Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Friday, 22 April 2016

For no reason other than obedience

we now refer to Beijing, Mumbai, Varanasi, Kolkata...
(instead of Peking, Bombay, Benares and Calcutta)
and even Tbilisi for Tiflis*
but nobody has told us to say København for Copenhagen
or Praha for Prague -
and the Thais are too polite to ask us to stop calling
Krung Thep Bangkok.
Not even Dubliners refer to their city as Ath Cliath.

*Final i in Georgian, as in Romanian (and as y in Hungarian) is not pronounced.

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