Meta comment on cultural awareness: "Japan wants you to say its leader’s name correctly: Abe Shinzo [1]" Why authors are still messing this up almost 5 years later is bewildering [1] https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/asia/japan-name-abe-shinzo-in...
One of the most annoying things about speaking the dominant world language (obviously it is also great in many respects) is that there is some pressure to change your language rather than just adjusting the sounds and spelling to the pre-existing phonetics. Erdogan is pronounced closer to erdoyan and Türkiye insisting on the umlaut. Nguyen and Pho rather than wynn and pha. Gyro instead of hyro. Blonde vs blond (WHY w…
It also feels very silly to change the spelling of a word or name when two languages share an alphabet, even if it makes it a little less phonetic.