I'm reading
"One of the World’s Smallest Countries Has a New Name/Formerly called Nauru, the island in the South Pacific wants its name to more closely match how it is said in the language spoken by its people" (NYT gift link).
You could say it isn’t really a change at all. People in Naoero speak English, but also the Nauruan native language, in which the country is known as Naoero.
The name Nauru came about because some foreigners struggled to pronounce Naoero....
How the new name is pronounced depends in part on one’s accent. British, Australian and American English speakers variously pronounce it nah-OO-roo, now-AIR-o or nah-oh-EH-roh.
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72 comments:
Isn't this the island that was supposed to be underwater by now?
Yo - Let's talk about vague words composed mainly of vowels while eating Türkiye at the cancelled blue city Thanksgiving event. Oooo, I can't wait.
https://word.tips/vowel-words/
Now do Türkiye.
I have a modest proposal. Starting today, we hold the world to its own standards.
No more Estados Unidos. No more États-Unis. The country is called The United States of America, and we want corrections on pronunciation.
Stand there patiently. Make them say it. The “th” in The. The t in United. That a, then the second t in States. And that killer r in America. English is a nightmare to pronounce. Tough.
Give it a week. Even Nauru - eight square miles, twelve thousand people, one road - will stop lecturing us on the correct vowel in “Nah-OO-roo.” When Nauru folds, the rest of the world will follow. Score another victory for the US of A.
Türkiye is the Land of the Turks. Seems reasonable to me.
Change is the only constant.
Istanbul - Tiny Toons
Eva Marie +1.
Not only that, but we need to start calling Mexico by its actual name, The United States of Mexico, so if someone calls you a United Statesian, you be sure to ask them “Which United States?”
Publicity stunt.
And who bears the switching costs?
And yet Deutchland is still pronounced "Germany"
Third world problems.
Europe is full of countries we Anglophones call by names other than the ones the natives use: Deutschland, Italia, España, Nederland, Magyaroszag, etc.
Europe is full of countries we Anglophones call by names other than the ones the natives use: Deutschland, Italia, España, Nederland, Magyaroszag, etc.
I'm waiting for schools to start teaching about the country of "Niger," and for someone to eventually look up the meaning and connotations of "Guinea" -- a name used by four current countries.
This marks the second time, ever, that I have given "Naoero" a thought. The first was many years ago when I learned of its existence. Points for whoever came up with this publicity stunt.
Do they have any rare earths?
"Its economy was once largely based on phosphate mining. But depleted supplies have led it in other directions, including processing Australian asylum seekers."
According to Grok, Australia's asylum seekers processed on Nauru and other places like Papua New Guinea are barred from permanent residence in Australia even if granted refugee status. They are resettled in third countries. Guess where most of them wind up. That's right, the USA.
Official Language: The national language of San Marcos will be changed to Swedish.
Underwear Rule: All citizens must change their underwear every half-hour, and it must be worn on the outside of their clothing so authorities can inspect it.
Age Law: All children under 16 years old are now officially 16 years old.
From the Woody Allen movie "Bananas." Decrees of the dictator following the revolution.
It's not as though anyone was talking about them. But just in case, try to say it right. Not that we were saying it right before. They just want to make it difficult again, the way it was before colonialism.
Say it like Scooby-Doo
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-oceania/oceania-peoples-and-places/micronesia/a/kiribati-armor
However it's pronounced, they win a prize for most badass primitive armor.
My daughter was complaining about this a couple days ago. She had a mnemonic to remember Nauru for her geography app, but it doesn't work for The Republic of Naoero, so she's worried her score will go down.
Tempest in a teapot. Who cares? Pronounce things however you like and keep on truckin'.
The fundamental problem with attempts at phonetic spelling in English is English speakers don't pronounce letter combinations consistently. We're using an alphabet intended for a different language (Latin) which contributed to 'smart' people Latinizing spellings and introduced many silent letters, and English spelling was standardized by printing and dictionaries right in the middle of a shift in vowel pronunciation. You can make whatever jumble of letters you want that you think represents a phonetic pronunciation of a non-English word and most everybody who speaks English is gonna stare at it with no idea how to say it. It is simply an affection to mark a class of people who are supposedly in the know. The name of a place is the name used by people speaking the language you are.
Countries don't get to say what another language calls them.
Germany Allemagne Deutschland
Let's call the whole thing off.
Say my name
Say my name..
Naw Roo.
Scoobydo could pronounce it better.
We thought Turkey was hilarious in fourth grade. "You're a turkey" was a big insult among the nine-year-olds. Our fourth grade teacher, Mr. Staton, got mad.
"Turkey has fierce fighters," he said.
In the back of the class, we kept calling each other turkeys.
"You're a fierce fighting turkey."
"Your mama is a fierce fighting turkey."
I'm going to work on the correct pronunciation all day today. I certainly don't want to offend any of the Naoeronianians.
Nauru has twelve ethnicities, with an average of 200 persons per ethnic group. Do they all agree on the pronunciation of Nauru?
General Tso's chicken was born in the USA, and we have no idea how to pronounce it. Three letters! And we can't say it right. You're missing a vowel, Tso. Or whoever you are.
I've been going with Dow for a while. Also Tow, with an emphasis on the "ow." The good news is, no matter how I mispronounce it, the English-as-a-second-language waiters always know what I mean.
I try to say it like I'm Chinese, which might help a little. I make an uncommunicative sound, ending in "ow!"
I feel sorry for you "so" suckers. Unless you're right. Which you might be, who the hell knows.
The N-word.
I think they're trying to chase away tourists?
Nauru sounds like a fantastic beach get-getaway, with spas and saunas and beaches and bananas.
Naoero sounds like a PC third-world hellhole, where the natives are unhappy and nobody likes white people.
get-away
not get-get away
be afraid, stuttering honky, be very afraid
"They just want to make it difficult again, the way it was before colonialism."
Yeah, that's the ticket. Back to pre-colonial Nauru, (or Naoeru, according to the More Vowels Party) when half of us tried to kill the other half! The Nauruan Civil War lasted four years and was put to a stop by the Germans, who took over our brave little island in 1880 and lost it to a British mandate after WWI. Think on that for a bit, we're so violent even THE GERMANS were disgusted.
Let's Call the Whole Thing Off
Nao way!
Does the pronunciation really depend on national accents, or rather on the conventions different governments and media have adopted? I can sound out the vowels in different ways and still pronounce them in a US accent.
I guess it's nice that the Naeoroans are thinking about something other than the "our island is going to disappear" hype. The rest of us have moved on from climate change to data centers.
Nauru had centuries of seabird guano, rich in phosphate. It was mined and sold as fertilizer. It’s mostly gone now. Leading export is the .nu moniker of email addresses. It promises anonymity on line. As in ace.mu.nu.
Sorry, got the island nation wrong . It’s Niue Island. Maybe they had the guano. Oh, never mind.
Isn’t this the same island that supported itself by selling batshit? I have heard of them, if this is them,
I'm old enough to remember when He-ro-she-ma was Hero-she-ma, Keeev was Key-ehv, and Turk-eye-ee was Turkey.
how long?
how long before the people in Germany start saying that their country is "Deutschland" ?
i mean, that IS closer to how they pronounce it
So, the article says how people mispronounce the name. Does it try to tell us how we should be pronouncing it? It is it just one of those situations where the point is to make it clear that whatever "we" colonizers say, it'll be wrong?
I suppose it's better than if they invented a character system out of whole cloth, right now. But since the benefits of written language were in fact a gift from the colonizers, maybe they're throwing "us" a bone.
“Countries don't get to say what another language calls them.”
Cities too. It’s Paris, not Pahree, Berlin, not Bareleen, Rome, not Roma, etc. Actually, Trump should just rename all of them. Frogland, Krautland, Limeyland, Wopland, etc.would be a lot easier to remember as well as pronounce. Any country that doesn’t like it gets a 1000% tariff. To start.
“Countries don't get to say what another language calls them.”
Tell it to Myanmar or Türkiye or Eswatini or Nee-kah-RAH-gwah.
In other news, the spelling of potato has been upgraded to potatoe to reflect the proper pronunciation of the last syllable.
Just don't pronounce it, "Latefordinner."
Yancy Ward, thank you. Now I can’t get past my mental picture of Scooby-Doo struggling with this over and over. Ha!
I have a much more cynical thought. Nauru, is a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. It's a singular island, not an arrayed island cluster, like Micronesia or Kiribati or the Marshall Islands, all fairly nearby.
I wonder if this change in spelling is really driven by its desire to 'shed its colonial past'. They were invited to do this almost 60 years ago, when they became a republic, so it's taken a while. And they still are accepting fairly heavy economic aid from Australia, those evil colonizing bast*rds that gave them their independence. They're not known as a 'Flag of Convenience' and it makes me wonder if economic development is somehow driving the spell check.
And thanks to Obama, we now have "Pahk-eee-stahn."
Well, English is the worlds language and the new spelling will be hard for people to pronounce. "aoero" is a strange combo in English. Thats 4 vowels in 5 letters.
But they can do whatever they want. Its their country. And I doubt I will ever have to spell or say their name again.
Mr. Staton, who spoke of the Turks as fierce warriors almost certainly fought beside them as UN forces in Korea. I knew a similar veteran who was gobsmacked at their berserker devil take the hindmost assaults.
Smilin' Jack, you almost made me spay coffee out my nose! :)
> Eva Marie +1
Forget that, how about Eva Marie x 10⁶!
She even emphasized the necessity to get that wonderful American English retroflex 'r' correct (and no, it's not the same as the subcontinental English retroflex-r)
So change your one sign at the airport and move on.
If they'll bother to show us the correct pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet, I'll do my best to pronounce it correctly. If they don't want to bother, neither do I.
You know what's a fun one to say? CooBAH. I'll say that one all day. I'm totally on board with the PC police. Am I being ironic, or possibly sarcastic? Possibly. Regardless, it's fun to say. I was saying it in the elevator. CooBAH. Nice echoes, in my elevator. CoooBAH.
Cue-ba sounds so ordinary. I don't even want to invade it anymore. CooBAH, I want to take my shirt off and jump in a pool.
Naoero may be the third smallest country in the world but it exceeds itself by being the second fattest.
Nauaru had huge fossil bird guano fertilizer mines over most (90%) of the place that are now more or less depleted but the minerals kept soils and plants from developing, being too concentrated in fertilizer it was not suitable for growing, so now they have nothing left and do things like housing Australian illegal immigrants and collecting foreign aid. It’s not a real economy now but I guess the name change is good, in the sense that there is no bad publicity.
Speaking of irritating island affectations, what about the Hawaiian effort to impose diacritical marks on a language (American English) that does not use them (notwithstanding the occasional New Yorker solecism, itself an irritating island affectation).
Now I want to have a beer with Saint Croix. Or several.
As long as the Nauruvians, err, Naoeros (?) call the body of water between the US and Mexico the Gulf of America, I'm ok with this local spelling. I'm not going to learn the pictograms for Peking, err, Beijing, though, because China is Asshole.
I think they just do it to annoy.
thanks, Fred!
Did you know Modelo is the #1 beer in the USA? That surprised me.
If you want to be a top notch political scientist, study the beer.
Bud Light used to be #1. And now it's not. What happened?
Modelo Especial is now the #1 beer in the USA. What happened?
Anybody who wants to understand the Trump phenomenon, look at our beer.
I'm sure this is compelling news to someone who gives shit.
Which native ethnicity was first to colonize the N-word?
The Anasazi engaged in civil war with genocidal progress: Diversity (e.g. racism), Equivocation, Implosion (DEIsm).
Should we start using every country's endonym then?
Japan - Nippon/Nihon
South Korea - Hanguk
North Korea - Choseon
China - Zhongguo
Cambodia - Kampuchea/Srok Khmer
Indonesia - Nusantara (hey, that's the name of the new capital city too!)
Greece - Hellas
India - Bharat
Finland - Suomi
And as many have already noted - Germany/Allemagne - Deutschland
And there are many more. These are just the ones off the top of my head.
Saint Croix said...
If you want to be a top notch political scientist, study the beer.
Bud Light used to be #1. And now it's not. What happened?
Modelo Especial is now the #1 beer in the USA. What happened?
meet the new boss.. the same as the old boss.
seriously, WHO owns Modelo Especial? i'll give you a hint
> WHO owns Modelo Especial
That can't be true
We are no longer the knights who say, “Ni”
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