Ith hith name Igor?
Yeth marthter.
That’th great newth!
No, I’ve never been to Barthalona or Barcelona. Nor am I ever going to either. I’m far to poor to travel beyond local necessities. I have no idea why I’m here at this party. Why you are here?
I’m here to sneak into the vault and steal the Diamond Tiara of Diana. Wanna help me?
Hahaaaaaa… sexy European lisp.
I am all in to pronounce names & places correctly, aka according to the original language. So, so dumb when a name is “transliterated” to another alphabet and now it doesn’t mean anything to anyone, and nobody can read it correctly.
However, for well established names, might not worth the trouble.
I agree to a point, but try Bangkok.
Edit: For the uninitiated, that is: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
Bangkok is also the first one that came to mind, bit as other have said the full name is not used locally, either.
Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake in Manitoba, though.
Maybe, but what do the locals call it?
lol do they say that colloquially? I don’t think so?
No. They use Krung Thep, which is short for Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.
If I ever go to Istanbul, I’ll be telling people I visited Constantinople.
Well, even old New York was once New Amsterdam, so…
Why’d they change it?
Honestly, idk. I guess people just liked it better that way
the guy with the captain’s hat thought it looked more like York.
That this thread became a mixture of They Might Be Giants and Mitchell & Webb is hilarious and i’m here for it.
Byzantium, please!
Byzantium iirc is a different place that is close by.
Byzantium … was an ancient Greek city in classical antiquity that became known as Constantinople in late antiquity and Istanbul today
I think it’s just grown over the years
It’s a bit iffy. Byzantium originally was located a bit further west. After Constantinople was “refounded”, it was located a bit further east. Some historians consider Constantinople to be a new city that usurped Byzantium over the years, others don’t and consider it the same city altogether.
This is complicated by some sources referring to the place as one and the same, whereas others seem to be indicating distinct (albeit close) locations.
Ultimately it doesn’t really matter though. It didn’t take long for Constantinople to grow beyond where Byzantium used to be, so the time period where they could’ve been distinct is really quite small.
Interesting, thanks!
Fuck that Carigrad or Tsargrad
serious question. is it pretentious to use the “real” name of a place instead of it’s english name? i’m not talking about pronunciation, but when english people decide to come up with a completely different, name for foreign places
like, “i visited milano, torino, and firenze this summer” instead of “milan, turin, and florence”
Well, most of the Spanish speaking world calls Barcelona the same way we call it. With slightly different inflection, but only the castellanos have the “Spanish lisp.” Which derived from some king who had a lisp, if I’m remembering that correctly? So other Spanish speaking people—most of them, in fact, don’t call it “barth-elona.”
I learned Spanish in Spain, so I started speaking in that lispy Spanish. But as I continued to get way more fluent, living in the other parts of the Spanish speaking world, my accent changed.
The Spanish king with a lisp is a folk etymology.
If it were true, then ‘s’ would also be pronounced that way.
I learned Spanish in Honduras. Never heard anyone ever use the Spanish lisp.
Does this mean I have to start calling Los Angeles “The City of Angels”?
Yeah kinda because English speakers know it as Milan, Turin and Florence
Well, I don’t think most primarily-English-speaking people would appreciate you mentioning that you visited Baile Átha Cliathe this past summer instead of just saying Dublin.
Una thervetha por favor!
¡Pues hombre, vallase para la porra! ¡Imbecil!
Una torta de patatas
That would be the (standard) Spanish, right? Catalan, the local language, has it with /s/
But it’s very language-dependent. English has established names for many places, so you should probably use those. But some languages just don’t, and if you borrow everything, you might as well borrow properly.
I think it’s interesting that some countries have entirely different names depending on the language. Here is one for example:
- English - Germany
- Spanish - Alemania
- Finnish - Saksa
- Polish - Niemcy
- German - Deutschland
There are many others, but they are more so variations of the same name, so I didn’t include them. The ones I listed are completely different.
I heard that the different names originated from the names of the Germanic tribes that interacted most with the respective peoples and resulting language. For example, what would be English-speakers would interact mostly with Germanic tribes, whereas would be Spanish-speakers would interactact mostly with Alemanni tribes. However, Perplexity says that the English name comes from the Roman name for the area, while the Spanish name comes from the name of the tribe. If only Crunk the Historian could investigate this and find an ultimate answer.
I can’t type out the pronunciation but have you guys heard American people read Japanese names? My god, it is so weird. Say that to Japanese people and I bet half of the time they don’t recognise what it is. The way a foreign language is being butchered is beyond imagination.
The one that keeps surprising me over and over again is Karyohkey instead of Ka-ra-o-ke.
Not sure about names, I feel like I have heard proper pronunciations of Akira and Tanaka in media, do you have some good examples of ones that are frequently wrong?
The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.
It’s not a lisp. Castilian pronunciation uses the same S sound as for the letter S as speakers from Latin America. It’s only Z and soft C that are different.
There is an urban legend that everyone in Spain started speaking this way because of the super-inbred Habsburg kings had a terrible lisp and everyone wanted to make him sound normal. There’s no evidence of it, but considering this guy was king of Spain…
Consider that the artist probably, at the direction of the subject, made some alterations (aka photoshopped) to the painting in order for the portrait to come out how they wanted to appear. It’s possible that the subject looked even worse.
Oh almost certainly. You don’t make the king look bad.
When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn’t have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they’re trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you’re kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.
Reminds me of one of the best Kids in the Hall sketches.
Many Spanish folks I have met roll their eyes when my Latin American Spanish skills rill my r’s.
I know its sounds like im an asshole but i lived 4 months there and picked itnup lol. So now i alsways say it like that even tho my spanish is pretty bad. But i like to pick up the correct, native pronounciacion of place names anyways to show a bit of respect to the people living there and i dont judge you if you dont do it.
I’m bilingual and that’s dumb.
People living in a place don’t care how you say the name of the place where they live when you’re talking to someone else in your own language. They don’t feel a sudden burst of respect from someone elsewhere in the world.
More importantly, the native names of most places use phonemes that simply don’t exist in English. Turkey wants you to say “Türkiye” but not only does English not have the “ü” character, that phoneme simply doesn’t exist in English. If you’re trying to communicate with someone in English, you shouldn’t use phonemes that don’t exist in English.
Fundamentally, the purpose of saying a place’s name is to communicate with someone, it’s not to show respect to the people who live in the place being named. If someone is going to find it even slightly difficult to understand you because you’re choosing to pronounce the name of a place in a way that’s unnatural to English speakers, then you’re doing a bad job of communicating.
But they are speaking the local language, so they’re learning to say it the correct way. Why would they insist on saying it wrong when they are learning to say everything else correctly?
Who’s speaking which local language?
What’s the name of someone speaking a foreign language?
What is the colour of wind?
Good luck dealing with all the idiots disagreeing with you. I’m not sure whether they think they look smart by using the “correct” pronunciation; but one learns quickly to anglicise words when talking to anglos.
Here in Switzerland we have four languages and we simply say words like they sound in the language they are from, even if most of us only speak one of the languages natively and one as a second language from school. There is no reason to make up separate pronunciations. Buillon is buillon and tiramisu is tiramisu even if I’m speaking Swiss German.
Switzerland is a tiny country, so it’s no surprise that certain words are standardized.
Im bilingual and speak 4 languages and i like it when people pronounce names correctly. Especially in hungarian which a lot of people pronounce incorrectly, it feels nice. Then again i could be alone but other peoples comment suggest otherwise. I just dont know why you reacted so offensively to my comment. Btw a language not having the correct sounds doesnt mean you dont hear/know them. Im really bad with the scratchy sounds in french, danish, arabic, etc but i still hear them so i recognise what is being said.
i like it when people pronounce names correctly
How do you define “correctly”? Is “Munich” a correct way to pronounce that city in Germany, or is only Munchen acceptable? Or should it be “Minga” because that’s how it’s said in Bavarian?
You could say the same thing in english in english because of the many dialects. I usually say place names in the local dialect except if its a language i speak and then you see how language is flexible becuase people who speak the same language as me say stuff differently.
I usually say place names in the local dialect
That seems like the best way to communicate.
except if its a language i speak
So, if you speak a language, you don’t care what the people you’re speaking to understand?
Oh, this is German, I speak German, I’ll tell Dave it happened in Agram
“So, I the guy went to Agram”
“Wait, what’s Agram”
“Agram, that’s the German name for Zagreb, Croatia. I speak German!”
No i mean i say swedish place names with my dialect not the one where the place is. If you speak a language well enough its hard to adjust you dialect. Same with english. I have a very strange mix of american and irish english so if i say the name of a south african place it wont come out the same way a south african would. But you should know this because you also speak english and this happens when a lot of people speak the same language. Hungarians in hungary say almost everything the same but when you go to romania or slovakia for example, the pronounciation changes but my accent stays the same. Of course there is code switching but thats usually only 2 dialects.
Damn, the other commenter seems hellbent on making you sound like a snob, despite every one of your comments being chill and relatable.
Trilingual here, if it’s clear that someone is trying to say it correctly (as would be said by anyone of the native language) even if they mispronounce it they get a pass.
If you come to my city and call it Saint Sebastien you are going to get very weird looks. If you call it San Sebastian or even better, Donostia, even mispronounced most local will smile because you are fucking trying.
Yes there are some phonemes that don’t exist in other languages but it’s clear when outsiders say them wrong while trying vs wrong and they don’t bother to make a similar sound. It’s about respect.
I would say Munchen since its how my German friends told me that should be said.
if it’s clear that someone is trying to say it correctly (as would be said by anyone of the native language) even if they mispronounce it they get a pass
It’s not about “getting a pass”, it’s about what’s the best way to say it for a given audience. In most cases, that’s how the language you’re currently speaking says the thing. If you’re a Brit, in London, talking to another Brit about Zaragoza, you shouldn’t pronounce it the way Castilian Spanish speakers would say it because the person you’re talking to is not likely to recognize the name when spoken like that.
Language is indeed for communication, which is why both ways of saying it work…
Except one way is better, and that’s the way that the person you’re speaking to understands best.
If I say Barcelona with a lisp, or without, 99.9999% of people that know what Barcelona is will understand me, you’re being unnecessarily pedantic. Anyone who seeks to control language should talk to a linguist. Language isn’t prescriptivist as much as non linguists like to think so. It is fluid and ever changing. People will choose how they want to speak and it will either work or it won’t. If people understand what someone is saying, nothing else matters as much as many like to think.
Yes, Barcelona is a place that people have heard enough of the two versions to know the “strange” version that isn’t natural to their language. But, what about Zaragoza? I doubt most English speakers would understand what you meant if you dropped the Castillian version of that into a sentence when speaking English.
Language isn’t prescriptivist
Of course not, that’s why the names of places in English don’t sound like the names used locally. If it were prescriptivist there would be no Munich, only Munchen. No Prague only Praha, no Geneva, only Genève. Only someone who doesn’t understand how languages work would think that it’s appropriate to say “Barcelona” with a “th” sound when speaking English.
You said “of course not” and then ended with a prescriptivist point of view, you’re lost mate.
Edit: I think you need to read a bit more about the difference between prescriptivism and descriptivism and maybe read something by a linguist, or watch one of their YouTube channels. Just because you’re rejecting one prescriptivist point of view, if you take up another prescriptivist point of view in counter, it’s still prescriptivist. The point is, enforcing language in any direction is a pointless task, language will never do what you want it to do, all you’re doing by trying, is making sure everyone is annoyed with you.
I think you need to do some more research. Nothing I said was prescriptivist.
There is a lot of people that speak english as a second or third language often they just don’t know correct english toponims or idioms, sometimes it’s just happens. English for a lot of people isn’t objective by itself just a means to an end.
Sure, but as a general rule, if you’re trying to decide how to say the name of a place, you should say it as it is said in your language/dialect if you’re speaking your language/dialect, and especially if you’re speaking your language/dialect with another person who speaks the same language/dialect.
My experience has been the exact opposite. When I mispronounce words I’ve been giggled at and/or corrected. When I pronounce it right, people either don’t notice or act pleasantly surprised, I’ve even gotten some head nods that I assumed was acknowledgement of my trying
When I mispronounce words I’ve been giggled at and/or corrected
By whom?
When I pronounce it right
What do you mean by “right”? “Barcelona” with an “s” sound is right.
Mostly Spanish speakers, not from Spain though. I wasn’t specifically talking about Barcelona, that’s just what the meme is about.
Look ma, a cunt
Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.
The majority of my time playing skyrim I thought he was referring to somewhere in a different citt like Solitude or something. Didnt realize he was talking about a place thats 10 paces away lol
The sense of scale has always been off with these games. Huge battles have 20 people fighting, cities have less people than a small apartment building.
And like… I’m just guessing… 800 square feet? That’s a district? Nazeem is crazy
