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The Latinizing of Names
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
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You should avoid using letters that do not exist or have different pronunciation. Or accept that people pronounce names offensively wrong. Noone cares enough to know every language and place of origin before reading about a thing.
And most people cannot even read the alphabet (IPA). Foreign scripts even less so.
Sounds like this guy doesn't care about proper pronounciation, though. And Arabic isn't really a language that's completely unrecognizable when you pronounce the alphabetized names with most european accents (not including English), in contrast to Chinese.
Hearing people pronounce Qatar should drive this home. English lacks the glottal "k" sound from Arabic so everything is on the table.
Meh, close enough. I'd be surprised if Europeans pronounce even one letter right when reading "Zhōngguó" (China).