ceigered:
As an Australian, I have no comment on crazy place names . 'Kunanara', said with French vowels instead of English ones, would probably be a good guess, but the truth is many Australians don't even know how to pronounce half of these place names . If we don't know how to spell or pronounce the name, we generally just call the place 'whoop-whoop'.

"Ah hey kev where a you goin ull of a suddin?"
"Ah ta some place out a' whoop-whoop"
"Ah beaut ma'e bring us back a soovenier!"

Hej, hej I didn't know that whoop-whoop thing. How much chewing gums do you need to pronounce this correctly? I will disarticulate my jaw trying this! But would be interesting diagnoses at the doctor:

What the hell did you do with your yaw?
Just tried to learn some aussi strine pronouncing.

You guys ran with this further than I thought you would.

Actually you missed my point a little bit and that was my fault for not being specific enough.

I am not looking to translate (transliterate) English place names into Esperanto; I was thinking more that if an island somewhere suddenly adopted Esperanto as it's defacto language, how would it handle street names; how would Google Maps look in Esperanto if "Esperantujo" or "Zamenhoflando" suddenly appeared on the map.

I like the idea of compounding names: Parkstrato, Zamenhofplaco, or even Placo Zamenhof etc.

Part of this is that I'm toying with a work of fiction (creative expression maybe) that will have a city that's been "Esperantized" in the future; I just wanted a feel for how signs would look etc.

Thanks

Oh and Ceigered: I love your Aussie place names. I was looking at a map yesterday and seeing place names like Woombooranoora and Uluramurana and things like that. I'm familiar with 'Strine so I can hear those names in my head. Great stuff. We have native names here in Maine too, this is (was) an Algonquin territory so we have names like Sagadahoc, Aroostook, Cobboseecontee, Penobscot, Sheepscot, Damariscove etc.

Ironchef:
Actually you missed my point a little bit and that was my fault for not being specific enough.

I am not looking to translate (transliterate) English place names into Esperanto; I was thinking more that if an island somewhere suddenly adopted Esperanto as it's defacto language, how would it handle street names;

You definitly should do this with the smallest member country of the European Union: Malta
Let me tell why. If you get it figured to translate the whole Malta's island street names into Esperanto. Then you have convince the Malta parliament to make Esperanto an official language at Malta. Afterwards Malta parliament could send a request to the European Commission to set Esperanto an official language of the European Union. Language discrimination etc. You know. That's no joke! Just ask any member of the european parliament (MEP). And the EP has to translate all it's stuff to Esperanto, too. Okay you will need some friends in Malta doing this. Some time ago there was official statement of somebody from the EC who told what condition are to make Esperanto an offical EU language. I will try to find this statement.

regards,

Nope, won't work because Malta already submitted Maltese as their official language. Maybe Cyprus? They have internal problems, haven't submitted their own language, they could use some more understanding.

Well Alun Ffred Jones addressed the EU members in Welsh, his own language, because Welsh and Gaelic have recognition within the EU as constitutional languages of the UK and Ireland respectively. If any EU member nation added Esperanto to its list of constitutionally recognized languages then all documentation and debates would have to be provided in Esperanto too.

Cyprus speaks Greek and English as its two official languages, with Turkish being the unofficial language of the not-so-much recognized Northern Turkey. I don't think they'd jump on Esperanto any time soon either.

I heard that you can "rent" Liechtenstein for special ocassions. Maybe we can rent the whole Principality and officially change its national language from German to Esperanto and declaire the Respubliko de Liĥtenŝtejno

I like this train of thought...

You are wrongly informed, Ironchef. The EU has 23 official languages, and some regional languages also get some attention but not every official document has to be translated to Welsh.

But I agree on renting Liechtenstein.

But for $375 to $500 a head, with a minimum of 450 heads, corporations can now rent the entire 160-square-kilometer country, with full access to one of the royal castles.

That's quite a big group though, this is the size of the IJK or UK. And not cheap either. And only for a day. I think we should for now be happy with Hertzberg.

Rogir:

But for $375 to $500 a head, with a minimum of 450 heads, corporations can now rent the entire 160-square-kilometer country, with full access to one of the royal castles.

That's quite a big group though, this is the size of the IJK or UK. And not cheap either. And only for a day. I think we should for now be happy with Hertzberg.

Erm.. when the country gets rented out, what happens to its citizens?

"Ok ok, move a long now, you only need to stay in the Swiss mountains for 2 weeks. Remember citizens - pick up your tent at line 1, rations at line 2!"

And @ Qwertz,
whoop whoop is easy to pronounce - it's like saying 'wup wup' in German, only with English 'w's
If we were in medieval England, then to get that 'hwowp-hwowp' sound going we would probably need about 20 packs of hardcore mint flavoured chewing gum. For extra freshness ..

And never heard of 'Strine' before, its funny to see what people across the world think of our pronunciation .

There are some Esperanto speaking nations in the RPG Nation States, founded by the Australian writer Max Barry. Our region is Esperantujo, and my nation is Esperantujo 2. I've named islands, cities and autonomous region, but not streets yet, except Haveno Strato, or Havenstrato, aŭ ajn, Zamenhofurbo, is the embassy quarter.
Do visit, or prefeably join in. We need the members. It's free, btw.

Pooh, I got it:

Leonard Orban

Multilinguism

European Commission > Commissioners > Leonard Orban > Multilingualism - Have your say...

Do you experience problems in your everyday life that are due to language difficulties?

February 6, 2008

"... The multilingualism of the European Union is defined within clear limits by Community law.

A language can become an official language of the EU if it meets three conditions:

- it has to be an official language of a Member State, stated by its Constitution;

- the Member State in question requests its recognition as an official language at the EU level;

- the other Member States approve this unanimously.

This is one of the reasons that Esperanto cannot become the lingua franca of the European Union. The second reason has to do with its specificity. A language like Esperanto has little social or cultural practice connected to its vocabulary. The practical and financial implications of creating entire domains ex novo in an artificial language are immense. Think only of customs codes or banking legislation or the technical requirements for pressure vessels of simple geometric form – sometimes known as brake cylinders. The third reason is a more personal one: I do not believe in a lingua franca, be it Esperanto, Latin or…English. On the other hand, lingua franca is, historically, a spontaneous social linguistic phenomenon and is not the result of any legislative or political decision. Probably some Esperantists on this forum do not agree with my position, but I believe we need to share our views (I found some of the arguments very interesting, although I did not agree with some of them)..."

ceigered:
And @ Qwertz,
whoop whoop is easy to pronounce - it's like saying 'wup wup' in German, only with English 'w's
If we were in medieval England, then to get that 'hwowp-hwowp' sound going we would probably need about 20 packs of hardcore mint flavoured chewing gum. For extra freshness ..

Hej, hej "hardcore mint flavoured chewing gum" Are you talking about this?

FF @ Youtube "Sind sie zu stark, bist du zu schwach" = "Do you feel they are to strong in taste, you are to weak"



Strine (Wikipedia)