Mumbai is formerly "Bombay" India.

[Lex]

Just an FYI if you are watching the attack that took place there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai

[Parche]

1. Bombay

I will never call it mumbai, that is stupid

[ContinentalOp]

2. LOL, do you still call Beijing "Peking" too? -nt-

[question everything]

4. And Zimbabwe Rhodesia? (nt)

[ContinentalOp]

9. That's at least an actual name change though.

This is just a slightly different transliteration. Really just a slight change in pronunciation.

[Parche]

13. yes i do actually

:hi:

[ContinentalOp]

16. Well, alright then! -nt-

[bean fidhleir]

24. Peking was only pronounces "pee-king" by ignorant westerners

who didn't realize that in that transliteration scheme, developed as usual by a missionary, but in this case one who was apparently more stupid than most, several characters were given values that make no sense in any language that uses the Latin alphabet. Peking, in that missionary's warped mind, is the perfect way to write a word that's pronounced (approximately) Bay-jeen. And everyone, in his mind, would see that Tsing Tao is naturally pronounced Ching Dow, Nanking Nanjeen, Szechuan zee-chwan and so forth.

[MarkInCA]

29. Tsing Tao ...I love that beer. n/t

[dysfunctional press]

31. people who can't handle grammar themselves shouldn't go around calling others ignorant...

it's really bad form, and only makes you look that much more stupid.

"Peking was only pronounces "pee-king" by ignorant westerners"...

"pronounces"??? :shrug:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[lindbergh]

32. Wouldn't that be an issue of spelling rather than grammar?

:silly:

[dysfunctional press]

40. pronounces is the wrong tense of the word

the word is spelled correctly, but it isn't grammatically correct.

[DireStrike]

37. That's a typo, not grammar

Look where S and D are on your keyboard.

[dysfunctional press]

42. i can only assume that people know what they are typing-

and they have plenty of time to edit typos, so the poster was obviously satisfied with the word that was used.

:shrug:

[DireStrike]

43. Seriously?

That's a curious stance to take on the internet.

I think you'll find a lot more "grammar" mistakes as you continue to read. Maybe next time you see one you'll question your assumption? That'll be good enough for me.

[dysfunctional press]

54. the grammar mistake by itself isn't any big deal- as you point out, they're already all too common

but when it's part of a post that accuses others of being ignorant...the irony is just too delicious to ignore.

[bean fidhleir]

55. I was following the ancient Society of Pedants rule

which is that any post critical of the language errors of others must have a language error of its own intentionally inserted.

[Dorian Gray]

35. It sounds more like Peking

in Cantonese, which is what Hong Kongers (part of the British empire) speak.

That could be part of the transliteration. Mandarin has a completely different sound, much closer to Beijing to our ears.

[bean fidhleir]

57. That's interesting. I wonder whether that's what he was doing -

transliterating Cantonese thinking he was handling the general case.

[Lex]

3. Seems like throwing off its old English colony name isn't

such a bad thing.

[JI7]

5. but in this case bombay sounds better than mumbai

[Captain Hilts]

6. They sound a lot alike to me. No big deal. nt

[Lex]

7. to whom?

[ContinentalOp]

8. But that's not what they did at all. It was always called Mumbai.

It's just a different Anglicization. Just like the Peking->Beijing switch.

[Lex]

10. Well, not exactly.

"So Mumbai it was until the 1600s when Spanish invaders appropriated the natural harbour and rechristened it Bom Bahia which literally means Good Bay. Then in 1661, Catherine de Braganza of Portugal married Charles I of England; the island was actually part of the Portuguese Princess’ dowry to her husband. Charles, however, was evidently unimpressed with his gift and leased it out to the British East India Company which anglicized Bom Bahia to Bombay.

But history must bow to politics. In 1997, exactly fifty years after the British left India, the local government launched a patriotic campaign to delete colonial rule from public memory --- and formally reverted to the city’s original name, Mumbai."

http://www.mumbainet.com/template1.php?CID=40

[ContinentalOp]

15. I guess it makes sense if you look at it that way. I was just pointing out that to locals...

the name never really changed. It's just an issue of what we call them in the West.

[lindbergh]

30. So what's Rangoon's excuse?

:D :silly:

[varun]

36. Rangoon is now Yangon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yangon
Yangon ( MLCTS: rankun mrui., pronounced ; also known as Rangoon) is the largest city and a former capital of Burma.

Calcutta is now Kolkata
Madras is now Chennai
Bangalore is Bengaluru

[Warpy]

12. It's Constantinople! Constantinople, I say!

See how silly you sound?

Honestly, call people what they tell you they want to be called. The citizens there say the British were mushmouthed and their city was always Mumbai.

I say they oughta know.

[htuttle]

27. "That's nobody's business but the Turks"

[Zhade]

44. How quaintly xenophobic of you.

Your arrogance is almost cute.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

47. Let me play devil's advocate a little.

Has any Japanese ever demanded that we call their country "Nippon?" Or a German urged you to say "Deutschland?" Are you annoyed when somebody who's speaking Spanish says "Nueva" York? Conversely, when I'm writing in English, I call my country "BraZil," because that's how it's spelled in English.

[Posteritatis]

46. Is there a reason for that, or are you just being contrarian? (nt)

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

50. Oddly, the Firefox spell checker agrees with you.

Although it's a bit more civil.

[malaise]

53. We've been calling it Mumbai for years

perhaps because we play a lot of cricket there. It's their city - they can call it what they want.

[DS1]

11. I agree with Bush, and blame the Persians for this bombing

[rosesaylavee]

14. Subtle.

I like it.

[ContinentalOp]

17. Where did you get that idea? I'm pretty sure the perpetrators are Babylonian. -nt-

[WinkyDink]

64. Neo-Sumerians.

[chaplainM]

18. Pop songs to be rewritten

"Come Fly with Me"

"If you can use some exotic booze
There's a bar in far Mumbai"


"Secret Agent"

"Cruisin' on the Riviera one day
Bleedin' in a Mumbai alley next day"


"Sympathy for the Devil"

"I lay traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Mumbai."

[Lex]

19. and on TV, "Dr. Mumbai"

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

49. And let's not forget "Down Under"

"Lying in a den in Mumbai
Slack-jawed, not much to say"

[Odin2005]

20. I don't get the insistance of calling the city Mumbai.

IIRC "Mumbai" is just "Bombay" in the pronunciation system (phonology) of the local language. It's like insisting we say "Roma" and "Moscova" and "Praha" for Rome and Moscow and Prague just because that's the native name of the city.

[ContinentalOp]

21. Paree, Meheeko, etc. -nt-

[XOKCowboy]

23. Florence will always be Firenze after I went there...

My friend and I had a conversation about why we call it Florence when it's name is Firenze. Same with Venezia, Milano and as you pointed out Roma. I have no problem using the natives pronunciation if that's what they wish.

[PassingFair]

26. In India, they pronounce it both ways...

so no one should get their knickers in a twist over this...

[malaise]

56. No citizen of a cricket playing country calls it anything

but Mumbai

[muriel_volestrangler]

58. Though no-one has yet re-named 'Bollywood' as 'Mollywood'

as far as I know. :D

[PassingFair]

60. You can HEAR the native Indians on TV calling it Bombay.

The older generation still frequently use the name Bombay.

[Lex]

25. Not exactly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4540214&mesg_id=4540313

[Evoman]

34. I got into a big argument with my dad about this.

He is from chile and he was ranting about how English people call Chile chill-ee instead of Chee-leh and Argentina Arg-ehn-tee-na instead of Argh-ehn-tee-na (argh is like the J in juan). He basically just dismissed me.


I swear not five minutes later he referred to England as Ingla-terra (it's how you say England is Spanish). Man, did I have fun with that.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

48. Man, I think ALL older native Spanish speakers are like that.

My dad too. There wasn't a day he wasn't ranting about how stupid other languages are. Mostly Portuguese and English. Sometimes French.

[Odin2005]

63. LOL, IMO the only stupid thing about Frech is the outdated spelling system.

French spelling has the same problem English spelling has, it hasn't changed to fit changes in pronounciation. French spelling also retains grammatical word-endings lost is spoken French.

[Odin2005]

62. LOL, it's not our fault the "Great Vowel Shift" happened!

It is that Great Vowel Shift that is the reason our perceptions of how vowel letters should be pronounced are different from folks in Continental Europe. 600 years ago "name" was pronounced like "Nahm-uh" and "meet" sounded like "mate" (and "mate" was pronounced "mah-tuh"). It was that vowel shift, more then anything else, that caused English spelling to be so screwed up, we still spell words pretty much how they were pronounced in London when the printing press was invented.

Interestingly, English short vowels haven't changed in over a 1000 years until shifts in their pronoinciated started in the Great Lakes region, California, and the South.

As for "Inglaterra," I've always found in interesting how countries and ethnic groups are named in different languages. The Romance languages call the Germany "Allemania," after a promenent Germanic tribe. Germanic languages came to call Latin and Celtic peoples "Wealash," meaning "stranger," fromch which we get "Welsh" and "Vlach". The Poles took "Vlach" and turned it into their label for Italians, "Wlocky."

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. It's like the 9-11 attack on New Amsterdam all over again.

[lib2DaBone]

28. "Eello.. my name is Paul... 'ow can I elp you"?

Ya Paul.. my HP computer is down and the VISTA program is realy a piece of crap. What can we do?

"I am so glad to Elp you... if you will gve me all the number from the box you computer came in.. I will forward your call to anyone who cares.. 'Ello... Ello?"

[Deja Q]

33. I wonder if they knew about these attacks when they renamed it...

just to spare all the morbid "Bombay? No, Bombed!" jokes.

:(

[DireStrike]

38. I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail.

Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?

[Zhade]

45. "I'm sorry, I can't find Prussia, Siam or autogyro in the manual."

NT!

[Robb]

39. But what of Gonzo??

Fozzie: Hey, why don't you join us?
Gonzo: Where are you going?
Fozzie: We're following our dream!
Gonzo: Really? I have a dream, too!
Fozzie: Oh?
Gonzo: But you'll think it's stupid.
Fozzie: No we won't, tell us, tell us!
Gonzo: Well, I want to go to Bombay, India and become a movie star.
Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star! You go where we're going: Hollywood.
Gonzo: Sure, if you want to do it the *easy* way.
Fozzie: We've picked up a weirdo...

[Obamarama]

41. Istanbul was Constantinople

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

51. Why did Constantinople get the works?

:P

Thanks for the earworm. I love the version by They Might Be Giants.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo0X77OBJUg&feature=related

[hlthe2b]

52. Bombay, Madras and Calcutta are considered Imperial names

left over from the British and Indians do find it to be a faux paus when Westerners continue to use them.

Bombay was changed to Mumbai and Madras to Chennai in 1996 and Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001... Bangalore is set to change in the future, but I don't think it is official yet.

Here's an recent article on all the name changes...http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-10-25-bangalore_x.htm

[Deja Q]

59. St Petersburg used to be called Leningrad...

:)

[cherokeeprogressive]

61. Calling Dr. Mumbai! Calling Dr. Mumbai!

It just doesn't sound right, LOL.

[Poiuyt]

65. I'm kind of embarrassed that it was renamed in 1996 and I didn't know about it

I'm guessing that if DU had been around back then, I would have heard about the name change.