I have to say that I strongly disagree with this. In English, Prague is always called "Prague", not Praha. We use Vienna, not Wien, and Moscow rather than Moskva. These ought to be the names of the articles, as they are not incorrect, and they are the way that the place is most familiarly known in English. Furthermore, if this standard were adopted, it would break open the possibility for a whole lot of other changes. For instance, monarchs' names are currently, for the most part, transliterated into English. Country names are translated. If we don't translate city names that are always translted into English, why shouldn't we have articles on King Fernando VII of Spain, or on Deutschland or Rossiya, and so forth?
Further, I think it's ridiculous to act as though this is somehow offensive to people from those places. As an English-speaker, I'm not offended that French people call my country the Etats-Unis, or that they call London "Londres". Why should I be?
Also, for somebody so sensitive to Czech national concerns, perhaps you should be aware that Czechoslovakia has not existed for more than ten years...sigh.
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Message: 14 From: "Stevertigo" stevertigo@attbi.com To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2003 12:08:26 -0700 Subject: [WikiEN-l] Proper Foreign Names Reply-To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org
(this is being sent in HTML - white on black. I hope... you like. I like.)
This may sound offlandish - but I want to throw support behind the idea of spelling proper names in close accord to their actual names' pronunciation. The English spelling/pronunciation "Prague" would redirect to "Praha" - the actual name of the place. This is not something that should simply be left to stand along English lines.
The idea of keeping English consistent is valid -- the proper spelling of English words means that all who read that word can interpret it to a reasonable degree of similarity - albeit in their own accents. (Dan and I have been talking at length about this). Proper English spelling then is generally important because it provides an anchor for the word - which is used by billions around the world. Similar to Han characters, which can be read consistenly by peoples who can barely say hello to each other.
Hence this is also a good reason also to name proper names according to their proper pronunciation. Proper names have long undergone a normal Anglicization when translated to English. Attempts in different aread have been made to reform this -- the Hepburn system given way to the pinyin, being an example -- We do it here already too: [[The Chang Jiang]] article redirects from Yangtze - perhaps in tune with the proper name of the Yangtze - I dont know for certain -- but this edit was done by a ZhongGuo-pedian, and not an Anglo-pedian - hence deference in Chinese matters would naturally goes to the guy/gal who is actually Chinese. Im not going to give Erik any lectures about travel in Deutchland.
A part of the reason why the En.Wikipedia has far more traffic than all of the other languages combined. (Internet access issues, WP founded by English speakers, etc.) is that English itself, being the world lingua franca - tends to attract people to it - simply because of the numbers. There is no reason why a foreign speaker, even with poor English skills, should feel like they are unwelcome - (as long as they can take correction - but thats attitude -related) - nor should they need to excercise some kind of compartmentalized way of thinking about their articles - certainly integrated language tools -implementation might someday speed up the process of making more articles avaliable.
In fact - what it looks like to me is that the En wikipedia will be the major component in a world language wikipedia - that allows for all kinds of cross-textual content. To separate these out by language makes some sense - for sake of non-confusion, but I submit that these other variants represent rifts between English and these other languages - and hence the willingness of people to use them. Perhaps a WorldPedia where only a few of the major languages are allowed would fit the bill to start.
Naturally grammatical errors will come up, and this is just the price to be paid for being the common tongue. There will always be a struggle between the forces of ethnoconvergence and ethnostasis - both of which see each other as being 'diverent' and 'destructive' - according to their different value systems. The one reveres multiculturalism, while the other reveres only its own.
All that said, I'd just like to see Prague redirect to "Praha" -(etc) let "Prague" be recorded as a depricated way of naming the capital city of Czechlosovakia. Proper names, at least we can all agree - belong to the denzens of those cities, and not to people elsewhere. Why depricated? Because I play go, chat, etc, with people from Czechlosovakia (for example) . Not something that was a reality as little as a decade ago.
WLBUY, -SteveM.
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