Belarus or White Russia? - Which term do you use?

[Rogue Valley]

On a serious note, the OP has a point.

No, he doesn't have a point. No one in Belarus calls their country "White Russia".

Just like no one in America refers to the country as "the colonies" as the British once labeled them.

 

[calamity]

No, he doesn't have a point. No one in Belarus calls their country "White Russia".

Just like no one in America refers to the country as "the colonies" as the British once labeled them.

My reference says otherwise.

The name Rus is often conflated with its Latin forms Russia and Ruthenia, thus Belarus is often referred to as White Russia or White Ruthenia. The name first appeared in German and Latin medieval literature; the chronicles of Jan of Czarnków mention the imprisonment of Lithuanian grand duke Jogaila and his mother at "Albae Russiae, Poloczk dicto" in 1381.[32] In some languages the country is generally referred to by a literal translation of "White Russia", including Afrikaans and Dutch (both Wit-Rusland), and German (Weißrussland)
Belarus - Wikipedia

 

[Tangmo]

Reminds me of Barcelona and Valencia.

B and V are closely related.
And the Spanish have a sound in between.

Indeed and the Chinese family name Cai is certainly never pronounced as a C. I mean ha, why would they do that eh. While it can sound like a T it certainly isn't that either. It's more of an aspirated H that also sounds very wet. Hence it's easy to take it for a T when it's not. We're looking at the transliteration anyway, as we'd know.

I like throwing idioms at 'em. So when I sigh and say, "You're just too precious," the Chinese ego swells cause they get very pleased when I am of course being critical. Idioms of any language almost always need to be explained anyway.

When I'm tired of listening to a Chinaman babble and drivel China's 1001 Rules -- each of which begins with don't -- I tell him his mother's calling him then watch him reach for his phone.

Years ago I was cussing at a Chinese "friend" who talked me into buying a junk Huawei mobile phone I quickly got to hate, to include the bogus price, so I threw in that he made me buy the most expensive phone in the world besides. With his long and sad straight face he said to me factually, "It's not the most expensive phone in the world," so I had to explain exaggeration to him and the how and why of exaggeration.

So as we see from early on, the culture of a language requires going beyond the words themselves. The problem of the Chinese is that they're literal about everything. I mean everything. Indeed, almost all their sayings and parables are about animals, kill the chicken to scare the monkey being one of my favorites ha. Deng Xiao Peng thought he was showing genius when the Party was attacking him for allowing some capitalism and he said, "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." So now you get some idea of Chinese capitalism that hasn't anything on earth to do with capitalism except perhaps the eternal quest for the better mousetrap. That would be it however.

 

[Tangmo]

In keeping with the topic of this thread I might say: "Oh no! I am not German! I am deutsch!" :mrgreen:

I am a Schwarzwälder, in fact.

Well that's good or so I'd suppose.

At least you're not a Haminegger like the actor-politician body builder from Austria right next door over there.

It's those teutonic body builders one has to be on the alert for or so it could seem. I trust you don't mind I look a liberty with a spelling in this post to make a kind of a reference to some others.

 

[Rumpel]

Deng Xiao Peng thought he was showing genius when the Party was attacking him for allowing some capitalism and he said, "It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice." So now you get some idea of Chinese capitalism that hasn't anything on earth to do with capitalism except perhaps the eternal quest for the better mousetrap. That would be it however.

eaceeaceeace

 

[Rumpel]

Well that's good or so I'd suppose.

Schwarzwald is "Black Forest" in English.
Well known for the Black Forest Cake = Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte

 

[Rumpel]

No one in Belarus calls their country "White Russia".

We here do not say "Black Forest" to our Schwarzwald.
But we do not insist that the whole world should be forced to say Schwarzwald instead of Black Forest.

 

[swing_voter]

We had a lot of "White Russians" immigrate to America after the Russian revolution. But I don't think they were from Belarus, they were pro-Czar.

 

[Fledermaus]

no , your barbaric Asiatic Muscovy soon will be part of China again

There is no "Asiatic Muscovy".

Moscow is considered European.

And Muscovy ceased to exist hundreds of years ago.

 

[Fledermaus]

Anyone who thinks that Belarus must be called Belarus, because that is its "proper" name, must also say Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó instead of China, for that is China's "proper" name.

What does the UN call it?

 

[Fledermaus]

Who says A, must also say B.

Who says Belarus, must also say España instead of Spain.

That's how it is.

Incorrect.

 

[Litwin]

There is no "Asiatic Muscovy".

Moscow is considered European.

And Muscovy ceased to exist hundreds of years ago.

never was not is and never will be. Muscovy is our achy foe , barbaric ulus Kobas order "Scorched earth" the biggest unpunished Marxist - Muscovite crime against humanity. geno

 

[Litwin]

We had a lot of "White Russians" immigrate to America after the Russian revolution. But I don't think they were from Belarus, they were pro-Czar.

+1, ....

 

[Aunt Antifa]

Belarus or White Russia?



Belarus or "White Russia"? How the country's name is dividing Europe | Euronews

If you call a Belarusian a “russian” you are inviting a violent response. Ive worked with Belarusian companies. There is no controversy where their citizens are concerned.

 

[Tangmo]

China is called China in international organizations. Beijing rather insists on it since its view is that there is only one China.

As far as posting packages and stuff to China from USA or from any English speaking country, you write China and the postal code and it gets there.

In France however China is Chine which is not a good way to place China's name into an address. China Post, which is the name of the USPS equivalent in China, has reading routers in China to read addresses in foreign languages as China is written in foreign languages. However, writing "China" in English in the address box avoids slowdowns in processing by China Post. "China" is the operative word at China Post. Vehicles of China Post have China Post on 'em in English. while the buildings have the name in each language, Chinese & English, no other languages.

I do not have international deliveries by China Post made to my residence building because the China street address and building address system is chaos. One time my building number was 12743 when the building next to it was 385. The building on the other side of mine was 2000 or something like it as I don't recall the exact digits at this point. China Post has to sort that out because China doesn't have Maple Street 1,3,5,7 and so on with the even numbers being on the other side of Maple Street.

In China a building goes up and it gets the next number from the municipality whatever the number is. A residence building often has stickers on a side wall that display the numbers of the buildings on the street and those numbers are mostly all over the place and seldom have any order or sequence to 'em. Postal delivery workers in uniform operate a small 3 wheel vehicle that has all the bags in it and the worker drops off a bunch of mail at the building office which somehow works out for the Chinese but leaves the foreign devil such as myself poking around a lot behind the counter. One time I found a three inch pile of my mail in the corner of somebody's desk organizer. To hell with that. So I always have international packages and mail sent to the office where the mail does reach everyone cause it's business mail.

Using internet in China to access official documents abroad is frustrating to try. This applies to US Government documents to include doing taxes online from China and certifying government annuity, social security, medical plan and the like. CCP censors block many US Government websites to include IRS & Treasury in general, military websites government and private media and membership organizations etc. This is true using VPN in China as well because the while the Party censors can resist some weaker vpn companies, there are other vpn companies that outfox the Party censors consistently.

Still, censors have their final ace in the hole of crashing your home computer and wiping out all your disks. That the Party censors crash your home computer out of frustration because everything else has failed to stop you is of little comfort. After all, having your home computer crashed by Party censors once a week for several months on end is no fun, as some of us have experienced because we are viewed by censors and the Party as the most egregious violators of their prohibitions and forbidden activities. Censors can read our screens continuously if that's what they choose to do, or, more typically, monitor our screens by programmed computers that attack our privately paid security systems. Party censors go for your security system first and foremost, each time, every time, and they're damn good at it, no matter the system.

 

[Fledermaus]

never was not is and never will be. Muscovy is our achy foe , barbaric ulus Kobas order "Scorched earth" the biggest unpunished Marxist - Muscovite crime against humanity. geno

There is no "Muscovy".

That is a fact.

Muscovy as a city/state ceased to exist hundreds of years ago.

The only Ulu is Mongolia.

Only your RUSSIA hatred drives you to keep making statements like yours above.

 

[calamity]

We had a lot of "White Russians" immigrate to America after the Russian revolution. But I don't think they were from Belarus, they were pro-Czar.

That has always been my understanding. This Belarus thing is new, but the facts do seem to support the idea that in parts of Europe, especially Germanic Europe, Belarus is considered White Russia.

 

[Fledermaus]

never was not is and never will be. Muscovy is our achy foe , barbaric ulus Kobas order "Scorched earth" the biggest unpunished Marxist - Muscovite crime against humanity. geno

Linking to another ignorant post does not change the facts.

 

[pinqy]

You are trying to use Etymology to justify using the term "White Russia" today. That bit of etymology hearkens way back to Kievan Rus times.

The country has been referred to in Russia as «Белору́ссия» Belorussia since Czarist times. White Russia is «Белая Русь»

One problem here is that Russia has never been referred to as “Руссия,» but “Росия» or modern Россия. So that in English, we end up translating both “-руссия» and “Россия” as “Russia” is misleading.

And add on that other languages don’t/can’t distinguish between Русь, русскый, and российский makes things even trickier.

At independence in 1991 the country chose «Рэспубліка Беларусь» - Republic of Belarus in the native language, oftentimes shortened to «Беларусь» Belarus.

I have never heard Belorus/Byelorus/Byelorussia referred to in English as White Russia. And I’ve never heard of Montenegro (Црна Гора) referred to as Black Mountain. Sometimes we translate or change, sometimes we don’t and that’s true for most languages.

 

[Rumpel]

If you call a Belarusian a “russian” you are inviting a violent response. Ive worked with Belarusian companies. There is no controversy where their citizens are concerned.

You do not understand a thing about what I am talking.
No use explaining anything to you.

You may have worked wih 100.000 such companies and still not understand my point.

 

[Rumpel]

This Belarus thing is new, but the facts do seem to support the idea that in parts of Europe, especially Germanic Europe, Belarus is considered White Russia.

Correct! The German name for that country is "Weißrussland", which translates literally as "White Russia".
Maybe the English language did not bother to have a special English name for that country, but just took over the name which that county used.

My point is that no language is obliged to take over the name that any country calls itself.

 

[Rumpel]

We had a lot of "White Russians" immigrate to America after the Russian revolution. But I don't think they were from Belarus, they were pro-Czar.

In this case "White Russian" was a political concept, not a geographical concept.

 

[Aunt Antifa]

You do not understand a thing about what I am talking.
No use explaining anything to you.

You may have worked wih 100.000 such companies and still not understand my point.

You posted a dip**** article that speaks to propaganda.

 

[Rumpel]

You posted a dip**** article that speaks to propaganda.

Propaganda is the last thing that I have in mind.

Rumpel is my name.
Linguistics is my game.

 

[Aunt Antifa]

Propaganda is the last thing that I have in mind.

Rumpel is my name.
Linguistics is my game.

Lack of knowledge vis a vis Belarus is why this thread is lame.