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Renaming the cities of other countries... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4852 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 161 of 192 25 September 2012 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
The rules of Russian-English transcription are conventional and inconsistent. But it is still transcription. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5064 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 162 of 192 25 September 2012 at 7:34pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's not. It's transliteration. Conventional and inconsistent. It's all like Гудзон, НАТО for Hudson and NATO. English spelling and pronunciation of Russian words is not based on the Russian pronunciation at all, it is based on the Russian spelling. But the English pronunciation is still unclear. In Russian we generally try to reflect pronunciation of other languages, pure transliterations are rare. There are three problems with Russian pronunciation then: stress, letters э, ё. Edited by Марк on 25 September 2012 at 7:52pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4852 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 163 of 192 25 September 2012 at 8:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
If English only transliterates, then why is it 'Boris Yeltsin' and not 'Boris El'cin'? Sorry, I don't think English is any worse than other languages when it comes to transcribing and transliterating. The world just isn't a perfect place where everything is rational and logical. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5064 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 164 of 192 25 September 2012 at 8:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
The soft sign is notusually accounted for anyway, and "c" is not used for ц. Ye in "Yeltsin" is an exception, but in general, it only transliterates. If we take a large amount of new loan-words, we will see that English spelling and pronunciation do not depend on Russian, while the opposite is true. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5342 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 165 of 192 25 September 2012 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Fortunately in Norwegian most capitals are pronounced the way the locals pronounce them, which saves us a ton of problems. Countries are often translated:
France = Frankrike Russia = Russland Germany = Tyskland etc. I mostly pronounce them the way everyone else pronounces them, though I go for civil disobedience when it comes to the country which capital we call Praha - there I go for Tsjekkia instead of Den tsjekkiske republikken, which is the official name. The only time I have had anger from someone was when talking to a guy from the Ivory Coast, he asked what his country was called in Norwegian, and I answered that it was called Elfenbenskysten, which is the Norwegian translation for The Ivory Coast. He went absolutely livid, quite literally spitting from rage, and screamed that we were nothing but a bunch of racists, and that we had to call it Cote d'Ivoire. I pointed out that he did not call my country by our name, Norge, but that did not pacify him. The only other time I can recall getting into trouble over the pronunciation of a city in a foreign language was many years ago when a colleague was telling me how much he liked Mallorca. We were having a vivid conversation, when he suddenly got up and left in the middle of one of my sentences. I figured he felt I talked too much, so I just let him be, but later in the afternoon, I passed by his office and asked what was wrong. "I do not appreciate to be corrected" he said. I protested that I had done no such thing, but what he was referring to, was that when he had said the word Mallorca, he had pronounced it the Norwegian way (Ma-lor-ka), while when I had used it a couple of minutes later, I had pronounced it the Spanish way (Ma-yor-ka). It would not occur to me to use anything but the Spanish pronunciation, but he took the mere fact that I pronounced it differently as an insult. Needless to say, when he made a pass at me a few weeks later, he got absolutely nowhere. If your ego is so fragile that you can't take someone pronouncing the name of a city in the local language, I am not the person you should spend any longer period of time with. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6605 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 166 of 192 25 September 2012 at 9:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
I think it's simply well-known that ć is ch, and most English speakers have only seen the name in the form Milosevic. They know about the ć but not about the š. Anyway, I doubt anyone will judge you for pronouncing it correctly, being a native speaker of a Slavic language. Although I also think it's silly to write the word the original way if it prevents you from pronouncing it correctly, I have to admit that Englishmen aren't that bad at foreign names, well the football commentators at least. The only problem are the vowels really, but writing them in a different way won't help with that. edit: oh and the stress too. English would do with more stress marks for sure :P Edited by Serpent on 25 September 2012 at 9:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6590 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 167 of 192 26 September 2012 at 6:43am | IP Logged | |||||
Disregarding tones, because thet won't give you anything useful. Finland: Fan laan Moscow: Mok si fo Croatia: Haak lo dei aa Portugal: Pou tou ngaa Lisbon: Lei si bun For most larger countries and cities, you can look up the pronunciation in CantoDict EDIT: This is why Obama is called Oubama in Taiwan but Aobama in China. The Chinese version was coined in Hong Kong, where it's read as "Ou baa maa". It's often worse when it's the other way around, though. Churchill is "Qiuji'er" in Mandarin and "Jau gat ji" in Cantonese (the 'j' is soft like English 'y'). It makes it extremely difficult to recognize foreign people's names when listening to Cantonese. Edited by Ari on 26 September 2012 at 7:00am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6590 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 168 of 192 26 September 2012 at 7:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Ha, I came to think of this thread when reading about the new skateboard park in Högdalen, Stockholm. It's called "Highvalley Skateworld", where "Highvalley" is a very literal translation of "Högdalen". That's another interesting form of city renaming, when it's done in the country of the city itself. There's something similar in my hometown Karlskoga where the local American football team is called the "Charleswood Wolves". "Karl" becomes "Charles" and "skog" becomes "wood". Is this something that happens in other countries, too?
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