Comment on I felt so betrayed when I found out Germany isn't called Germany in Germany
FishFace@piefed.social 3 weeks agoThey explain the methodology - where there is more than one official name, the name in the language with the most speakers in that country is used.
bobzer@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
That’s certainly a decision.
FishFace@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
How would you pick along multiple official names in different languages?
bobzer@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I mean it’s mostly a criticism of whoever suggested this map as a way to see country names in the language of the country, rather than just English.
But it’s also kind of a pointless map as it’s not useful to an English speaker but it doesn’t commit to teaching you indigenous place names either.
FishFace@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
I don’t really understand. I asked how you would pick better names but you’re not saying how.
Maybe I would understand if you gave an example. I look at a country you might be thinking of, Nigeria, say, the official language of Nigeria is English, so this surely should not be an example because English is the language of the country. (Both by official status and by number of speakers).
English of course is not an indigenous native language of Nigeria - a description you seem to use interchangeably with “language of the country” - but there are over 500 of those, so if you don’t think the map is suitable due to featuring non-indigenous names, which of them should it pick?
Trying to answer the question I asked on your behalf (always prone to error) maybe you would prefer a map which names countries according to the most widely spoken indigenous language in each country? It would be interesting to have a map which labelled the USA *Wááshindoon bikéyah ałhidadiidzooígíí*, and Britain as *Prydain*, but I suspect the original reply would have expected those countries to be labelled in English, not in indigenous minority languages.