Two new RB countries

Luckily Scotland are already separate from England on RB!

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It isn’t stupid at all; it’s the name of their country and they alone get to define what that name is.

I hate to get all Jordan Peterson on your arse, but I couldn’t disagree more.
They get to chose what they call themselves in their language, and I get to chose what I call them in my language. They have no dominion over my language.

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Lets talk about Burma, Deutschland and Magyar

Both of those have been recognized as separate in the Ham Radio community for years. Considered really rare, and I bet will be in the craft beer community as well!!

It’s Magyarország you pleb! :joy:

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Saying what they’d like to be called isn’t “having dominion” over anything. Calling people what they’d like to be called - absent a really good reason - is just polite.

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In other cases, Albanians for example generally don’t want other people to call them the way they call themselves. Actually, they get really pissed off. Mainly because it’s mostly used pejoratively, so can’t blame them.

Kongeriget Danmark; FĂźrstentum Liechtenstein;

Svalbard was debated before. It was then decided that the distance from mainland (~1000km) was insufficient for it to qualify. Also the poilitical status could have been reason to split, but was decided against.

Nothing has changed since that decision.

Anyway, the damn site changes the language of the site to our own language and it forces us to see the ratings in our own language first no matter what… at that point, they could easily adapt the name of each country depending of language as well…

Countries don’t control languages; they control territory, and part of the protocol of being a country is getting to tell the rest of the world what to call you.

If countries directly controlled language, then the biggest authorities on the English language are the United States and Nigeria. I reckon Nigeria has some great names for England :sunglasses:

Nonsense. Some do. Deal with it.

Nonsense. It’s a request. No way does an external countries requests for what to be referred to in your language trump your own choice of what your call them in your own language - have you missed the point that it’s your bloody language, why the heck would you give foreigners control over it?!?! In particular, if they want to claim that words containing letters that are not in your language should be part of that name.

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Language is a living thing and constantly changes. You can try to control it, but how well that works heavily depends on whether people accept your authority or not. France certainly has a higher influence on French than the UK on English. D/A/CH are probably closer to what the French to than what happened with English.

Because we’re talking about them, not about us. If you respect a country and their culture, there is no way around trying to use what they offer. It does not matter to me if it’s my language or theirs. Of course, if they make it difficult, they also can’t expect me to get everything right, but there’s no harm in trying and being respectful.

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I am not so sure about that - German does not even know grammar or pronunciation rules. Only Austria codifies its variety via public authorities, and they only cover vocabulary, nothing else.

a funny example of how this has not always happened is how the name of Germany and Germans in German is based on the Indoeuropean *teuta, meaning the people, populace. It has the same root as, for instance, deutlich, indicating stuff that matters.

In Slavic languages, the names for Germany and Germans are based on nemet / niemc, meaning “mute”, people who don’t matter, etc.

In formal platforms such as Foreign Affairs or International Organizations they do trump. For example if I send a letter to the Permanent United Nations Representative of a country, they will not accept it unless it’s addressed formally to their choice of government name. As for the rest of the world, you can call any country with any name you like, as long as you’re not corresponding with their government.

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Indeed. There’re plenty of diminishing terms for neighbouring tribes and peoples; c.f. “barbarians” (babblers, very much like your example of language-incompatibility), “slavs” (slaves), and putatively “eskimos” (monkey humpers).

However, that’s mostly irrelevant - people who think such other-ist nomenclature is equivalent to referring to “Côte d’Ivoire” as “Ivory Coast” are on planet woo woo. The most natural translation into English of “côte d’ivoire” is “ivory coast”, for pity’s sake.

Note - troll deliberately left in to trigger soibois.

No. That is not how languages work in the world, especially when it comes to English (which has no single regulatory body).

It isn’t a request, though; it’s official policy. Côte d’Ivoire, Czechia, and Eswatini (just like every other country in the world) selected their own name in English, submitted it to international organisations for standardization, and the United Nations. English-language country names are (usually) the one thing that all countries can agree to honour; one person’s stubbornness about using a circumflex in an English word isn’t going to change universally-accepted standards.

No single country has authority over English (and that includes countries where English is an official language) because the international community has agreed that it is the main language that we communicate in an official capacity. English is everybody’s language, not just yours.

That single person running the entire national broadcasting corporation seems to be doing a pretty thorough job of not kowtowing to this foreign pressure:
https://www.google.com/search?q=CĂ´te+d'Ivoire+site:bbc.co.uk&hl=en&gbv=1