Watching the news this evening about the troubles in Venezuela, I was dismayed not only to hear the newsreader pronouncing 'Colombia' as 'Columbia' but even the map displaying the affected countries misspelled 'Colombia' as 'Columbia'. How would we feel if our country was written/described as Inglend?
'Colombia' is pronounced more like 'lum' than 'lom', and countries often spell other countries' names to suit how the sound would be spelt in their own language.
I'm sure when I was at schoolit was Rumania- I thought it was spelt like that in a World Cup from my childhood (1970) but when I checked back at old maps from early 20th century it was always printed as Romania so I assumed I'd ust misread it for all those years. I also thought Colombia was Columbia on the world cup (1970 again?) tour around the time of the Booby Moore bracelet incident but maybe again I just misread it