🇲🇼 Newly on sale on Delcampe are more items from Malawi Post although I cannot presently find any details of these issues including the dates of issue.
Firsly there are 5 new surcharges on old definitive stamps - 3 Bird stamps and 2 Butterfly stamps. These items are all surcharged in red. Rating:- ****.
Additionally, there is a sheetlet containing 6 different stamps on the subject of Indigenous birds of Malawi. This item is similar to a number of the issues which were released in 2016 by Malawi Post and is an attractive item. Rating:- ****.
🇫🇯 In Blog 1208 I mentioned the Year of The Dog stamps presented to Fiji Post by The People's Republic Of China but was unable to provide a reasonable illustration of the stamps. I now illustrate below this issue though sadly the illustrations are still not very good. And neither, for that matter, are the designs. Rating:- *.
🇸🇿 As readers of the Blog will know, Swaziland has changed its name to celebrate the country's 50th anniversary of Independence from The United Kingdom. Both The Commonwealth and The United Nations have now started to use the country's new name but don't expect to find it listed by The Commonwealth under 'e' or even 's', instead you must look at the letter 'k' where you will find the country identified as 'Kingdom of eSwatini' with the United Nations giving another version in the form of Eswatini (Kingdom of) which is patently incorrect as the 'e' is clearly to be used in lower case. I look forward to seeing the country's first stamps using the new name to discover how exactly the country's postal service inscribes its stamps after the change of name.
I notice the Taiwanese spelt eSwantini with a capital E in the photograph. Given this is a diplomatic event, I doubt they would've spelt the country name incorrectly (especially since the king was the main one pushing for it). It appears the 'e' makes Swantini plural (in other the words the land of the Swazis), so perhaps it is acceptable to write it as Eswantini?
ReplyDeleteThanks Chris. It's interesting isn't it? The truth is I don't really know but the strangeness of the new name with the small 'e' is complicated enough to anyone who normally writes in western script let alone people who normally write in Mandarin script. Everything I've read so far seems to emphasise that the 'e' should be in lower case but perhaps the real answer is that the only correct name is the full 'Kingdom of eSwatini' (as used by The Commonwealth)rather than the shortened 'eSwatini'. If there's anyone out there who lives in eSwatini who knows the correct answer, do please leave a comment.
DeleteThe government's website http://www.gov.sz/ Eswantini is acceptable (look at the copyright at the bottom of each page). I suspect the more correct way of writing it is eSwantini, especially when it is not at the start of a sentence, and Eswantini when it starts a sentence.
DeleteThank you Chris for your helpful and interesting input here. As I said, it will be interesting to see the name as it appears on future new issues.
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