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.
Localized names are ok, why do you need to pronounce something “correct” way if your language for example doesn’t have needed sounds or they are extremely hard to pronounce, are you going to learn how to pronounce south african clicks to pronounce some city the correct way?
Its also very America centric of OP, ironically. People in other places might also adjust our names and words.
I know, I think I forgot to mention I understand that other countries do this, sorry for specifying America as I cannot speak for other countries as I am not from them nor have I been to them. This was about cultural awareness, and the fact that by learning difficult things at a younger age, ‘USA’ would be better. They are already teaching things younger and younger as we advance as a society, why not add this? I hear young kids learning more and more difficult things. But making it easier or harder is less the question, but rather advancing and making people smarter and more cultured.
I get. Still language is about being pragmatic. Adjusting pronunciations or making new words is just a means to an end: being understood.
I would love to learn that. Even as a kid I probably would have loved it. However I understand the difficulty.
Do you think that schools should spend weeks to months of time to train pronounciation of places in hundred different languages? How would you even decide which way is the correct pronounciation, if languages evolve and might sound different even in the span of a century, not even counting places where multiple ethnic groups live and have different languages and different names for places?
First, it would be a start, and second: it could be generalized to certain countries until a consensus was made. DOE/government or what is left of it could petition each country to decide this out of respect and cultural awareness. I dare not add any pathos to this argument. The more open-minded people there are the more it helps.