----- Message d'origine ----- De: "Doug Ewell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Patrick Andries <Patrick dot Andries at xcential dot com> wrote: > > > Because according to the articles this was the original English > > spelling before the occupying Japanese authorities changed the initial > > C by a K so that Korea would follow Japan in alphabetical order. > > This seems very misguided, if true. According to the Berliner Zeitung this is what happened in the 1908 Olympic Games ÂDie Japaner, so behauptet Historiker Chung, wollten 1908 bei der Londoner Olympiade unbedingt vor Korea einmarschieren. In ihrem Ãbereifer Ãbersahen sie aber eine Kleinigkeit. Das Einmarschritual des IOC folgt nicht dem englischen, sondern dem franzÃsischen Alphabet. Und dort wird Korea mit C geschrieben But to no avail, since the countries apparently parade in the French alphabetical order. >Alphabetical primacy can hardly be > considered an effective measure of the relative power or importance of a > nation. And this is why the host nation has a privileged order of entry (don't remember if it is first or last). Order has a certain meaning for some people. > Furthermore, Japan in the pre-WWII era was still relatively isolated and > anti-Western. Did it really matter to the Imperial authorities how > things were spelled in English (while simultaneously ignoring the French > spellings)? I do not know if such reasoning (although true) prove wrong what the Berliner Zeitung reports. I have been told people (and countries) sometimes do irrational things. > Alternative English spellings of non-Latin-alphabet place names were > common in the pre-WWII era. In addition to "Corea," you will also find > "Tokio" and "Bagdad" in American literature of the day. How about Irak ? (In French today we still write CorÃe, Badgad and Irak. Anyone writing KorÃe, Baghdad or Iraq would only appear to be ignorant and transcribing directly from American newsfeeds or irreversibly pedant.)
