Desiring to contribute in some way to the enrichment of so tormenting question about the esperantization of states and cities names, the great master Túlio FLores produced a magnificent study on the subject, which should be analyzed by the participants of this forum (Sorry about the poor translation from Esperanto to English, but this was necessary because the debate is in English language (see the original text in Esperanto at Criteria for the Esperantization of the Brazilian names of states and cities, by Túlio Flores (partially applicable in other languages). See some excerpst: …A question which perhaps can be done on the issue is: whether in fact we need Esperantisation of all names of states and cities, even those of small, internationally known towns? My emphatic answer is: Yes! No guided me to the fact that the city is large or small, serious or slight, significant or insignificant. According to me, all the cities are important and quite important, regardless of the fact that in this or that other lives millions or several thousand people. It is important, in this work, to find the rules for the Esperanto version. So we have clearly defined criteria for Esperantisation of all other names necessary for the Brazilian Esperanto speakers, and perhaps also for other countries… …The most general system for Esperantise foreign names is the 15th rule of the Fundamental Grammar. It reads: "The so-called words foreign, i.e., those which most languages have taken from one source, are used in the language Esperanto without change, receiving only the spelling of this language; but at various words of one root it would be better to use without change only the word key and the other form of the latter according to the rules of the language Esperanto. "(from Fundamenta Krestomatio, 18th edition, page 241)… …The Esperanto version of proper names can be based on three systems: the grafic, the fonetic and the semantic… …Use of hyphens at compound names has more than one word… …Of course you can not use those words themselves, because thus they would not appropriate names for the derivation of adjectives and resident names. However, if you write them in a single word, they risk becoming almost unrecognizable: Usage of the fonetic system for Esperantise the names, does not mean that we blindly follow it. Of course you can use the esperantised names in Esperantic text, aimed by foreign Esperantists. If you write a letter by ordinary mail or inform your address in some form (for example to subscribe to a magazine, order books, etc.) you must use the accompanying forms, because the world does not know about the existence of Esperanto names. However, when you write texts in English I recommend that in the first appearance of the name, use the Esperanto name immediately followed by the parenthesized report of a vernacular form... (bolds are mine).

orthohawk:So, in other words, since there are so few of us, compared to Koreans and Indians, it sucks to be us, huh? nice attitude from such an inclusive, tolerant, liberal community.

That's not really fair. This isn't so much an intolerant response as it is a practical one, and one that isn't limited to Iowa. My native language is "la angla", not "la engliŝa", and the one I learned in high school is "la germana" rather than "la dojĉa". Likewise, people here are listed as being from Anglujo or Germanujo rather than "Englando" or "Dojĉlando", not to mention the use of "japano" instead of "nipono" or "nihono". Even the use of "Usono" (which I rather like, for the record) instead of "Unuiĝintaj Ŝtatoj de Ameriko" goes against the principal of using the native term for a people or place...and it does so for the very practical reason of "Usono" being -much- easier to use in the various forms of Esperanto's grammar. "Iovao", regardless of what might be prefered, is in widespread use. Generally speaking, among the (Esperanto-speaking) world population, it is more likely to be recognized and understood than "Ajovo", and so changing that would require a major visible campaign against the incumbant usage. At least, that's what I'm gathering from this thread.

orthohawk:oh, heck, people barely know what "Iowa" means! lol.

Well, you've got me there.

According to Wikipedia, Iowa is named for the Ioway people, whose autonym is "Báxoje" ( pronounced something like "Baĥoĝe" or "Paĥoĝe" ). So really, if we are using a people's own name as the basis for their Esperanto form, then the proper name of Iowa in Esperanto is Baĥoĝeujo...unless of course there are so few of this Siouan people that it sucks to be them. Just sayin'.

forigita.......for now

orthohawk:So, in other words, since there are so few of us, compared to Koreans and Indians, it sucks to be us, huh? nice attitude from such an inclusive, tolerant, liberal community.

It's pragmatic. You can feel free to work towards a change that you would like to see and you can free to raise awareness, but you can't force people to care and you can't force people to come around to your point of view, especially when you're up against more than 100 years of use of a word in a language. It's a question of asking yourself "Do I care enough about this to make it my mission and to spend significant amounts of my free time on this?". Sorry but hundreds of thousands of Esperanto speakers probably aren't willing to change the way they speak because one or two people don't like a word. Pragmatically if hundreds of people care about something, they can change minds and raise awareness much more easily than one or two people who care can do the same thing.

orthohawk:(did Bharato come into being because of Indians complaining or non-Indians?).

Long story short -- Hindujo as the name of a country is confusing due to its use to refer to a subcontinent, and also potentially insulting by implying that only Hindus live there, so you could say that both Indians and non-Indians felt the name was inappropriate.

Long story long -- The old word is Hindio or Hindujo. Indians generally oppose this word, to my knowledge; India is called some variation of "Bharat" in nearly all of its national languages, and of course "Hindujo" has an implication that this is the land of the Hindus, whereas we all know that India is ethnically and religiously diverse. Today, "Hindujo" is still used, mainly to refer to the entire Indian subcontinent (including modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan). Esperanto was created as a language prior to partition, so "Hindujo" (British empire colony of India, encompassing most of the subcontinent) was not strictly wrong at the time, but times have changed and now we have multiple countries there.

Many South Asian Esperantists call India "Hinda Unio". I have a Nepalese friend who calls it that. I am not sure what Indians themselves think of that but it's a term I hear sometimes.

Breto: ......people here are listed as being from Anglujo or Germanujo rather than "Englando" or "Dojĉlando",

(snip)

Well, as for England and Germany, to my knowledge no Englishman or German has objected to the current Esperantization of their countries' names.......but of course, they are important enough internationally to warrant an Esperanto version (just like every other language needs a native version of these countries to speak about them), but even then, "England" seems to be split between the "E" version and the "A" version among languages, with the "A" version seeming to be slightly ahead in the numbers game (and there's even an "I" version (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian), so "naturally" Esperanto went with Anglujo (which by the way was the "original" name of the country way back in Anglo-Saxon times....well, in the native form, Ænglaland) instead of Englujo.

Breto:According to Wikipedia, Iowa is named for the Ioway people, whose autonym is "Báxoje" ( pronounced something like "Baĥoĝe" or "Paĥoĝe" ). So really, if we are using a people's own name as the basis for their Esperanto form, then the proper name of Iowa in Esperanto is Baĥoĝeujo...unless of course there are so few of this Siouan people that it sucks to be them. Just sayin'.

Well, they all live in Oklahoma now, anyway, lol. But for what it's worth, both the people and government (of both Iowa AND the US) have decided to go with the Dakota name rather than the native Baxoje (although, "Baxojia" would be a cool name for the state!).

(to be continued)

Do you know what? This 'problem' is everywhere within other languages and no-one argues about it with half as much vitriol. Okay, Esperanto formulations of names might be more disputable (though the principle of widespread usage and acceptance will crush any alternative, no matter how 'correct' it can be shown to be; Wittgenstein showed this 80 years ago).

Someone comes to Iowa and pronounces it EE-O-WA, saying everyone in their country calls it that. You then correct them and say we call it EYE-O-WA. They say 'oh, okay' and say it your way. Once they get home people there just carry on calling it EE-O-WA. Everyone can see the same spelling, everyone knows what the word denotes, no-one will get confused unless it's the first time they've ever encountered it.

erinja:

orthohawk:So, in other words, since there are so few of us, compared to Koreans and Indians, it sucks to be us, huh? nice attitude from such an inclusive, tolerant, liberal community.

It's pragmatic. You can feel free to work towards a change that you would like to see and you can free to raise awareness, but you can't force people to care and you can't force people to come around to your point of view, especially when you're up against more than 100 years of use of a word in a language. It's a question of asking yourself "Do I care enough about this to make it my mission and to spend significant amounts of my free time on this?". Sorry but hundreds of thousands of Esperanto speakers probably aren't willing to change the way they speak because one or two people don't like a word. Pragmatically if hundreds of people care about something, they can change minds and raise awareness much more easily than one or two people who care can do the same thing.

Worked for Korea and India...........

erinja:

orthohawk:(did Bharato come into being because of Indians complaining or non-Indians?).

Long story short -- Hindujo as the name of a country is confusing due to its use to refer to a subcontinent, and also potentially insulting by implying that only Hindus live there, so you could say that both Indians and non-Indians felt the name was inappropriate..

well by that logic, Iowa shouldn't be called that in either English OR Esperanto since none of those people live here anymore, anyway (yes, I'm being purposely and jokingly snarky, so don't bite my head off).

but, (as thee says) long story short, the Esperanto name of the country was changed because the Esperantists of that country objected to the old name and wished for a new one. Same with Korea.

(to be continued)

Vestitor:Do you know what? This 'problem' is everywhere within other languages and no-one argues about it with half as much vitriol. Okay, Esperanto formulations of names might be more disputable (though the principle of widespread usage and acceptance will crush any alternative, no matter how 'correct' it can be shown to be; Wittgenstein showed this 80 years ago).

Someone comes to Iowa and pronounces it EE-O-WA, saying everyone in their country calls it that. You then correct them and say we call it EYE-O-WA. They say 'oh, okay' and say it your way. Once they get home people there just carry on calling it EE-O-WA. Everyone can see the same spelling, everyone knows what the word denotes, no-one will get confused unless it's the first time they've ever encountered it.

So, in other words, thee is also in the "well, we outnumber you so tough luck" camp. We'll see. I may be 53 but looking at my family history, I have around 40 years to go and a lot can happen in 40 years.

Anyhow, to get back to the supposed recognizability factor, there's a problem with that, q.v. the disparity between spelling and pronunciation in English. When speaking Esperanto (I tried this on the others in my local group) when I say, e.g. Mi estas el Ameso (pronounced ah-MESS-oh) (I'm from Ames (a city north of Des Moines) I could see they were spelling it out in their minds to see what city I was talking about. When I said "Mi estas el Ejmzo" they immediately knew where I was talking about. Same with "Dubukveo" and "Dubjuko" (Dubuque, in case you wondered, lol ) I won't even get started on how a graphically based version of "Des Moines" would sound as opposed to the phonetically based version would do!

My point here is that language is in its essence an oral/aural phenomenon, not a paper and ink one....we tend to forget this fact in the modern age. A language can be a valid, "real" language without ever being written down or even having an orthography. One can't say the reverse, So despite what the subcommittee of the LK decided over 100 years in the past, I think they went the wrong way, at least when talking about place names which were NOT internationally "famed" (e.g. Paris, Chicago, Washington). In those "non-famous" cases, I say go with the phonetic form, because e.g. for a Russian or a Serb or a Bulgarian, or a Greek, "Iovao" is is probably LESS recognizable to them than "Ajovo" is (their versions of the name are Айова, Ajова, Айова, and Αιοβα respectively), so by going by "recognizability" we have basically left vast numbers of potential (and actual) Esperantists out in the cold.

Coming at this from another angle (to touch on what Mr. Vestitor posted), the name of my state is not "EE-oh-wuh".....it's "EYE-oh-wuh" and if you're going to use an assimilated version of the name (which is what we do when we change the "w" to a "v"*), you should follow the pronunciation, not the spelling, if going by the spelling drastically changes the pronunciation into something unrecognizable in speech. This will save the listener from wasting time having to ask "Huh? Where?"
*FWIW, Latvian and Lithuanian both say Ajova/Aiova despite using the Latin alphabet.

bartlett22183:I have just acquired a copy of the latest edition of Wells' English Esperanto English Dictionary," and on page XVI he writes, "The glides (semivowels) j and ŭ are like English y and w (IPA [j w]." Now, I am not a professional phonetician, but to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge, English /w/ is often considered a semivowel, so that it would be legitimate, if uncommon (and even if not strictly Fundamenta), to use ŭ similar to the English /w/. Thus, as one respondent wrote, I would be justified, even if a little nonstandard, in writing my middle name as Oŭen[o]. Nevertheless, I understand erinja's explanation.

In another thread on this forum (which I cannot find now due to the awesome search function of lernu and my own inability), someone argued -based strictly on the Fundamento- that Esperanto ŭ can be compared to a short Polish u and not to an English w, as /w/ doesn't even figure in the Esperanto phoneme inventory. Basically the author asserted that ŭ is [u̯] or [ʊ̯], but not [w].

Talking about eŭ and aŭ, neither English has /aw/ or /ew/ in one syllable, just /aʊ/ and /əʊ/. So no /w/ after a stressed vowel in the same syllable.