The World's Most Insulted Countries!!

The name of our country represents us. It is the one single word we are proud of and held *almost* sacred. We make sure it is respected and we don’t tolerate insults. But what if our country name always gets misspelled, mispronounced and misrepresented? Won’t we take it as an insult? *I would!*

If that is the case; SE Asian countries I’m afraid, are some of the world’s most insulted countries.

Laos has to be the most mispronounced country name in the whole world. The French f*cked it up! They spelled the name of the country the French way when they colonized in the 1600s and didn’t correct it when they left – the “S” is silent. Now the world read it as LAH-‘OS or sometimes with too much American twang “LAY-‘OHS”. *Pffft!* The proper way to say Laos is without the “S” – LAO, as simple as that.

Now, how many books, magazines and other printed medium misspelled the word “Philippines”? It has to be the most maligned country name in the world. I have seen variations of “Philipines”, “Phillipines”, “Phillippines”, “Philipine”,”Philupins” written in the English context. They can’t seem to decide if it’s a double “L” or a double “P” or just double everything altogether! And not too many people know that they don’t have to put the “S” at the end all the time, ex. "Philippine Republic" and "Republic of the Philippines".

Thailand doesn’t have any problem with the spelling -- but a lot of people pronounce it as “THIGH-LAND”. *Whadda’?!!* This is not the "Land of Limbs and Lower Extremities” for christssake! It’s “TAI”. Although we love to put “H” on just about any English transliteration of our proper names, its not included in the pronunciation just as Phuket is not “Foo-ket”. Ha!

I don’t know how the Bruneians feel whenever their country pronounced as "Broo-neigh". Or maybe written without “Darussalam”. The proper pronunciation is "Broo-nai".


Honest mistake or not – it’s still a mistake and needs to be corrected. Now that you know; once is ok, twice is forgivable and the third is asking for war.*just kidding*