland between something happening "on Ukraine" vs "in Ukraine". It have no real difference, the former is archaic grammar irregularity for some currently or previously bordering countries, for example: Ukraine, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia.

      But there was suddenly entire shitstorm in media about it, that it refuse the status of country, it is playing into Putin propaganda etc. etc. it was a mirror thing of the Kiev vs Kyiv debacle in English which we didn't have because pronouncing "Kyiv" is pretty hard for Poles so everyone is still using traditional name in Polish "Kijów". Also of course nobody changed it for the rest of abovementioned countries.

      • anarcho_blinkenist [none/use name]
        ·
        edit-2
        5 hours ago

        it's ironic too because nobody who's complaining about that grammatical quirk with Kiev/Kyiv or "on Ukraine" vs "in Ukraine" seems to have an issue that the west-aligned countries calls Pridnestrovie the entirely different name "Transnistria" which actually does that thing of 'refusing the status of the country' because it just means "[the Moldovan territory] past the Dneister (river)"

        and also its doubly so because Pridnestrovians don't want to be called that because it's literally the name the Romanian and German Nazis used for their occupation government when they did the Holocaust there (Transnistria Governorate)

  • SadArtemis [she/her]
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Honestly, in half the country (the east) Russian is if anything more indigenous than Ukrainian is.

  • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
    ·
    8 hours ago

    It always annoys me how bent out of shape people get over pronunciation of city and place names in other languages. Some languages have different sounds and thus things are said differently.

    The Chinese word for Australia is "Audaliya" and even the frothist of frothers don't go complaining about it (I hope)

    • Owl [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      6 hours ago

      Chinese names for countries are cool. They try to be nice about it when there's more than one set of characters for something that sounds right (America is from the characters for "beautiful country" instead of "mildew country"), but when that's not possible you get really silly like Portugal being named "grape tooth." (There are also countries with literal translations.)

        • miz [any, any]
          ·
          6 hours ago

          I don't know why Greece (Hope Wax) is labelled Hope December

          • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            5 hours ago

            the La (腊) in Xi La (Greece or Hellas) can mean wax but it also refers to method of food preservation in China called Waxing where meat is dried and cured to have a waxy exterior, this is commonly done in the winter and hence the 12th month in the Chinese Lunar calender (actually usually in January rather than December) is sometimes colloquially called the wax month

        • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          edit-2
          5 hours ago

          They should really fucking change it for Germany. Also Sweden, didn't they heard about Poltava? And France after what happened after last election. And UK ffs.

          Bulgaria is spot on though, their insurance companies are fucked up.

    • SadArtemis [she/her]
      ·
      7 hours ago

      even the frothist of frothers don't go complaining about it (I hope)

      Even if they did, they should stay mad. None of the Anglo settler-colonial names are legitimate after all.

    • Hexboare [they/them]
      ·
      7 hours ago

      There's the other nickname that's shorter and translates to backwards/rustic Australia

  • Collatz_problem [comrade/them]
    ·
    8 hours ago

    The most idiotic thing about this is that English pronunciation of both Kiev and Kyiv is equally far from both Russian and Ukrainian pronunciation.

    • LalSalaamComrade@lemmy.ml
      cake
      ·
      edit-2
      8 hours ago

      Because the script for English is stupid, and I'm not sure why it hasn't been phased out with something like Shavian. "a" can have the "ah" sound (alternative), the "ae" (amazing) sound and the "eh" sound (bad). Similarly, "e" can have the "ae" sound (elephant), "aih" sound (eye) and the "i" sound (economy).

      On a similar note, karma (कर्म) is not spelt as car-muh, it's cur-mha.

      • Krem [he/him]
        ·
        3 hours ago

        love going on anglo wickypedia and looking up a country, city, or non-anglo person from history

        pronunciation guides are first in some anglo gibberish fo-NEY-ticks with big SHOU-ty letters and nonsensical spelling, for some weird anglo pronunciation, and then IPA for the [weird] anglo pronunciation, and then the pronunciation in local language

        por ejemplo

        Hexbear (US: HAYKZ-buhr [IPA: 'hejks,bə:r]) (UK: HEKS-beh[IPA: 'heksbɶ:] ) (Marxist Standard: Hexbear [IPA: häx'bɑˑɾ̼])

      • Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Your pronunciation examples confuse me greatly. "ah" from "alternative"? "eh" from "bad"? Certainly not in my accent.

      • Hexboare [they/them]
        ·
        edit-2
        6 hours ago

        We're not going to succeed in making English the dumbest lingua franca by making the sounds match the letters.

        20 vowel sounds for five vowel letters is language perfection

      • KoboldKomrade [he/him]
        ·
        7 hours ago

        If elected president, I will do nothing but push for a phonetic alphabet.

      • WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de
        ·
        7 hours ago

        𐑞 𐑮𐑰𐑟𐑩𐑯 𐑞𐑨𐑑 𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑦𐑟 𐑯𐑪𐑑 𐑿𐑟𐑛 𐑦𐑟 𐑚𐑦𐑒𐑪𐑟 𐑦𐑑𐑕 𐑡𐑳𐑕𐑑 𐑦𐑥𐑐𐑪𐑕𐑩𐑚𐑩𐑤 𐑑𐑵 𐑒𐑩𐑯𐑝𐑦𐑯𐑕 𐑩 𐑚𐑦𐑤𐑘𐑩𐑯 𐑐𐑰𐑐𐑩𐑤 𐑑𐑵 𐑤𐑻𐑯 𐑣𐑶 𐑑𐑵 𐑮𐑰𐑛 𐑩𐑜𐑱𐑯