39 messages over 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
Arnaud25 Diglot Senior Member France Joined 3841 days ago 129 posts - 235 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: Russian
| Message 33 of 39 06 July 2014 at 10:08pm | IP Logged |
As said before French people pronounce the foreigner words "à la" french: the names of the cities are sometimes adapted (I still wonder how Москва has become Moscou, Beijing Pékin, etc), the names of brand are pronounced the french way.
Here's a little video illustrating the difference of pronounciation in Germany and in France of English words and names.
Un bounetie or a bounty, that's the question :)
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| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4661 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German
| Message 34 of 39 07 July 2014 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
I think it used to be common to find a French version for cities a long time ago, but nowadays, I don't think it is done anymore for cities who do not have one already.
In Quebec, we use the English pronounciation for brands and loan words.
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| Lugubert Heptaglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6866 days ago 186 posts - 235 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Danish, Norwegian, EnglishC2, German, Dutch, French Studies: Mandarin, Hindi
| Message 35 of 39 07 July 2014 at 10:20am | IP Logged |
Avid Learner wrote:
I think it used to be common to find a French version for cities a long time ago, but nowadays, I don't think it is done anymore for cities who do not have one already. |
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I have experienced the opposite: very many years ago, the first few times I heard a reference to the French town [ni:s], I was confused. Never heard of it, so I asked Mother. She told me that Nice was what I knew as Nizza [nit:sa].
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| dampingwire Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4664 days ago 1185 posts - 1513 votes Speaks: English*, Italian*, French Studies: Japanese
| Message 36 of 39 07 July 2014 at 12:07pm | IP Logged |
Lugubert wrote:
I have experienced the opposite: very many years ago, the first few
times I heard a reference to the French town [ni:s], I was confused. Never heard of it,
so I asked Mother. She told me that Nice was what I knew as Nizza [nit:sa]. |
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Nice is Nizza in Italian too. I'm always surprised that the UK pronunciation is [ni:s]
rather than pronouncing it as "nice" ... I guess it must have been a sufficiently
popular destination (for some, at least) that the appropriate form came back with the
holidaymakers?
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| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4771 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish
| Message 37 of 39 07 July 2014 at 8:08pm | IP Logged |
Arnaud25 wrote:
I still wonder how Москва has become Moscou, Beijing Pékin, etc |
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Both of these have to do partly with interference from other languages, and partly with changes in the original language. Moscou, like the English Moscow, appears to be derived from the German Moskau, since out of all the Western Europeans the Germans had the most extensive contacts with pre-Imperial Russia. A widely held theory is that Moskau itself wasn't derived directly from Москва, but from the older Russian formation Градъ Московъ (Grad Moskov, or Gradŭ Moskovŭ). Москва was originally the name of the river the city was built on, and Градъ Московъ simply means "the town of/by the Moskva (river)".
As for Beijing, the consonant represented by the letter b in pinyin isn't really voiced (the b contrasts it from its aspirated counterpart, represented by p), while the while the consonant k ended up palatalized to something resembling the English ch (or j in pinyin) during the transition from Middle Chinese to Modern Mandarin. Either the Europeans first heard the name of the city before the transition was complete, or they first heard in Southern Chinese languages where it never happened.
Edited by vonPeterhof on 08 July 2014 at 6:12am
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6596 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 38 of 39 16 July 2014 at 6:42pm | IP Logged |
In Finnish it's still Moskova ♥ It has preserved a lot of loan words unchanged, like for example the Germanic kuningas for king too (sorry offtopic).
Edited by Serpent on 16 July 2014 at 6:52pm
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| Avid Learner Diglot Senior Member Canada Joined 4661 days ago 100 posts - 156 votes Speaks: French*, English Studies: German
| Message 39 of 39 20 July 2014 at 9:29pm | IP Logged |
Lugubert wrote:
Avid Learner wrote:
I think it used to be common to find a French version for cities a long time ago, but nowadays, I don't think it is done anymore for cities who do not have one already. |
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I have experienced the opposite: very many years ago, the first few times I heard a reference to the French town [ni:s], I was confused. Never heard of it, so I asked Mother. She told me that Nice was what I knew as Nizza [nit:sa]. |
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Nice is one of those names that have been around for a long time. What I meant is that if, for some reason, some random Italian city became famous nowadays, I am pretty sure that no French name would replace the original Italian name, unlike most historical well-known countries and cities (including Nice).
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