Talk:Pyongyang

Spelling

This should be moved to 'Pyongyang': the longer spelling - who uses it? - looked like a mistake & I corrected it at North Korea. Ro Thorpe 21:14, 30 October 2009 (UTC) - Ah, the Revised Romanisation...not, it seems, a massive hit... Ro Thorpe 22:56, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

The background is that "yeo" is a phoneme (and letter) different from "yo" (and "ye-o"): "Yeo" is pronounced similar to the "yo" in "Yoghurt", while "yo" is more like in "Yoga". And the main reasoning behind the revised romanization is that you can type it using only letters of the English alphabet. --Daniel Mietchen 01:48, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

The same is true of 'Pyongyang', and it's one letter less. This has all the hallmarks of a misguided reform. I looked in the Wicked Pedia: [1]. Ro Thorpe 02:28, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I have just Googled the matter and the version with the "E" has about 75,000 hits and the traditional spelling has about 3 or 4 *million*. I really think that the article title should be restored to the original. This is the sort of argument that has raged for years here at CZ -- and in every case Larry, as EiC, always came down on the side of the traditional and usual spelling. Since Daniel is not an Editor in Linguistics, or Far Eastern Culture, or Korean History, or whatnot, I don't think he has any particular credentials for making this change. If, in the next day or so, I don't see compelling arguments in favor of this new spelling, I will restore it to the original. Hayford Peirce 03:17, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Do you see any difference between 평양 and 푱양? The first is the Hangeul re-transcript for Pyeongyang, the second Pyongyang. And even if you accept Google counts for plain English queries, they certainly aren't appropriate for checking the transliteration of anything from another script system, since most results contributing to them probably had been written by someone who does not know (or care) about the correct (or official) transcription which, in this case, is given in the table at the WP page linked by Ro. And if that reform was indeed misguided, what rule should prevail for page naming here at CZ? Besides, this article is about the capital of North Korea, where transcription is handled differently than in the South. --Daniel Mietchen 08:14, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

What rule should prevail for page naming here at CZ? Use the normal English name, regardless of any other consideration. A parallel example to 평양 or 푱양 would be (pasting from CZ page): Athens (Modern Greek: Αθήνα, Athina; Ancient Greek: Ἀθῆναι, Athēnai). Ro Thorpe 16:30, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

We've argued this over and over and over and, for all I know, OVER again, long before Daniel got here. I used to use the example of Roma instead of Athina. I *thought* it had been pretty well-settled that we used the most common English word, ie, Rome, not Roma, but if Daniel wants to insist that it should be whatever he says it is, then the hell with it -- life is too short to argue about it another ten times. Hayford Peirce 16:41, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks like it should be pronounced 'Pye-on-Gyang'! Ro Thorpe 20:50, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Say, for what were hopyards meant, Or why was Burton built on Trent? Hayford Peirce 21:18, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

My initial remarks were just meant to provide background to Ro's suggestion of this spelling being a mistake. It is not, though this may have no bearing on page naming here — I agree with your point on Αθήνα or Roma. I am not aware of a CZ policy on place names, nor of an easy mechanism to determine the most common English name for any given place (though Google Maps may perhaps serve that purpose, and it uses indeed Pyongyang). So move around the page as you see fit, but keep in mind that the spelling you find strange is actually an officially correct one. --Daniel Mietchen 22:12, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

This is what CZ:Naming Conventions says about it:

1.) "Another important convention is that the common names for things should be used in preference to the recondite or obscure, although this may have a few exceptions. See below for details."

2.) "Generally, prefer common names. The common names for things--if accurate--should be used in preference to the recondite or obscure (although this may have a few exceptions)."

3.) "Names of geographical entities should be written in full, in title case, and without the definite article ("the"): Pacific Ocean, Red Sea, Nile, North America. Please use the common name in English (Amazon River not "River Amazon" since the river is usually known by the former name). Generally, use the name of a geographical entity usually given by the locals if English-speaking, and most often used in English if the locals are not English-speaking (e.g., Rio Grande). In uncertain cases, some sort of disambiguation should be used in the title."

It seems to me to be impossible to argue that Pyongyang is not the common spelling. It has, in Google, 3,580,000 hits as opposed to a mere 75,500 for Pyeongyang. Maybe someday Pyeongyang will become the standard usage, the way that Beijing has replaced Peking (except for duck on Chinese menus), but I think it will take a while. (You may recall that there was an *extremely* testy exchange between Larry and Howard a while back about "Hezbollah" (Larry and Google) vs. "Hizbullah" or some such (Howard and various scholarly texts); since Larry was the EiC you may imagine who eventually won the battle -- but he may well have lost the war.... Hayford Peirce 22:29, 31 October 2009 (UTC)