Barcelona
Barcelona
112 comments
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I know its sounds like im an asshole but i lived 4 months there and picked itnup lol. So now i alsways say it like that even tho my spanish is pretty bad. But i like to pick up the correct, native pronounciacion of place names anyways to show a bit of respect to the people living there and i dont judge you if you dont do it.
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I'm bilingual and that's dumb.
People living in a place don't care how you say the name of the place where they live when you're talking to someone else in your own language. They don't feel a sudden burst of respect from someone elsewhere in the world.
More importantly, the native names of most places use phonemes that simply don't exist in English. Turkey wants you to say "Türkiye" but not only does English not have the "ü" character, that phoneme simply doesn't exist in English. If you're trying to communicate with someone in English, you shouldn't use phonemes that don't exist in English.
Fundamentally, the purpose of saying a place's name is to communicate with someone, it's not to show respect to the people who live in the place being named. If someone is going to find it even slightly difficult to understand you because you're choosing to pronounce the name of a place in a way that's unnatural to English speakers, then you're doing a bad job of communicating.
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Im bilingual and speak 4 languages and i like it when people pronounce names correctly. Especially in hungarian which a lot of people pronounce incorrectly, it feels nice. Then again i could be alone but other peoples comment suggest otherwise. I just dont know why you reacted so offensively to my comment. Btw a language not having the correct sounds doesnt mean you dont hear/know them. Im really bad with the scratchy sounds in french, danish, arabic, etc but i still hear them so i recognise what is being said.
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Look ma, a cunt
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Here in Switzerland we have four languages and we simply say words like they sound in the language they are from, even if most of us only speak one of the languages natively and one as a second language from school. There is no reason to make up separate pronunciations. Buillon is buillon and tiramisu is tiramisu even if I'm speaking Swiss German.
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My experience has been the exact opposite. When I mispronounce words I've been giggled at and/or corrected. When I pronounce it right, people either don't notice or act pleasantly surprised, I've even gotten some head nods that I assumed was acknowledgement of my trying
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But they are speaking the local language, so they're learning to say it the correct way. Why would they insist on saying it wrong when they are learning to say everything else correctly?
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Language is indeed for communication, which is why both ways of saying it work...
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There is a lot of people that speak english as a second or third language often they just don't know correct english toponims or idioms, sometimes it's just happens. English for a lot of people isn't objective by itself just a means to an end.
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Good luck dealing with all the idiots disagreeing with you. I'm not sure whether they think they look smart by using the "correct" pronunciation; but one learns quickly to anglicise words when talking to anglos.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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It's not a lisp. Castilian pronunciation uses the same S sound as for the letter S as speakers from Latin America. It's only Z and soft C that are different.
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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"
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Well, I don't think most primarily-English-speaking people would appreciate you mentioning that you visited Baile Átha Cliathe this past summer instead of just saying Dublin.
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Yeah kinda because English speakers know it as Milan, Turin and Florence
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Well, most of the Spanish speaking world calls Barcelona the same way we call it. With slightly different inflection, but only the castellanos have the “Spanish lisp.” Which derived from some king who had a lisp, if I’m remembering that correctly? So other Spanish speaking people—most of them, in fact, don’t call it “barth-elona.”
I learned Spanish in Spain, so I started speaking in that lispy Spanish. But as I continued to get way more fluent, living in the other parts of the Spanish speaking world, my accent changed.
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The Spanish king with a lisp is a folk etymology.
If it were true, then 's' would also be pronounced that way.
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I learned Spanish in Honduras. Never heard anyone ever use the Spanish lisp.
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Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.
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The majority of my time playing skyrim I thought he was referring to somewhere in a different citt like Solitude or something. Didnt realize he was talking about a place thats 10 paces away lol
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And like... I'm just guessing... 800 square feet? That's a district? Nazeem is crazy
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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.
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I agree to a point, but try Bangkok.
Edit: For the uninitiated, that is: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit
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That would be the (standard) Spanish, right? Catalan, the local language, has it with /s/
But it's very language-dependent. English has established names for many places, so you should probably use those. But some languages just don't, and if you borrow everything, you might as well borrow properly.
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I think it's interesting that some countries have entirely different names depending on the language. Here is one for example:
- English - Germany
- Spanish - Alemania
- Finnish - Saksa
- Polish - Niemcy
- German - Deutschland
There are many others, but they are more so variations of the same name, so I didn't include them. The ones I listed are completely different.
I heard that the different names originated from the names of the Germanic tribes that interacted most with the respective peoples and resulting language. For example, what would be English-speakers would interact mostly with Germanic tribes, whereas would be Spanish-speakers would interactact mostly with Alemanni tribes. However, Perplexity says that the English name comes from the Roman name for the area, while the Spanish name comes from the name of the tribe. If only Crunk the Historian could investigate this and find an ultimate answer.
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Fortha Bartha
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Hah. It does raise the question of what the reaction would be if the guy was going for a Catalan pronuntiation instead.
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Una thervetha por favor!
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¡Pues hombre, vallase para la porra! ¡Imbecil!
Una torta de patatas
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Ith hith name Igor?
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That'th great newth!
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No, I've never been to Barthalona or Barcelona. Nor am I ever going to either. I'm far to poor to travel beyond local necessities. I have no idea why I'm here at this party. Why you are here?
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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.
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The one that keeps surprising me over and over again is Karyohkey instead of Ka-ra-o-ke.
Not sure about names, I feel like I have heard proper pronunciations of Akira and Tanaka in media, do you have some good examples of ones that are frequently wrong?
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Many Spanish folks I have met roll their eyes when my Latin American Spanish skills rill my r's.
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Reminds me of one of the best Kids in the Hall sketches.
112 comments
But that's how c is pronounced in castillian, no? What's pretentious about it?
Pronouncing things as they would be in the language they're actually in is sometimes a faux pas in American culture, I've learned
Let's be fair: doing things the correct way, or just being slightly educated, is often a faux pas in this wasteland pretending to be a civilization.
Fowks pass!
Only if you are not a native speaker of that language, or always? Am I supposed to imitate how Americans botch the names of German car manufacturers like Porsche or Volkswagen if I ever go on vacation there?
Yeah, it's weird. Sometimes people think it's pretentious and sometimes people think you're an idiot, whether you do it correctly or not. Like all rules with the English language, it's a case-by-case issue. If anyone tells you a rule to remember it, it's likely wrong more often than it's correct.
I've been mocked and had some people outright pretend they don't understand what I'm saying when I pronounce guanábana correctly.
probably that he's not from there. absent other information, his lisp would then indicate that he is imitating the accent in order to sound more cultured. like someone from the us midwest saying "have you been to mehico?"
Barcelona kinda has an extra layer of this too, because Catalan does pronounce "Barcelona" with an S sound rather than an unvoiced TH
That's fine, I intend to aggressively say "Los An-heles" and "Ari-tho-nah" from now on, see how the anglophones deal with using a normal accent to say their names.
I mean, I get it, it sounds weird when people say "Los Anyeles" or "London" when speaking Spanish, too. But... you know, if the spelling is the same I don't see the problem using the way it's actually meant to be said.
I've gotten enough weird looks for ordering a "BuRRi-toh" in anglo speaking countries to be annoyed by this. And don't get me started with how Americans have chosen to pronounce "Los Gatos". If you're going to steal our word you at least could give us the deference of not mocking us for not butchering it.
Now, if the anglophone in question is out there calling it "Barna" you know they're a poser.
Fair but unkind. People talk weird most of the time. 😺
What's pretentious about it is that you're talking in English, so you should use the English place name. The purpose of communication is to be understood by the other person. If you use a non-standard pronunciation, even if it's the name as the locals there pronounce it.
So, to communicate effectively to another English speaker in English you shouldn't be saying "Munchen" you should be saying Munich. You should be saying Prague, not Praha. Vienna, not Wien.
Choosing to say the name of a place "like the natives do" might be seen as pretentious because instead of trying to communicate effectively, you're attempting to seem smart or cultured.
For me is a matter of respect, I try to pronounce place names just as I try to pronounce names. If I say them wrong I feel like I'm disrespecting the locals.
If that makes me pretentious I'll be a petty bitch and mispronounce the names of the ones calling me so. Bastards.
Thank you for detailed responce. For some people it might be just a habit, I'm sure most people aren't against using equivalent names if they exist. Just never occured to me that it would be pretentious, for example until you mentioned that Praha is Prague in English it didn't click with me.
It's the opposite (as far as I could find). Pronouncing "c" similar to "th" is only done in Spanish in Spain. In Catalan (as well as Latin/South American Spanish) all pronounce it like "s".
Castilian Spanish is the dominant dialect of Spanish in Spain.
Edit: A helpful map:
There is no mention of catalan in my post because it wasn't about catalan. 🙃