tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5461 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin
| Message 113 of 192 24 September 2012 at 4:58pm | IP Logged |
Ari wrote:
tarvos wrote:
The Dutch word for a country far away (that they don't care to name/is fictional/said
in jest) is "Verweggistan". Literally meaning "farawayistan." We can only use this in jest though. |
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Swedish version: "Långtbortistan". |
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Norwegian version: Langtvekkistan (Langtbortistan would work too.)
It is a word typical of the Donald Duck & Co. comics.
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montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4836 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 114 of 192 24 September 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged |
It used to bother me that in England we refer to the German city of Köln as "Cologne", which sounds like a French name, until I realised that the latter was derived from the older Roman name of "Colonia". So I decided to be less sniffy about names in future!
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Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4647 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian
| Message 115 of 192 24 September 2012 at 5:32pm | IP Logged |
montmorency wrote:
It used to bother me that in England we refer to the German city of Köln as "Cologne", which sounds like a French name, until I realised that the latter was derived from the older Roman name of "Colonia". So I decided to be less sniffy about names in future! |
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It is also Cologne in French. You also have the term "eau de cologne" as a generic name for perfumes.
By the way, I was told by a German friend that in the local dialect in Köln/Cologne the city is called "Kölle".
My own attitude is simply to refer to a city with the name it has in the language I speak (that is, if I know it): Cologne in English and French, Köln in German and Norwegian, Colonia in Spanish and Keulen in Dutch.
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iguanamon Pentaglot Senior Member Virgin Islands Speaks: Ladino Joined 5270 days ago 2241 posts - 6731 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)
| Message 116 of 192 24 September 2012 at 5:51pm | IP Logged |
New York is known in Spanish as "Nueva York" and in Portuguese as "Nova Iorque", but in French it is called simply "New York". I wonder why it's not called Nouvelle York in French? How does French handle the suburb of New Rochelle?
Edited by iguanamon on 24 September 2012 at 5:53pm
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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 117 of 192 24 September 2012 at 6:07pm | IP Logged |
tractor wrote:
Ari wrote:
tarvos wrote:
The Dutch word for a country far away (that they don't care to name/is fictional/said
in jest) is "Verweggistan". Literally meaning "farawayistan." We can only use this in jest though. |
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|
Swedish version: "Långtbortistan". |
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Norwegian version: Langtvekkistan (Langtbortistan would work too.)
It is a word typical of the Donald Duck & Co. comics.
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are these associated with countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan etc? Or not?
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5064 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 118 of 192 24 September 2012 at 6:52pm | IP Logged |
SamD wrote:
Somehow "I want to go to Londres" sounds either like someone is being
very pretentious or is channeling someone else.
If a foreign city or country has a name that is difficult for speakers of one language
to pronounce correctly or without inducing giggles and blushes, there should be a name
for it in that one language.
On the other hand, the pronunciation of Iraq as "eye-rack" comes off as jingoistic.
It's easy enough for English speakers to say "ee-rock." |
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Yes, but English does not tend to borrow the pronunciation from other languages. It
seems to me that more often than not they just take an original written word (without
diacritics and letters non-present in English) or a strange transliteration and
pronounce it in a random way. While other languages rarely borrow words in the same way
from English. For example, where did [ks] come from in Mexico and Texas if they have
never been pronounced like that?
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tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4715 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish
| Message 119 of 192 24 September 2012 at 6:58pm | IP Logged |
Because it's written like that in Spanish and in English x usually means a [ks] sound?
No genius needed to explain that
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Марк Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 5064 days ago 2096 posts - 2972 votes Speaks: Russian*
| Message 120 of 192 24 September 2012 at 7:07pm | IP Logged |
tarvos wrote:
Because it's written like that in Spanish and in English x usually means
a [ks] sound?
No genius needed to explain that |
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Then why isn't written in English in a way which would satisfy the Spanish pronunciation
(adopted to English)? And that's what I'm talking about. English speakers rarely borrow
anything from ear.
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