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.

  • Aradina [She/They]@lemmy.ml
    ·
    3 months 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]
      ·
      3 months 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]
          ·
          3 months ago

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

          • CliffordBigRedDog [he/him]
            ·
            3 months 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

          • GarbageShoot [he/him]
            ·
            3 months ago

            These are literal translations of names mostly chosen for sounding at least a little like the country's name in its own language

          • CloutAtlas [he/him]
            ·
            3 months ago

            Deutschland

            Deutsch

            De

            德dé (meaning moral or virtuous)

            德国déguó

        • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          3 months 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.

        • REgon [they/them]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Red Wheat sounds like the title of a kickass video game, a fantastic western novel, a decent 80's action movie and an absolutely horrendous metaphor for menstruation.

        • bunnygirl [she/her]
          ·
          3 months ago

          name for sweden sounds like they're still kinda mad about a very odd war that happened at some point

    • SadArtemis [she/her]
      ·
      3 months 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]
      ·
      3 months ago

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