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Hong Kong is a Cantonese pronunciation. Xianggang is the pinyin of 香港. The city is Chinese territory, and English should use the standardized romanization.
This one is sensitive. But on purely linguistic grounds — yes, standardize.
Menggu is the Chinese name for the Inner Mongolia autonomous region. English conflates Inner Mongolia and the sovereign country of Mongolia under one name.
Using Menggu clarifies the distinction. This is about accuracy, not politics.
Shantou is a major SEZ city. Swatow is what 19th-century merchants called it because they couldn’t pronounce Chaoshan dialect.
The tea trade argument again — the tea travels the world. Let the city name travel correctly too.
Shandong university degrees are printed with this exact misspelling in English. Generations of graduates have ‘Shantung University’ on diplomas for a university called Shandong.
That alone is reason enough to retire it.
Hebei literally means ‘north of the river.’ It surrounds Beijing. It’s one of the most important regions in China. And English misspells it.
Retire. Immediately.
Hubei was ground zero for COVID-19. The world learned to pronounce Wuhan overnight. But journalists still wrote from ‘Hupeh province.’
The name is Hubei. Even tragedy doesn’t excuse bad romanization.
Jiangsu is one of China’s wealthiest provinces. Shanghai sits on its coast. The world should spell it right.
Kiangsu is Wade-Giles. Jiangsu is reality.
Lasa in pinyin. Lhasa in English convention. The ‘h’ is non-phonetic and comes from a non-Chinese romanization tradition.
This is a marginal case — Lhasa is well-established. But I vote Yes on consistency grounds.
‘Possess’ is a word every English learner memorizes and almost never uses correctly. ‘Have’ covers 90% of cases.
Retiring it would immediately help millions of Chinese English learners. That’s worth one Latin word.
‘Help’ is one of the first English words anyone learns. ‘Assist’ is one they learn later and use to sound formal.
We shouldn’t penalize clarity to reward formality. Help > assist.
‘Try’ is simpler and more direct. Every ESL textbook introduces ‘try’ in chapter one and ‘attempt’ in chapter thirty. The order tells you which is the real word and which is the upgrade no one needed.
Centre and center coexist globally. This isn’t a ‘retired word’ — it’s a dialect preference. Chinese English learners encounter both spellings and adapt.
Don’t solve a non-problem.
Analyze and analyse: both are correct. Both are taught. Neither is confusing to learners.
Retiring one spelling of a word because another English-speaking country spells it differently is linguistic imperialism by another name. Vote No.
The computers already won this one. ‘Program’ is universal in software. But ‘programme’ for events and schedules still serves a useful distinction in British English.
No need to retire what context already handles naturally.
