Decolonize Language

"So anyway, about the Middle East..."

Her response of “takes more time” tells me all I need to know about her 🙄

Ugh...

This gets into something I've always found interesting about language.

We routinely use our own names for other places rather than the names locals use. We say Japan instead of Nihon, Germany instead of Deutschland, Egypt instead of Misr, and China instead of Zhongguo. (which is funny to me because we say "Quesadilla", "Sushi", and "Bratwurst" in pretty much the native tongue.

I also understand the argument that "Middle East" originated from a European geographic perspective. OK.. yeah.. That's true. And yeah... if you ask "middle of what?", the answer is essentially "middle relative to Europe." I get the point.

But LITERALLY EVERY GEOGRAPHIC TERM comes from someone's perspective. Every map is drawn from somewhere. Every language inherits names that originated outside the culture being described.

So her proposed replacement was "North Africa." CAREFUL! "Africa" itself wasn't originally a continent-wide self-description used by all the people who lived there! It's an inherited name that came through outsiders (the Romans) and was eventually adopted broadly. Again... we're replacing one historical exonym with another historical exonym.

Still.. I'm not saying the criticism is completely wrong. I'm saying it's a huge (and still where we are right now, unreasonable) ask. If the standard is that we shouldn't use names that originated from an outsider's perspective, we'd have to rename a massive portion of the world map.

This might be the most unimportant argument about the Middle East that I've ever heard.

And if the west called themselves the middle anything, it would be offense still because why is the west in the middle! The west is the west and no one shits themselves. Performative outrage is performative

I completely understand her point and agree with it, then . . .

"Can we say the Arab world?"

"No!"

Why not? That's referring to a geographic region by the predominant ethnic identity of its inhabitants, instead of it's direction relative to the original lands of historic colonizers. Why would that be problematic? Would it be because of other people's in that general region (Kurds and Persians, for example)?

Wait till she finds out about the Midwest in the US…

North Africa and West Asia are far better and specific regional descriptors. But what do I say when I want to describe that whole region? Middle East still seems useful…..

Well I learned something new today.

Does it truly offend people though or does it just offend her?

Edit: the exact transcript from the video:
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but the minute you say ‘Middle East’ I become upset.”

Edit 2: I lived in the Middle East and we always called it that so that’s why I was curious.

What a useless rant