A New-Way to Gain Foreign Business

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 92, 15 October 1932, Page 23

A New-Way to Gain Foreign Business

If you're sending a letter to the capital of Austria, should you address it to Vienna or to Wieii?

Should Yugoslavia's capital be written Beograde or the more familiar Belgrade? In Italy is it Naples or the Lyric Napoli-*

lhe answer depends largely on the sort of letter you arc mailing." If it's a perfumed note to your American sweetheart studying art in Italy, she wall feel more ut homo if you 'write it Naples, not Napoli. But if it is a typewritten letter- to a business firm hi Yugoslavia you arc more likely to land-that -contract-if you go native and address your letter to the-foreign-look-ing Boograde (writes Genevieve Hcriick in the "Chicago Tribune"). This, in essence, is the advice which the United States Geographic Board's first report on foreign geographic uames gives American letter writers. The advice is particularly designed, however, for government departments, consular and diplomatic offices, army and navy correspondence, and other federal mail bags, where a mistake might be serious, or at least, very Impolite The use of local official' forms of geographic names on letters and publications intended for foreign countries is sure to create, the little booklet points out, "a good impression which is favourable to the transaction of business."

That is the Government tip of writing the name of a foreign city on an envelope. When it comes to "-writing the name of the country.to which the letter is going an entirely different problem is involved. Here :t ' not so much a question of flattering the vanity of the recipient, although that would be good policy, but of getting the letter quickly and accurately dispatched out of the United States and that is really better policy. In this instance the experts' advice is to give the name of the foreign conntry in its English' spelling. That is. write Poland instead of Polska, Do not write it Suomi for the mail carrier in the" United States would be frightfully puzzled. Write it Finland, and Vie will put it into the right bag the first time. Whatever Jiscourtesv there might be in writing the name'of the country in our acepted English terms, will be more than made up by the

speed with which the American postal authorities get the letter to the right dock, the right boat, and the right country.

Once over in that country, it is due to the native postman to deliver it to the proper city or town. That is one more reason in addition to the practical business or diplomatic reason for writing the local address in the local manner. So, if you are clever and follow the directions in this 112-page book, you will write "Livorno, Italy"; but never "Leghorn, Italy." Take it the other way round. If a native Italian is writing to a resident of Salt Lake City, he might very well use the Italian name for . the United States. But his letter, the bookiet reminds us, -would cause a lot of confusion if addrdessed to Citta del Lage Salato. And there are a lot of "don'ts." Don't <pell it Jugoslavia; the proper spelling is Yugoslavia. It is not Cape Town; but Capetown. It mnst always be Tokyo; never Tokio; and pronounce it in two syllables, if you please. There is no such place as, Esthonia; it is Estonia. Baile Atha Claith is the new Gaelic for Dublin. But since Dublin is also of Celtic origin, it is just as well, the book suggests,, to keep the old name. But it is not very polite to address a letter to' Cologne, Germany, since Cologne is a French name and the German name is Koln. Do not ever talk about the Si Kiang River over in China, for Kiang nieans j river. Similarly, the linguists who got out the book caution against such "illiterate duplication" as Rio Grande River, since Rio means river. But these are really only the lighter moments of the volume. There are pages of accents and transliterations and diacritical marks from Arabic to Bantu dialects. ■ The chairman of the Erudite Board is Mr. Frank Bond. And the report -was prepared by Mr. S. 'TV. Boggs, geosraplier of the State Department, and Dr. Helen M. Strong, geographer of the Bureau of Foreign- and Commerce of the Commerce Department. It contains 2500 decisions as to the official spelling of foreign geographic names.