![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
1. Interesting comment somebody made: I don't think of myself really as an American, I consider myself a New Yorker first.
*laughs*
That's such a normal thing to say, I love it.
2. Stupid people, though. Phonology. Say it with me. PHONE-ology. Phone. Like telephone? Like sounds you moronic little twit?
3. And the interesting discussion part! We're talking about accomodation and stuff, and especially about people who deliberately will mispronounce words in another language, or who just won't care and blithely mispronounce them and use them incorrectly in their own language. And one girl mentioned the common pronunciation of Puerto Rico as Porto Rico.
Except....
1. English doesn't have the combination of sounds pw. We can say it, sure, but it's not part of English, and it's slightly more difficult to say. It's easier for us to anglicize the word to a combination of sounds that *does* exist in our language.
2. More to the point, people generally don't try to emulate native pronunciation of places, unless they're speaking in that language. In fact, if you do, you'll be considered pretentious. Oh, I was in Pah-ree before I went to Firenze. Riiiiiight. If you're speaking Spanish and going "Porto Rico", that's wrong, but in English? It's a slightly different case from usual, sure, but I think the general rule still applies. Place names aren't kept true to form.
*laughs*
That's such a normal thing to say, I love it.
2. Stupid people, though. Phonology. Say it with me. PHONE-ology. Phone. Like telephone? Like sounds you moronic little twit?
3. And the interesting discussion part! We're talking about accomodation and stuff, and especially about people who deliberately will mispronounce words in another language, or who just won't care and blithely mispronounce them and use them incorrectly in their own language. And one girl mentioned the common pronunciation of Puerto Rico as Porto Rico.
Except....
1. English doesn't have the combination of sounds pw. We can say it, sure, but it's not part of English, and it's slightly more difficult to say. It's easier for us to anglicize the word to a combination of sounds that *does* exist in our language.
2. More to the point, people generally don't try to emulate native pronunciation of places, unless they're speaking in that language. In fact, if you do, you'll be considered pretentious. Oh, I was in Pah-ree before I went to Firenze. Riiiiiight. If you're speaking Spanish and going "Porto Rico", that's wrong, but in English? It's a slightly different case from usual, sure, but I think the general rule still applies. Place names aren't kept true to form.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-02-08 12:56 pm (UTC)I tend to emulate native pronunciations of place names if and only if they are not radically different from the US version. Spanish place names are generally like this -- I've taken Spanish, so I instinctively pronounce things that way. Same with places like "Berlin," which is actually pronounced more like "Bear-leen" in German rather than "Burr-lynn" the way many Americans say it. It's not a big deal to say that. But take "Moscow," which in Russian is more like "Mohsk-vah" -- nobody's going to know what I'm talking about if I do that, so I don't.
I find it interesting that places don't necessarily have consistent names. The country whose capital is Berlin, for instance, is "Germany" in English, "Alemania" in Spanish, "L'Allemagne" in French, and "Deutschland" in German. I just think that's neat.