For what it’s worth, there’s still no evidence that Chinese tanks actually killed anyone on 6/4. No journalists on the ground found any indication of a mass casualty event on Tiananmen Square, which directly contradicts the claims made by protestors that there was. The same cannot be said for Soviet tanks in Hungary or Israeli tanks in Gaza, where civilian causalities are rather well-documented.
By the widely recognized origin of the word (the Soviet Union rolling in tanks to suppress revolution in Hungary) and what it means (people in support of that use of force and tanks to suppress civilian revolution), supporters of Israel and the US are both “tankies.” Glad we agree, good talk!
That’s fair, but I think it loses the distinction between different transliteration strategies. For example, phonetic transliteration preserves far more of the original language than other methods. Transliteration is a necessary component of language: most common languages lack glottal stops and clicks, but it’s still important to be able to refer to places that are named with glottal stops and clicks.
In that regard, the TAR has always been referred to as Xizang in Chinese because the TAR covers the Ü-Tsang region. The lands of greater Tibet from the peak of the Tibetan Empire are now parts of Qinghai, Sichuan, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Kashmir. The unified region of greater Tibet has, in recent history, always been དབུས (Ü) and གཙང་ (Tsang). This is pronounced ue-tsang according to Tibetan Pinyin (phonetic transcription) and Xizang according to transliteration - running through the possibilities, I’m struggling to find an exonym in Mandarin that would be closer in pronunciation.
The traditional name of the region is བོད་ (Bhö). The name Tibet is itself an import from the English. Given the degree of funding the Tibetan government-in-exile receives from the US (an English-speaking country), I’d suggest that the Tibetan government-in-exile has a strong financial incentive for maintaining English…
The legitimate government of Tibet… According to who? Even the British (who had just finished shipping opium to China, looting Chinese palaces, and had every reason to antagonize the Chinese) didn’t recognize the independence of Tibet.
Regardless, this is the same Tibetan government that supported a caste system and ethnic discrimination, right? That Tibetan government? The same one whose leader has been called out by American media for being a pedophile?
Bringing up Tiananmen when there are documented instances (with actual evidence) of people getting run over by Israeli tanks and bulldozers in Gaza right now. Backed by the US government. With the US President actively spreading FUD about the scale and extent of atrocities. Nice.
Xizang is literally the phonetic transliteration for the region of the TAR. You’re basically saying that we should keep the name Western colonialists gave a territory because Western brains would get hurt if the name changed.
Maybe Westerners shouldn’t get their panties in a twist about someone not using a name created by the West because Western colonialists couldn’t figure out a better transliteration?
Xizang is as much a “Chinese word” as Tsawwassen or Denali is an “English word.” It’s literally a direct phonetic transliteration of the Tibetan name used to describe the land occupied by the TAR.