Talk:Yangon

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Myanmar (Burma) To-do: edit purge Tagging articles.

[edit] Rangoon or Yangon?

Should this be listed as Rangoon or Yangon? -- Zoe

Good question. Looks like Google likes "Yangon, Myanmar" more than "Rangoon, Myanmar". However, searching for each term without "Myanmar" yields more or less a tie (these terms by themselves could be part of the names of any number of things though). --maveric149

"Rangoon, Burma" would probably be more likely than "Rangoon, Myanmar". Want me to create a Yangon page and redirect to Rangoon, or redirect Rangoon to Yangon? -- Zoe

Hum. The Burmese would have to make things difficult by renaming their country... Did they also rename their capital as well? Although official names are oftentimes secondary in importance to the most widely used (and therefore most likely to be searched for and linked) names when naming articles, it is an important thing to consider -- especially when a country has made a deliberate decision to rename their nation. --maveric149

The junta uses "Yangon" and "Myanmar." Nobody else much seems to--Burmese emigres still say Burma and Rangoon, as does the political opposition. I'd do "Rangoon, Burma" and "Yangon, Myanmar" and redirect Yangon to Rangoon. Vicki Rosenzweig

Then the question is, what do we do with the Myanmar article.... These quandaries are vexing because there are no easy answers. I would also err toward widest usage in this case (using the older names for both), but I feel a bit uneasy about not using the "Myanmar" and "Yangon" names because of the official name change and their acceptance by the United Nations. Using these names may also be viewed by outsiders as us taking a political stance on the validity of the current government (although the US doesn't recognize this government -- do other English speaking countries also not recognize the current government?). If we do this, then we might also have to revisit the Zaire vs. Democratic Republic of the Congo issue again (which is even a greater borderline case)... --maveric149

This seems like a Calcutta/Kolkata case. The concensus there was to avoid POV conflicts by using the version used by local authorities; see Talk:Kolkata. I sugjest we do the same here, i.e. move this to Yangon. - Efghij 04:04, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

In both cases it would make more sense to use the generally accepted English name (i.e. Calcutta and Rangoon). We don't call Germany 'Deutschland' or Moscow 'Moskva', do we? In the Burmese case you have the added factor that the regime which undertook the renaming is illegitimate, and the original names (Rangoon and Burma) are used by the opposition. Still, as usual, politically-inspired (and supposedly 'accurate') renamings win out over sensible considerations of common use. Sikandarji 08:43, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

What is the writing of Yangôn and Mandalay in Burmese?

In Unicode (try the SOASMyanmar font) Yangon is ရန္ကုန္, or spelt in Burmese letters 'ya-gauk, na-that, ka-kyi, ta-chaung-ngin, na-that'. Not all Unicode fonts will cope with the spelling of Mandalay, which is မေလး (again, in SOASMyanmar font). The Burmese spelling is 'ma, na + ta-wun-bu hna-loun-sint, thawe-hto, la, wissa hna-lone pauk'.

I don't think it should be listed as Yangon, or Myanmar. The renaming is not recognised by most countries, and is a symbol of the military dictatorship. Many local people still refer to it as Rangoon, and use this name as a symbol of non violent resistance to the military government. I need not mention of course, that the military government changed the name in the ninties. As Wikipedia is meant to be a symbol of freedom of speech and democracy, we should not recognise this name and instead have it as "Rangoon" and "Burma". Segafreak2 22:38, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

I've NO idea who came up with the circumflex accent in 'Yangôn' - it simply shouldn't be there. EaungHawi 12 July 2005

I agree, and I've formally requested that the page be moved to Yangon. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 14:05, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Requested move: the article Yangôn should be moved to Yangon. Please indicate whether you support or oppose the move and sign your name with ~~~~.

• Support since I'm the one making the request. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 21:12, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Support, sure. I don't see the circumflex appearing anywhere other than this article, so I assume EaungHawi is right. If anyone disagrees, they'll say so... GTBacchus 21:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Support. If it dosen't appear anywhere else... Does the UoM regime uses it? Is it used in linguistics, less specialized writings, etc.? If the answer to all of these is no, then the choice is obvious: Yangôn and Rangoon should redirect to it. El_C 23:25, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

I can say pretty definitely that it isn't used in linguistics. The circumflex is occasionally used in transcription of Burmese to indicate the high-falling tone, but both syllables of this word have low tone. I don't know how to Google for "Yangôn" in a way that will exclude all instances of "Yangon". --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 00:02, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Wake up! Google isn't the only search engine. [1] [2] Gene Nygaard 23:18, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

• No vote. My own preference would be Rangoon, which is far more widely recognised in English and has been used for longer. The Guardian uses Rangoon almost exclusively, as does the BBC, most US government websites, and the UK Foreign Office. We should not ape the US press's affectations. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 21:40, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
• Support, everywhere I've seen it, including my passport stamp shows it as Yangon Dwstein 00:09, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
• Support. --*drew 00:55, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

---

Looks like we have reached consensus here. I have, therefore, moved Yangôn (now redirects) into Yangon. El_C 01:43, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Why the hast? Could it not have waited for 5 days as the WP:RM guidelines suggest? If someone now moves it back they can argue that the WP:RM guidelines were not met and/or request another vote. Seems to me that it would have been better to wait five days because it does less harm than a precipitative move. Philip Baird Shearer 10:44, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Burmese characters

Hello, I can't see the Burmese characters even thought I've installed several Unicode and TTF Burmese fonts in my computer's "Fonts" folder. Is there any way to make them viewable? I have a PC and am using Internet Explorer. Maybe I'm not the only one having this problem, so any help anyone can provide (posting here instead of on my "discussion" page) would be great. Badagnani 00:57, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Okay, I downloaded the font listed at the top of the Yangon article and I can now see the name of the city in Burmese characters. But in the Tofu article I can't read the Burmese characters there (on the right hand side of the page); they are showing up as small boxes. Badagnani 01:02, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

The URL shown at the top of the page no longer resolves, at least not from here. Richard W.M. Jones 10:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)