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What's in a Name?
Names of places Often, the names of places in other countries remain the same in our own language or are recognisable beyond doubt (Londen/Londres = London). Nevertheless, we can still be caught out by the translations of place names and other such phenomena in texts written in other languages, or be unsure as to how to render them correctly when writing ourselves in a foreign language. The aforementioned problem is accentuated in a country like Belgium where there are already three official languages at play! Although many outsiders are unaware of the full details of the political structures in Belgium, this is how we talk about you in English:
Importantly, when referring to language groups, such as the fourth smaller but equally important Belgian community not mentioned above, the terms germanophone, francophone and neerlandophone in French are rendered German-speaking, French-speaking and Dutch-speaking in English, NOT germanophone etc. The nouns from this would be German speaker etc. As to the other main cities and areas of Belgium,
my general advice would be that where no anglicised
form exists, you should use the name in the
language of the area concerned, i.e. Mons
and Liège should be known as such
and Leuven remains Leuven and
not Louvain. Four special cases exist
in which we have adopted our own preferred versions.
These are: Antwerpen / Anvers = Antwerp Some other countries also provide us with good
examples of this problem.
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