Gordon Barlow

I must say I'm fascinated - in the nicest possible way - by the prospect that the ancestors of the Queensland pygmies may have settled in Australia before the ancestors of the 200-odd clans and tribes of the currently recognised aboriginals. If I were advising the existing pygmies (there are some, I'm told), I would tell them, "Wait till a NO vote awards fifty squillion dollars in reparations to the currently recognised aboriginals, and then sue them for the whole shebang, on the grounds that their ancestors disenfranchised yours and it's you who deserve the fifty squillion!" What a turn-up that would be! The pygmies - the real "First Nation" - could then re-name Uluru to its original name of Ayer's Rock, and so on.

As I said, I'm fascinated by the prospect. I wonder if they have a professional advisor already...

Gordon Barlow

There is quite a long back-story as to why I use my real name on the BE forums, but briefly... For 25 years or so after 1989, I wrote a weekly newspaper column campaigning for freedom of speech, in this British colony where freedom of speech had always been suppressed by the local politicians and their minions. It seemed hypocritical to use a fake name, and the pols would have come after me no matter what name I used.

Previously, political criticism had all been anonymous, usually roneo'd in a shed somewhere and secretly distributed. My publishers were brave, and the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office protected me from all attempts to deport me, and I had just enough local support to keep me here. And once I'd started on the free-speech train, there was no way to get off it. Sigh...

The battle had begun a couple of years before, when I was blamed for defeating a Government proposal to levy a tax on local incomes. As an expat, I was supposed to shut up and sit down. But, well, that's a whole nother story.

Gordon Barlow

What do fellow-shrimps think about all this name-changing? It seems to be getting out of hand. Virtue-signalling, as they say. How can we be sure what the original names of places are. How long had the Uluru people been living there? How can anybody know? The natives living there now claim that their ancestors always lived there. Always? 50,000 years - 2000 generations in the one spot? How long did they take to get from their first step on the Australian land-mass to Uluru? Did they by-pass any other clans or mini-tribes along the way, or fight their way past? Was the place really unoccupied when they got there?

The most recent inhabitants of the area (excluding the whites) were the last to arrive - not necessarily the first. Folk-memory is all very well, but it's not reliable over long periods.

Gordon Barlow

One name-change I find especially irritating, is Fraser Island in Queensland becoming K'gari. What a fake! Tell me: what letter does the apostrophe stand for? None. Why not spell it Kagary? English place-names end in -y, not -i. And the apostrophe just buggers things up entirely. I lived in Toowoomba, not T'woomba, and in Brisbane not Brisb'n. Some clown in the Civil Service has just tried to make Karagy more "native", I guess.

I read the other day that Canberra was to be re-named Kamberri. Why change the C to K? Because it looks more "native", right? Sheesh! As for the change from n to m... no problem: most of us natives have always called it Cambra anyway.

Beoz

Land has been lived on globally by different people for centuries. Australia has one instance that gets rolled out. Britain has many. It's not worth entertaining.

btar

The use of punctuation to indicate the way First Nation names and words are pronounced is widespread in BC if not Canada. A couple of examples from BC's First Nations Guide to Pronunciation a_guide_to_pronunciation_of_bc_first_nations_-_oct_29_2018.pdf (gov.bc.ca) are:

• Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k:tles7et'h' First Nation which is pronounced kai-you-cut / sheh-kluh-szet alternatively kai-you-cut /chek-tluh-set and
• Shxw’?whámél First Nation which is pronounced shwah-ham-ul.

In some areas these appear on road signs but thankfully, the English version is included too.

Gordon Barlow

See? This is the kind of thing that I find seriously irritating. It is simply virtue-signalling, to spell place-names like that, and I don't think the public ought to tolerate it. Next thing, we'll be told that all Arabic place-names have to be written in Arabic script. Well, why not?

Gordon Barlow

And another thing, btar... The two examples you gave there... they can't be right. Neither English nor any other language has colons in the middle of words, or numbers (both in your third line), or question marks either (fourth line). So it wouldn't be correct to put them on any official notice. Ottawa doesn't see the need to put ridiculous punctuation marks in its name, or Saskatchewan. Somebody is having a laugh, right?

btar

Well, the extracts I gave were from the guide which itself is linked from the Gov BC website so I felt reasonably confident that the list was genuine. Having a whizz around looking for another example I found Indigenous Languages of British Columbia - Province of British Columbia (gov.bc.ca) which looks like the previous link but the result is different.
I don't know about use on official notices but have seen reference to using "plain language" so maybe not. However, have a look at the use on road-signs in an article published by CBC - these I have seen on the Sea to Sky highway - a spectacular drive providing there is no smoke. Road signs along the Sea to Sky Highway offer insight into the history of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people | CBC News

Gordon Barlow

It's a bit of a puzzle, and it's hard not to attribute some of the names to some joker taking the mickey! Did any of the aboriginal peoples even have a written language? If not, then it really is just a fraud, to foist words such as Skwxwu7mesh onto the public. How does one even pronounce a syllable like skwxw? Five consonants in a row? Tchah! And how does one pronounce a number? Dear God! The whole word simply can't be pronounced in English - or in French. What do the Quebecois think of all this? As Henry Higgins famously said in that movie: "The French never care what they do, actually, as long as they pronounce it properly."

abner

Oh, please, stop clutching your pearls, Gordon.

There is similar deference to traditional place-names in local, traditional languages, throughout the UK, whether in Wales, Scotland, or (far less so, unfortunately, and for the wrong reasons) in Northern Ireland.

Is this also "virtue-signalling", of the kind you object to?

Dual-language signs, who knew they could be a thing? Acknowledging the locals, and also of interest to the tourists? Why is that bad, whatever unusual punctuation is involved?

Finknottle

In a similar vein, remember Gulf war 1 when British journalists suddenly started pronouncing ME place names with a pseudo Arab pronunciation, ie Dahran suddenly became Daacchran, Baghdad became Baacchdad, etc - and the worst, some time later, a radio 2 DJ pronouncing a well known pantomime as Aarlaaarrchdeeen!

Gordon Barlow

Yes, most times it is virtue-signalling, and woke, and provocative. I have no objection to the Welsh officials adding the local language versions to sign-posts, but if they were ever to put up something like that Canadian example - Skwxwu7mesh - then I would ask the nearest Welshman to pronounce it the way it's spelt, with the "e" the only vowel-sound. I would also ask him when the "7" was added to as an alphabet-letter to the language of his tribe. You are defending it, and your defence is a tribute to your courage and wokeness. But please don't encourage the bloody Scots to add "Och man the noo!" to every place-name in the country- with the exclamation-mark added as an extra "letter" like the Canadian "7".

We have to draw the line somewhere.

abner

Gotta stop you right there.

"Most times" it is virtue-signalling? What are the good exceptions then, in your view?

"Most times" it is "woke"? What does "woke" actually mean to you, and why is it objectionable?

"Most times" it is "provocative"? To whom, and why do they find it so?

It's no surprise that cultural norms, and in particular forms of cultural deference, evolve and/or dissipate over time. The idea that accepted placenames--whether of countries, cities, or even obscure municipalities of any sort--should continue to be cemented in the standards of some colonial-era English-language atlas is absurd, decades after that era has past.

Like you, Gordon, I grew up in an era of "Ceylon", "Peking", "Burma", and the like, but I've learned to move on with the times.

And while new-era transliterations of local-language placenames into modern English phonemes undoubtably present spelling and pronunciation challenges for both sides, well, vive la difference!

Gordon Barlow

What is particularly interesting is that we pick and choose which foreign names we up-date and which we don't. I too have switched from Ceylon to Sri Lanka and from Peking to Beijing - probably influenced by the people I've been with. Myanmar, not so much. I call it My/-an-mah/, although I've read that it's supposed to be M'yan/-mah, which is at least closer to the English "Burmah", I guess. But why did we change Peking to Beijing, when we don't even know what the Chinese people call China? And why is "Chinaman" a taboo word thee days, when we call the country China? "Chinaman" has even been removed from the dictionary of cricket terms, for goodness sake. Nowadays, that kind of ball is called a left-handed back-of-the-hand ball, or something equally complex. Go figure, eh? And as for Paris... why don't we follow the Beijing example and call it Paree? It's a funny old world.