Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, I noticed that the city of Kiev had changed its name to Kyiv. At first I thought I was being gaslighted (gaslit?). Then I started digging. Sure enough, the shift seems to have taken place just in the last couple of months. Before March of 2022, I’d never seen Kyiv in my life. Now, good old Kiev has disappeared without a trace.
Well, I’m not adopting the new spelling, for two reasons.
Firstly, it’s not the Ukrainians who are asking us to make the change. It’s fussy journalists and self-important I.R. gofers who are flexing their little power within the Acela Borg. My theory is that this is a desperate ploy for the dictionary industry to justify publishing new editions.
Secondly, the “proper” spelling (if you really want to get technical) is Києва.
Ed West has also noticed this trend, and he’s sick of it, too:
What makes this trend so strange is that in most cases no one else is doing it. Almost every other language in Europe still uses a variation of Peking, while it remains Bombay, Bombai or Bombaj on the continent. Maybe it’s just a peculiar English form of self-flagellation or status signalling; or perhaps it’s yet another aspect of the curse of having the global language, everyone feeling they have the right to be represented by their own spelling in the world’s common tongue. Maybe they feel that way—but it’s also our language.
Hear, hear.
Mr. West’s column reminded me of one by the late Charles Krauthammer. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, so let me just say that I agreed with Krauthammer on very little. But he, too, had a healthy intolerance of Americans who try to pronounce foreign place-names like native speakers:
Neeeee-kahh-RAAAHH-gwahhh? Pronouncing Nicaragua the Spanish way is perhaps a sign of sophistication, but it is also an advertisement of one’s raised consciousness. More annoying still is the ringingly rococo “elll-sahl-vahh-DOHRRRRR,” all liquid l’s and rolling r’s, climaxed in the triumphantly accented last syllable. All this to signify hopes for a liberated El Salvador and, some day, a liberated listener.
(…)
I can take this oblique swipe at the Monroe Doctrine. What I cannot take is the follow-up reference to, say, the drug problem in “Kohl-LOHHHHM-bia.” My habit now is to respond with the observation that the problem is seen very differently in Paa-RRREEEE, is ignored totally in Mohs-KVA, though it has provoked street demonstrations in KUE-bin-hah-ven (DAN-mark).
And that’s only the beginning.
For instance, Christians no longer refer to Muslims as Moslems, much less Musselmen. And of course we no longer refer to Islam as Mohammedanism, but as… well, Islam.
Islam means “submission,” i.e., to the Will of God. Given that only 1 percent of the U.S. population is Muslim, why are the other 99 percent forced to use this preachy name?
And what if Christians decided that everyone else had to refer to our faith as “The Way, the Truth, and the Life”? Would the good people of Saudi Arabia be willing to oblige? Likewise, the Koran (Qur’an) refers to Christians as Nazarenes. When will the Mohammedans expunge this offensive phrase from their holy book?
Only three percent of Latinos refer to themselves as Latinx. Only nine percent of Native Americans were offended by the Washington Commanders’ old moniker, while the majority said they were proud of the name Redskins.
I noticed the same thing when I lived in Australia. In short succession, Aborigines became Aboriginals, and then Aboriginals became Indigenous Australians. The hope, I think, was that the racial animosities associated with that noble people would somehow disappear if they just changed the wording a little bit. If only it were that simple.
Likewise, my friend. Fr. Dwight Longenecker recently asked Twitter why black people are now known as people of color—despite the fact that colored people is regarded as one of the cruelest racial epitaphs. “At once a Twitter mob descended,” writes Father, “and I was branded a racist.” Then,
In the midst of the scuffle one African-American gentleman took the time to answer my question. He explained that “colored people” was a term that defined and categorized a person according to the color of their skin whereas “people of color” acknowledged their humanity first and their distinctive racial characteristics as a secondary trait. I liked that explanation, and I’ve been happy to use the term “person of color” despite its clumsy diction and awkward syntax.
I like that answer, too. The trouble is, it doesn’t stop there. For instance, according to the U. S. Government homeless people are now to be known as people experiencing homelessness, and for the same reason. I don’t see why “pregnant people” (the current, trans-friendly epitaph for expecting mothers) shouldn’t become people experiencing pregnancy.
I just can’t go along with this way of thinking. We can’t erase bigotry by constantly tinkering with the thesaurus. Yes, it’s Orwellian. But it’s also extremely annoying. Up with it I will not put.
Friends, in a recent op-ed for the New Hampshire Union-Leader I expressed that our governor, Chris Sununu, would make an excellent candidate for president. I also referred to Governor Sununu’s “moderate pro-life position.”
This caused consternation among some Catholics, including C. J. Doyle of Catholicism.org and my friend the radio host Mike Church. They pointed out (among other things) that Governor Sununu has described himself as pro-choice and a supporter of Roe v. Wade.
I honestly didn’t know that. When I wrote the op-ed, Governor Sununu had just signed into law a 24-week abortion ban. According to some friends, who know more about state politics than I do, Governor Sununu did so with great reluctance, and only because it was part of the state budget.
I sincerely apologize to any reader I’ve misled, upset, or disappointed. Of course, I would never (knowingly) endorse a pro-choice candidate for any office. Mea culpa.