For the French there are no Olympic Games in Beijing
[tag]Olympic Games[/tag] will take place in Pékin and not in Beijing.
The French have committees for everything. One of them is the commission nationale de toponymie (CNT), which deals with the spelling of "topographical names in foreign countries". After much discussion, the geographers and linguists of the CNT have decided that the rest of the world has it wrong. "Beijing" must be spelled "Pékin".
The committee has also set rules for the translation of topographical names in the arabic and cyrillic alphabets, regardless of what other people think. The ambassador of Belarus knows all about it.
He tried hard and long, but the CNT didn't want to listen and decided that the ambassador didn't even know the name of his own country: he doesn't represent Belarus but Biélorussie.
Tue 18-Dec-07 | Permalink | Share
Comments
Comment from romke
Time: December 19, 2007, 2:54 pm
Really?
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Time: December 19, 2007, 12:48 pm
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