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As you said, naming is both a thorny and complex issue. The problem is not only orthographic - different spelling rules across borders reflecting colonization. Sometimes names are different altogether, as their loads are taken differently. Look at 'bantu' infamous in SA even for languages but widely accepted elsewhere, and even sometimes claimed as an ethnic category. Or Shangani, proper in Mozambique but not in SA - xiTsonga is the official. Regarding prefixes for (Bantu) languages, it is now PC to use them in SA - isiZulu, seSwati, etc, rather than Zulu, Swati, etc, against all logic in my view. It would seem normal to use the word as it is (when it exists) in the text language - when we write in English, we write of French (not français), when we write in French, Shakespeare's medium is Anglais (not English), and when we write in Zulu, we write of isiFulentshi, isiNgisi, isiSotho, not French (or Français), or English or ...seSotho. But maybe that does not matter so much as long as what we write about remains unambiguous, and we write relevant and positive things. ML
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