Belissarius said:
No this was not directed at you which is why I never used "your nation" or the like in any responce to your posts. And which is why I started a new paragraph with a transitional sentence.
Your evidence was selective at best. For provinces you selected romantic languages that are all similar to show that "see why would anyone have a problem the all look the same" well the word provinces in english is yet another french import into the english language if I recall my studies correctly. So it would look like the romanic language words now wouldnt it. i simply didnt respond because I felt you knew that it was a deliberatly skewed bit of evidence not complete as your other list of languages and words for United States, as it likely wouldnt have been as confivincing if a whole lot of languagues didnt have similar looking words.
Of the seventeen languages I listed, four are Romance Languages. Of the four I used in my most recent example, one was German, which is, of course, a Germanic language. I picked those four based on their common usage, not because they are the only such languages to use some variation on Province, as you would have easily found if you'd bothered to do even some cursory research on the issue before wieghing in with your unsubstantiated hypotheses.
If you want some more, how about provincií (Czech), Prowincji (Polish), provincií (Slovakian), provincies (Dutch), provinser (Norwegian), and provinssit (Finnish)? If you don't mind another Romance language, there's also Províncias (Portuguese).
Now will you drop this silly pretense that non-Enlish speakers won't know the difference between States and Provinces, when virtually every European language has a distinction between the two terms, both of which are so close to the english spellings as to make discerning their meanings trivial?
I also find that you seem to have no sympathy for people who use english as a second,third or fourth language. I can read some french but I still get confussed but what native french speakers would think is obvious and the least likey to be confussing. Things get screwed up when you read in one language and think in another it painfully easy to make mistakes and get confussed. I also dont know all the French names for all the nations of the world though the entire time period of the game nor the German names for nations which I know a few and I know non of the names for nations in other languages. So I am able to put myself in someone elses shoes and see that perhaps there could be a confussion especially since Johan said there was. Again I ask WHY would he care about the name unless it did cause confussion? Perhaps he has members of paradox's staff that had the problem? I think you are dismissing the issue simple because you dont see any possablity of confusion because you yourself are not confussed.
And you are dismissing the unlikeliness of confusion based on one persons say so rather than the overwhelming evidence that "United States" is one of the least confusable names possible. I have plenty of sympathy for people whose first language is not English. But the fact is that the only person in this thread who has provided any evidence of how non-English speakers term the United States of America is me. All you have running with your argument is an unelabourated statement by one person whose first language is not English. But then again, there's Jolt and VictorVVV, also continental Europeans who back up what I've been saying about European versions of "United States".
Seriously, the only way you could compare potential confusion over the meaning of "United States" to confusion you have over French is if the French words that confuse you are ones like "Français", or "Québécois".
Also perhaps they are issues mentioned like colonies can become states like in victoria and united states becomes a more confusing statement in that context. It is very easy to dismiss another's concern when you dont share the same problem. I also dont see a problem with useing a common and perfectly acceptable form of refering to a nation if it eliminated the possiblity of confussion for a portion of the players who dont have a total command of english that i or other primary speakers do. Its not like he's doing anything that is insulting or innaccurate. We are talking stricly subjective opinion on what people like better. I personally feel that a person's desire for a name to be one way is trumped by anothers concern for confusion.
I too am concerned about confusion. Which is why it should be "United States", so that 80% of the Population of the EU isn't confused by an acronym which does not translate into their name for the United States.
