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Renaming the cities of other countries... | ||
Tags: Names | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| brandon Tetraglot Groupie United States Joined 7055 days ago 54 posts - 55 votes  Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, French Studies: Dutch, Swedish, Italian | Message 89 of 192 26 February 2010 at 3:45am | IP Logged | ||
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@tractor
I agree, but I think it's more of an issue that Americans may tend to pronounce something wrong in the US because there are that many more places to try to pronounce. Smaller countries, fewer place names to know. Also, I think in Europe, for example, a place may be pronounced differently because of strong regional accents, and although there are regional accents in the US, it's nothing compared to Bayrisch German and Plattdeutsch, for example, where they may not be mutually comprehensible in their regional dialects. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5461 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 90 of 192 26 February 2010 at 6:04pm | IP Logged | ||
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Even in a small country like Norway there are so many place names that is is impossible to know how to pronounce
them all. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| horshod Pentaglot Groupie India Joined 5778 days ago 74 posts - 107 votes Speaks: Hindi, Marathi*, Bengali, Gujarati, English Studies: German, Spanish, Turkish | Message 91 of 192 02 March 2010 at 7:24am | IP Logged | ||
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Some Indian cities:
English name -> Indian name Bombay -> Mumbai Calcutta -> Kolkaataa Madras -> Chennai Bangalore -> Bengalooru Oh and India - Bhaarat/Hindustaan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6776 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 92 of 192 02 March 2010 at 8:19am | IP Logged | ||
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Horshod, do those cities have different names in Marathi, Bengali, and other Indian languages?
Wow, it must be awesome to know so many Indian languages. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6785 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 93 of 192 04 March 2010 at 2:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm surprised nobody has mentioned "Kiev/Kyiv." "Kiev" represents how the city is spelled in the Russian alphabet, while "Kyiv" is Ukranian. Ukrainian ultra-nationalists will demand that you write it the Ukrainian way, even in English.(Never mind that almost nobody in Ukraine actually writes in Ukrainian or even speaks it fluently according to a Ukrainian I know.)
To me this seems silly -- rather like Germans demanding that "Cologne" be written the German way in English. There is an war which has been going on between Georgians and Russians for several years on Wikipedia, over the spelling of the city "Sokhumi" in Abkhazia, with the Russians calling it "Sukhumi." We are talking about a single letter here -- and in English no less, when all three languages use different alphabets anyway! I had a Georgian roommate in college, and he got himself banned from Wikipedia and was piping mad for days over this. It's ridiculous. Usually the page says "Sukhumi" because Russian editors (and moderators) of Wikipedia far outnumber the Georgians, even though the city has never been nor is it now Russian by population (previously Georgian and now mostly Abkhaz. And the Abkhaz name is something different entirely.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| William Camden Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6280 days ago 1936 posts - 2333 votes Speaks: English*, German, Spanish, Russian, Turkish, French | Message 94 of 192 04 March 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged | ||
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Central/Eastern Europe has a lot of it. Bratislava has been Pressburg, and/or Pozsony. Wroclaw has been Breslau, etc.
Lille is called Rijssel in Dutch, I believe, and even William Tyndale (d.1536) referred to it as "Ryssel". 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6711 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 95 of 192 04 March 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||
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And calling Wroclaw Breslau or Kaliningrad Königsberg might be seen as a political statement. But even names that don't refer to old maps can be controversial - such as Derry and Londonderry for a certain town in Northern Ireland.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Virginian683 Diglot Groupie United States Joined 6785 days ago 43 posts - 50 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: French, Russian | Message 96 of 192 05 March 2010 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
Unless, like me, you have no idea how to pronounce "Wroclaw." Or say, "Ceske Budejovice" (Budweis) :-) As far as I can tell, most cities in Czech Republic and western Poland are still called by their German names in German media, train stations and airports. I highly doubt it is a sign of 'Germania irredentia', but rather like me, most Germans don't know how to read Polish and Czech. By the way, I wrote a paper on Kaliningrad in college, and it seems in the 90's there was actually a movement to change the city's name back to Koenigsberg (like Petersburg -- also a German form). It never happened, but there was some effort to reclaim the city's German heritage. Some street signs have even been posted in German. Edited by Virginian683 on 05 March 2010 at 5:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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