4 ms·

> I think it's about time that English finally followed suit. Why? Do you think that languages should all follow the same rules about everything?

• Leherenn 6y ago
  When it's about a proper noun with a clear authoritative source, I would say yes.
• mcv 6y ago
  Not everything, but names, yes. When China informed the world that their capital was called Beijing rather than Peking, the world fixed their spelling and pronunciation. Why would this case be any different? And of course there will remain spelling and pronunciation differences. I don't expect English to use "Nederland", but "Netherland" should be fine. Maybe also drop the "Dutch" and replace it with something like Netherlandish or Netherlandic. Because "Dutch" is another weird archaic holdover. Nobody in Netherland even knows why we're called that in English. (I suspect it stems from the medieval name "Diets" for a group of predecessors of our language, which stems from well before the country existed.)
  • ByteJockey 6y ago
    That's actually a really interesting example. Because you're entirely right about the city, and yet China doesn't call itself China. Actually, the big three SE asian countries (Japan, China, Korea) all have different names for themselves than most languages of european origin use. Presumably others do as well, but those are the ones I looked up. I wonder why that is. Edit: Further thought. Most of the major cities I'm aware of (especially capital cities) in those countries are pronounced fairly accurately (with room for accents, of course). That's actually a really interesting set up.