How long will it be...

[lutzj]

...until people around the west stop saying "Hong Kong" and "Macau"? How long until they start saying "Xianggang" and "Aomen" instead? The last two are the correct romanizations of those two placenames, since the Pinyin romanization is now the correct one to use in the Xianggang SAR since China has owned it since 1997.

And by "people," I mean Westerners.

Anyone?

It takes a couple of generations: remember that Hong Kong/Xianggang just became officially Chinese a decade or two ago. India is almost there: people now say Mumbai and Kolkata instead of Bombay and Calcutta.

 

[LucyDuke]

My point is that it's really stupid to insist on using obsolete Romanizations when the English language is perfectly capable of offering a direct transliteration. And like I said, you didn't answer the question, why do we use correct romanizations for cities like Beijing and Chongqing, but not Xianggang?

It's not stupid to use the words we use. Nobody's insisting on anything, it's just that we have those words, we know what they mean, and we use them. There's no big deal.

"We use correct romanizations for cities like Beijing and Chongqing, but not Xianggang" because, I would imagine, they were popularized first and we've stuck with them. It's not like language is something a committee decides on.

Go ahead and use your Chinese words, if it makes you feel better. Nobody will know what you're talking about. Nor will they care when you whine about it.

 

[Rhymes]

My point is that it's really stupid to insist on using obsolete Romanizations when the English language is perfectly capable of offering a direct transliteration. And like I said, you didn't answer the question, why do we use correct romanizations for cities like Beijing and Chongqing, but not Xianggang?

Because thats how it is right now and the trouble of going through a massive name change campaign greatly outweighs the advantage of giving satisfaction to a handful of people who care about it.

 

[skadistic]

Is Cambodia still Kampuchea? Can I still call Siam Siam?

Do I really care?

 

[LesCanadiens]

Go ahead and use your Chinese words, if it makes you feel better. Nobody will know what you're talking about. Nor will they care when you whine about it.

You see, and you have the balls to complain about the decrease in OT posting quality. It's the underhanded insults like this that set the slippery slope that allow more overt insults. You have no basis for accusing me of whining. I didn't realize that staking out a position and sticking to it was whining.

Cease your trolling.

 

[LesCanadiens]

Also, if you don't care, don't post. This is to everyone. You don't spam US election threads with "ZOMG I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS ROFLCOPTERS," do you?

 

[GinandTonic]

Also, if you don't care, don't post. This is to everyone. You don't spam US election threads with "ZOMG I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS ROFLCOPTERS," do you?

So address the substantive points -

1 - All contries know each other by differnet names.

2 - HK only came to heve any significance under the name HK.

 

[Rhymes]

Also, if you don't care, don't post. This is to everyone. You don't spam US election threads with "ZOMG I DON'T CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS ROFLCOPTERS," do you?

The answer "because we don't care" is actually the answer to the question in the OP "should we call those cities the right way". And it's not a spammy or trolly answer... We are not saying we don't care about the thread or topic, but that "we don't care" is actually the best logical answer to the question in the OP....

If almost everybody in the population doesn't care,,, why should we go through the trouble of changing how we call those cities?

 

[LucyDuke]

You see, and you have the balls to complain about the decrease in OT posting quality. It's the underhanded insults like this that set the slippery slope that allow more overt insults. You have no basis for accusing me of whining. I didn't realize that staking out a position and sticking to it was whining.

Cease your trolling.

I haven't complained. I'm not insulting you. I'm saying your "position" is ridiculous. Disagreeing with you isn't trolling. I'm sorry to see you're so upset about being wrong.

 

[LightFang]

What exactly is the problem with different languages using different words to refer to the same thing? In other words, who cares and why is this a noteworthy case?

Oh, how true.

Look. It's Hong Kong. The place is always Hong Kong to me. In English. I refer to it two different ways, depending on what language I happen to be speaking (and when I learn how to say it in French, well! That'll be a third way. )

"My friend is going to Hong Kong this year."
"Wo de peng you jin nian qu xiang gang."

It's the same thing! Are you one of those people who complained about Peking/Beijing too? To me, it's Beijing; I don't get angry when people use Peking, however awful that translation is.

My point is that it's really stupid to insist on using obsolete Romanizations when the English language is perfectly capable of offering a direct transliteration. And like I said, you didn't answer the question, why do we use correct romanizations for cities like Beijing and Chongqing, but not Xianggang?

Because language is like that!

Why don't you go learn Esperanto or something? Oh wait, that language was made by humans and although it's supposedly neutral to everything, it's not.

Language doesn't make sense. It flows, it has irregularities, it has odd declensions and conjugations. It's beautiful, like that.

 

[Sims2789]

As soon as the Chinese say France instead of Faguo

Agreed. We don't have to learn the pronunciation rules of hundreds of languages. That's why San Francisco is San Frinsihscoe, and not Sahn Franseescoe.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

When will people stop calling Mumbai Bombay?
When will people stop calling Moskva Moscow?
When will the English stop calling Deutschland Germany, or Suomi Finland?

Aren't semantics wonderful?

 

[lovett]

My point is that it's really stupid to insist on using obsolete Romanizations when the English language is perfectly capable of offering a direct transliteration. And like I said, you didn't answer the question, why do we use correct romanizations for cities like Beijing and Chongqing, but not Xianggang?

Cause the people who live there use them.
Do you have any evidence that residents of Hong Kong call it Xianggang?

 

[Dezzilisk]

How long will it be before we all start calling them "ching ching" and "chang chang"?

 

[skadistic]

Cause the people who live there use them.
Do you have any evidence that residents of Hong Kong call it Xianggang?

Any time I've ordered stuff from Hong Kong the business said they were in Hong Kong and the shipping label said Hong Kong.

 

[LightFang]

Cause the people who live there use them.
Do you have any evidence that residents of Hong Kong call it Xianggang?

They do when they're writing pinyin!

When they're writing English they use the English term.

 

[GinandTonic]

They do when they're writing pinyin!

When they're writing English they use the English term.

And when writing in French we use the French name, while in English we use the English name.

Look, I just did! Are Masque and co going to castigate me for not using the correct form? Are they going to change the titles on the ferries, trains and planes to say England? I wouldnt even want them too. Rich tapistry and all that.

 

[nivi]

I never knew Hong-Kong and Macau by any other name, and now that I do know, I still don't give a crap.

 

[BasketCase]

Forever, because I hate the Chinese government and will never give it a dime's worth of respect until the current regime is deposed and replaced with a democratic state.

Hong Kong. Macau. Hong Kong. Macau. Hong Kong. Macau. Hong Kong. Macau.

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

So was the rest of the country. And yet, we refer to Beijing by its proper name, and we don't use Peking anymore.

It helped that Beijing changed it's name several times and that Peking was not merely a different romanization, but actually reflects a change in the way the Chinese pronounced the name. Hong Kong and Macau aren't going to change - Beijing and the other instances you mentioned were the exception, not the rule. And there's no great benefit in changing anyway - no matter how accurate the romanization it would still be a flawed representation of the real names. We still use different names for a lot of European cities even though there's no romanization issues.

In Japanese we still say 'Pekin', if that's any consolation. We do get to write it in the same way as the Chinese though.

It used to bother me that city names were incorrectly represented, but at the end of the day if you're using the wrong script you're never going to get it right. Hong Kong is a perfectly legitimate name for 香港 in English. Xianggang is just an approximation of the Chinese pronunciation, it's nothing special.