Friday, June 27, 2014

Kinabalu—Getting The Name Right

This is going to be a short post (which is uncharacteristic of me).

I'm seeing a lot of excitement—as per facebook posts—in a group of Singaporean friends attempting to scale our famous mountain here in Sabah over this weekend (all the best, folks!). For a while now, I've noticed that there are many, many people, including non-Sabahan Malaysians who've been getting the name wrong. 

So here I am, in my brave attempt to set the record straight. However, I'm not doing this with much hope of success, because I happen to know that some people don't really care about getting the name right anyway. But here goes nothing!

The name of the city is Kota Kinabalu; the name of the mountain is Kinabalu. Notice that there is no "Kota" in the name of the mountain. In English it's Mount Kinabalu; in Malay it's Gunung Kinabalu. Some people may find it a big challenge to pronounce the Kinabalu somehow, so they may opt for Mount K instead, though I would much prefer the full name.

So, Mount Kinabalu, Gunung Kinabalu, or Mt K (if you really must). But NOT Mount Kota Kinabalu, Gunung Kota Kinabalu or Mt KK.


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