Mind your language
`MUMMY, why aren't you drinking your tea, isn't it nice?' Veronica asked at breakfast on Mothering Sunday. .
`Delicious, 0 zygote of my gamete,' I answered. 'Very kind of you. It's just that someone has actually written quite a sensible letter.'
It came from Hong Kong, from Mr Tedd Marr, who has been ruminating on place names. He told me he had already taken to task the dull old Economi ,s( for persevering in using Myanmar and Yangon. These (for those who don't know) mean Burma and Rangoon. One can't help agreeing that their adoption in English is absurd.
In his letter to that fine publication Mr Marr said, 'This is not a political gripe; I don't for a moment mind what governments decree from time to time about their national names, or that they are able sometimes to coerce their citi- zens into using them.'
It is, I suppose, a question of degree. Would you call the Jackdaw of Rheims the Jackdaw of Rance? Do you say Cey- lon or Sri Lanka; do you say Cambodia or Kampuchea; do you pronounce Kenya to rhyme with seen-ya or with Lenya?
We don't mind calling Leningrad St Petersburg again, but, then, why did we ever call it Leningrad in the first place? Do we give up Leghorn, Lyons and Saragossa but go on with Florence, Munich and Moscow?
Nothing is funnier than hearing newsreaders trying to give Anglicised forms a foreign ring, as in Munich with the ch pronounced as in loch; the Ger- mans call it Munchen. Even Punjab pronounced with the `u' as in spoon has made its way onto the World Service. They haven't got round to calling Paris Paree yet.
`I suppose,' says Mr Marr, 'the rule must be that we should avoid humbug, and try to call a place by something as close as we can manage to what the locals call it, until the momentum of language prevails, or unless it prevailed long ago, and there is already a settled English name.'
That sounds eminently sensible, but Mr Mau. has raised other questions about Peking/Beijing of oriental com- plication, which will have to wait till another time.
Dot Wordsworth
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