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Renaming the cities of other countries... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| 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 49 of 192 17 November 2009 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | ||
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I don't know about Danish, but it would strike me as an affectation in English, sort of like how Miss Piggy always
says "moi" to show she knows French but it just annoys everyone else. Anyway, if you're not going all the way, why bother? I don't have the faintest clue what Mexico City is in Aztec or Jerusalem is in Hebrew and Yiddish and Arabic and Aramaic and Armenian*, or what my home town is in Cree. *Nor which language to give preference to. Edit: Oh yeah, Mexico City is "Tenochtitlan" as I recall. But who uses that in conversation? Edit #2: No disrespect to Iversen, who aside from the Professor is probably my biggest role model here. Edited by Captain Haddock on 17 November 2009 at 4:02pm 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 50 of 192 17 November 2009 at 4:43pm | IP Logged | ||
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I simply don't understand your logic, Gusatufu. I refer to a town called Paris by it current inhabitants (with a mute s), - why should I want to change its name, when the general rule in Danish is that we don't change town names if we more or less can pronounce the original name?
The tendency to adapt place names was stronger before the modern massmedia, and people back then adapted a few town names they used often and left the rest alone. On the other hand they changed just about all the country names they knew. That's why we have a confused situation now where some names always are used in an adapted form, some have two forms and the rest are pronounced and written fairly closely to the original form. In this situation I can choose to stick to the original names whenever I have the choice, and others can choose to use the adapted names in the greyzone. It would be rather pointless to invoke historical considerations (except to explain the reasons behind of some of the adaptations, and I leave that to the etymologists). The Romans called the town Lutetia (or rather Lutetia Parisiorum),with a reference to the Gaulish tribe who lived there. In French this name as been changed into Lutèce, but the alternative name "Paris" was used already around 300, so it has been in use during all the time where anything vaguely ressembling a French country has existed. For the same reason I don't use the Aztec name for Ciudad de Mexico - I use the name used by present day Mexicans (and NOT Mexico City, unless I'm speaking in English to Anglophones). The final -s in Paris was certainly pronounced in Old French, and theoretically the Danish pronunciation could be a direct loan which happened already back then, but who cares? It is silent now when Frenchmen speak French, and that's the pronunciation I would use if the Danish tradition hadn't been different, whatever the origine of that tradition. And no, we don't don't call French cars for voitures, we call them 'bil' because of a competition where that name won. But those that drive them are called 'chauffører', and that word is an adapted French loanword. And the names of French car makers are generally preserved except for humorous deformations (Peugeot is sometimes humoristically pronounced pegoyt (with a hard g)). I fail to see why it should be "pedantic and a very petty form of showing off" to use a word in approximately the form in which it was imported. If there is an overwhelming consensus for or against using an adaptation of the foreign word then I follow it, but we are talking about a greyzone here, and within that zone I support the position that foreign names should be kept in a form fairly close to the original. But everybody is welcome to have another meaning, as long as you don't try to force me to share it. Edited by Iversen on 17 November 2009 at 5:12pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7164 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 51 of 192 17 November 2009 at 5:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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In general when I talk about place names, my choice of pronunciation varies with my audience. I'm not as big a fan of doing it the way Iversen prefers...
When I deal with English-speaking people (especially those who are unfamiliar with geography), I'll stick when applicable to the English convention - pronunciation and all. Therefore I would say things like "I am going next week to Prague and then onto Cracow." or "How was your trip to Beijing? Did you find time also to see Shanghai and Hong Kong as you had hoped for?" I only consider using the "proper" pronunciation of place-names if I know or strongly suspect that my audience will understand what I mean or are familiar only with that "proper" pronunciation or reference. On my latest trip through Europe, I did vary my pronunciation or choice of place-names to suit the local environment. It was a way to make sure that my friends/hosts were clear on what my plans were. For example just before I landed in Romania, I told my friend in English that I was planning to be in his hometown, Braşov by so-and-so time (I pronounced it the name as "Bra-shov" per Romanian convention even though the rest of my conversation was in English) A few days later I found myself in another town called Sighişoara (pronounced like "Sig-ee-SHWA-ra" in Romanian) but then called a Hungarian friend whom I was to visit in a few days. I explained to him that I was in Segesvár (pronounced "SHEG-esh-vahr" - this is the Hungarian equivalent of "Sighişoara") but would arrive in his town in a few days. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5529 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 52 of 192 17 November 2009 at 5:20pm | IP Logged | ||
My logic is pretty simple. In Danish, everyone else calls Paris [Paris]. If you happen to know that the 's' is silent in French (which most other Danes probably know too), that doesn't change the long established fact that in Danish, the name is [Paris], everything else is wrong. It is not relevant to invoke "logic" or "consistency". You probably don't say "han erede" or something like that, which would be "logical", instead of "han var". Danish is not Esperanto! Apart from this, how do you select which local form to use? What do you call Jerusalem? Dublin? Åbo? Canton? Do you take sides if ownership is disputed? In the case of Paris, the name is still spelled the same, it's only pronounced differently. Do you also use the French 'r'? Logic would sure want you to. What is more essential, the pronounciation if individual sounds, or the overall form? Would you for example try to use the "local" form, but with Danish phonology, or try to imitate some locals all they way down to sounds? Have you seriously never experienced any bad feelings because of this? It certainly wouldn't go down well here, espcially not when the forms are too different for normal people to understand that it is the same place. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5529 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 53 of 192 17 November 2009 at 5:25pm | IP Logged | ||
OK, but while speaking English, would you adapt the words to English phonology or try to copy the locals exactly? When I here Swedes speak English and inject names of Swedish people or places using Swedish pronunciation, it feels very weird. It might be different if the sound of English was less familiar. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7164 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 54 of 192 17 November 2009 at 6:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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When speaking English AND dealing with an informed audience (or an audience whom I strongly suspect to be informed), I would adopt the native convention as best as possible. In cases when speaking English AND dealing with an uninformed audience (or an audience whom I strongly suspect to be uninformed) I would use the English convention (or "mangling") as best as possible. Therefore with an uninformed audience in English I would use for example "Prague" instead of "Praha", "Naples" instead of "Napoli" or Tripoli (Libya) instead of Ṭarābulus (NB The English convention does in other cases come a bit closer to the native pronunciation/form (e.g. Beijing, Vladivostok, Mumbai, Buenos Aires), so I may end up being closer to the native pronunciation without any special effort.)
The reason I approach it from two ways can be seen in the following example: If I were speaking in English to a Hungarian friend in Hungary, I would pronounce local place names per Hungarian convention even though the rest of the conversation is in English. I don't find it too strange especially considering that if I were to pronounce the Hungarian names using English conventions, the spoken result could be unintelligible. For example, a name like "Szombathely" could be read aloud in English as "ZOM-bath-ell-ee", when the Hungarian/"proper" pronunciation is "SOM-bat-hey". The English mangling is often too obscure for Hungarians to understand unless they'd be fluent in English and aware of how Hungarian spelling can be reinterpreted in English. This also means that I would pronounce names such as Győr, Székesfehérvár, Pécs, Miskolc, Nagykanizsa or even Budapest as in Hungarian (it also helps that I know some Hungarian, so I have some practice with pronouncing things there in a way that is usually close enough to "proper") However I am human and there are many cases where I'd be totally unfamiliar with the name. In those cases I'd try my best, but by this point I know that I'd be guessing (and would probably mangle the pronunciation). If you were to make me read aloud some place-names in Celtic languages, I could be really struggling and nearly paralyzed since I would have no idea about to handle names such as Ystradgynlais (Wales) or Muckanaghederdauhaulia (Ireland) (let alone produce the native pronunciation) without some training in Celtic languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arti Diglot Senior Member Russian Federation Joined 7020 days ago 130 posts - 165 votes Speaks: Russian*, English Studies: French, Czech | Message 55 of 192 17 November 2009 at 8:25pm | IP Logged | ||
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I haven't read all the thread, but is there any logic explanation why foreign geographic names are different from the original ones in certain languages?
The only logical explanation I find is simple renaming the new conquered territories according to ones native language, but it doesn't fit all the cases... 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| minus273 Triglot Senior Member France Joined 5773 days ago 288 posts - 346 votes Speaks: Mandarin*, EnglishC2, French Studies: Ancient Greek, Tibetan | Message 56 of 192 17 November 2009 at 8:57pm | IP Logged | ||
The most common scenario: We have population A, speaking language A, who is the current major ethnic group of city C. For a number k, we say, k years ago, city C is inhabited by population A_k, which may or may not be the direct ancestor / direct linguistic ancestor of A. Now we introduce a population B. k years ago, B started to contact with city C. Most probably, the name of C in the k-years-ago B language is the direct phonetic adaption of the name of C in the A_k language. If the name of C is not consciously changed in B language in the last k years, the current B name of C is the A_k name of C plus phonetic evolution. With regard to the native name of C (the name used by its then-current major ethnic group), a number of things may happen: - The name evolved as A_k language evolves into A language - The dominant ethnic group of C changes to A', with a different historical name of C. - A slang name takes over the former name, felt as outdated - C become part of a nation state D, so population A start to speak the national language, in which the name of C is different for the aforesaid reasons. Or more generally, A adopted another speech form. Also, the adoption of the name in B_k language may be only indirectly phonetic. It may be mediated by a classical language, like Latin, (A_k scholars latinized the A_k name of C to make it look better in Latin) or a trade language, like Low Saxon. Or maybe it was pronounced in B_k (and in B) with a spelling pronunciation (it's the norm in Sinosphere), etc... Edited by minus273 on 17 November 2009 at 9:03pm 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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