serious question. is it pretentious to use the “real” name of a place instead of it’s english name? i’m not talking about pronunciation, but when english people decide to come up with a completely different, name for foreign places
like, “i visited milano, torino, and firenze this summer” instead of “milan, turin, and florence”
I am all in to pronounce names & places correctly, aka according to the original language. So, so dumb when a name is “transliterated” to another alphabet and now it doesn’t mean anything to anyone, and nobody can read it correctly.
However, for well established names, might not worth the trouble.
I agree to a point, but try Bangkok.
Edit: For the uninitiated, that is: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
lol do they say that colloquially? I don’t think so?
The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.
There is an urban legend that everyone in Spain started speaking this way because of the super-inbred Habsburg kings had a terrible lisp and everyone wanted to make him sound normal. There’s no evidence of it, but considering this guy was king of Spain…
When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn’t have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they’re trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you’re kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.
Edit: Apparently, as of recently, Spain no longer insists México is spelled Méjico but still keeps it around as a correct spelling (it’s not, it’s literally only them).
That sounds interesting, do you have a source? I’d like to learn more.
I’ve read that in ancient Spanish the letter X had in some cases the sound that the letter J has in modern Spanish, therefore the spelling of some words changed accordingly: Don Quixote is Don Quijote in modern day Spanish.
I can’t type out the pronunciation but have you guys heard American people read Japanese names? My god, it is so weird. Say that to Japanese people and I bet half of the time they don’t recognise what it is. The way a foreign language is being butchered is beyond imagination.
Hahaaaaaa… sexy European lisp.
Reminds me of one of the best Kids in the Hall sketches.
