This was addressed during the lore section today at fanfest.

Banri Oda (paraphrased by Kate Cwynar): "it's really important that what we're trying to do is we're not trying to recreate reality. We're trying to imagine a world with perhaps similar locations but still fitting the history of FFXIV. But at the same time when we do draw on real life cultures and languages we want to develop an understanding and a respect for those cultures and we want to try to demonstrate that the best we can. And this is a real point of focus for 7.0. I can't say much about it but I will say that is something the team is very aware of. They're aware that we have not always made our goal demonstrating the proper respect for cultures in the past both as a game and as a franchise. We're really working on it."