Dear Ozzy Osbourne/Paris Hilton/Starbucks/Virgin Mobile/Lufthansa,
I’m sure you’re all very busy, I just wanted to write to you to remind you: IT’S COLOMBIA, NOT COLUMBIA!
It’s good to get that off my chest. Some of you non-Colombian readers may be wondering why it’s such a big deal…I mean, it’s just one letter right? Well, just imagine how indignant people in England would get if their country was routinely spelt Ingland by major celebrities, at the Olympics (yep, we did that, on a BBC news feed of all things!), and by the coffee chains selling imported ColOmbian coffee…I imagine people would be a little bit ticked off by that. We’ve written about the Colombia/Columbia confusion in the past, but it’s seems that action is finally being taken on a large scale:
The good news is that the Colombian people aren’t just sitting around and accepting the constant misspellings of their proud and beautiful country: they’re fighting back! The ‘It’s Colombia, not Columbia’ campaign is aiming to spread the word around the world that this country deserves the respect of having its name spelt correctly. Don’t get us wrong, if Justin Bieber tweets about Colombia with a misspelling the world doesn’t explode, but it’s just a tiny bit more ignorance that contributes to a greater whole. What’s more troubling is the trend for people who call themselves journalists to fail to correctly spell the country they’re writing about. To me, it often smacks of arrogance: ‘this country isn’t as big as ours, so who needs to get it right!?’ Sometimes it’s just an honest mistake…but where’s the harm in correcting this honest mistake so it stops happening in the future?
The campaign has a strong presence on Twitter and Facebook, and has attracted attention from international publications as well. They have designed t-shirts and other merchandise, and are encouraging their followers to name and shame serial offenders on their social media forums. It’s a plan that we at See Colombia are thoroughly in support of…after all, no-one will find us if they keep googling See Columbia Travel, right!?
You can show your support to this campaign by liking their Facebook page here.
Chris
