An English language lover's lot is not a happy one these days. There always were wordwreckers at large, of course; but there're many more of them today thanks to the politically correct fashion of toadying to the fancied sensibilities of some foreigners, whose sensibilities ought rightly to be the least of our linguistic concerns, and who need to be told, in no uncertain terms, our language is strictly our business, none of theirs whatsoever.

The first offenders to come to mind, of course, are the Moslems. (I beg our conscientious editor not to "correct" my usage, lest my whole point be lost!) A look back through history reveals that the prophet of Allah was, in English, Mahound, Mahmud, Mehmed, Mahomet, Mohammed, more or less in that order. At last, savants seemed to have settled on the latter. Whole shelves of English literature are full of a standardized and long-accepted "Mohammed." But now all at once all international relations and faith ecumenism hang perilously on the issue of an "o" that some think should be a "u"! And at least well into the 1950s, Mohammed's followers were called (logically enough) "Mohammedans," though responsible scholars usually footnoted that of course their "real name" was "Musselmen." That being what English speakers then made of what they later made out as "Moslems." And again we're scolded: that offensive "o" must become a "u"! Strictly, the one's just as "incorrect" as the other. The terminal "s" makes a plural only in European languages. There are no "Muslims" (any more than "Moslems") on the Arabic tongue. The Arabic plural of (if you insist) "Muslim" is "Muslimin."

Which easily explains how and why Westerners first came to call them "Musselmen" (which seems to suggest a "muscular Islam" to match the 19th-century "muscular Christianity" movement!)

One finds library shelves and bibliographies full of "Korans" but all of a sudden the word has become as disrespectful and insufficiently sensitive as "Moslems." To refer to the "Qur'an" as the "Koran" is as sacrilegious as flushing it down the toilet.

The angel Gabriel, speaking for Allah, we're told, dictated the "Qur'an."

One knows not whether to blame Gabriel or Allah for that puzzling apostrophe. An apostrophe, at least in European languages, stands for something left out. And it's hard to imagine Allah, or even Gabriel, leaving something out of a book purported to contain everything. Is it just a letter, a sound?

No doubt it's all crystal-clear in Arabic. But what business does it have in English? And that "Q"! It's a rare letter in English, since the sound is equally represented by "k" (as in "Koran") or even "c."

That land between China and Japan was once "Corea" in English. God knows what it is in Korean, since their syllabary knows neither a "k" nor a "c". And in English, in the few words that begin with it, the "q" is invariably followed by a "u." From where, then, do we get "al-Qaida" (or "al-Qaeda"; the pundits haven't made up their minds yet) or the country of "Qatar?"

Those Latin letters certainly don't carry over from Arabic, in which they're simply unknown. Written words are supposed to reflect sounds, and words in English should reflect them according to English rules.

(It's academically the mode to say English simply has no spelling or pronunciation rules; but it isn't so at all.)

In English, therefore, the country should be spelled and pronounced "Cotter," or "Gutter," depending on which politically-incorrect English-speaker's doing the pronouncing and spelling. And the terrorist syndicate should be spelled something like "Kaydah."

The "al" should be either capitalized, merged to make "Alkaydah," or dropped altogether.

What do the following parallel lists of place-names mean?

On the left. are what the residents call them. On the right are their names in English.

Strangely, the denizens of the first seven don't mind a bit that English-speakers use anglicized place-names.

But, egad!

Don't you dare speak English of the final four!

New York, Nueva York; United States, Estados Unidos: England Inglatierra; London, Londres; Germany, Allemania.

How is it that the Americans, English, and Deutsche aren't up in arms because speakers of Spanish perversely use the "wrong" names for our places?

Because every language has its own version of foreign place-names, just as it has of other words.

Every language has its own genius, and conforms new words and names to that genius, at least ideally.

Trouble starts when the too-clever start fancying foreign words (like the foreigners themselves) must be let in just as they are, without being "assimilated."

With place-names, the argument seems to be that "emerging" nations have more sensitive feelings than "emerged" ones.

So we must do violence to our language so's not to hurt their delicate little sensibilities.

Well, nuts!

We should tell the Chinaman who objects to "Peking" to say "Beijing" (in Chinese) till he's blue in the face; but we're speaking English, and we're going to go right on referring to Peking duck, Pekinese dogs, and Peking.

And if he still objects, tell him to go get stuffed.

Not very diplomatic, agreed, but maybe we need a little less diplomacy.

John Bolton may be just our man!