Are these Anglicized names a sign of how self-centered and imperialistic we Americans are? Not at all, unless you think the use of Estados Unidos proves that all Spanish speakers share those traits.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Starsky and Hutch's Ford Is Another Matter
The site of the Winter Olympics is Turin, the Games' logos notwithstanding. English speakers should not use Torino unless they also refer to Rome as Roma, Spain as España and so on.
Are these Anglicized names a sign of how self-centered and imperialistic we Americans are? Not at all, unless you think the use of Estados Unidos proves that all Spanish speakers share those traits.
Are these Anglicized names a sign of how self-centered and imperialistic we Americans are? Not at all, unless you think the use of Estados Unidos proves that all Spanish speakers share those traits.
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On those ever-changing city names, that's an issue I like to duck. (Not sure if that's Peiping duck or Beijing duck.)
Does that mean I have to stop ordering a "cal-zone-ay" and start ordering a "cal-zone?" Half the people taking my order now look at me funny. Changing the way you suggest will cause the other half to look at me funny. Are copy editors the arbiters of which way the masses speak?
I generally stay out of the pronunciation realm -- you may want to check with Charles Harrington Elster. My gut reaction, though, is that "cal-zon-ay" would sound kind of affected from a non-Italian at a U.S. pizza joint.
That's quite a different issue, I think, from referring to Rome as "Roma" and the like.
Bombay becomes Mumbai when ... enough people start calling it that. I'd have a better feel for whether this has occurred yet if I were still working on a universal copy desk.
All this is even less scientific than the usual unscientific stuff I deal with, so I have a certain distaste for it.
Speaking of getting looked at funny: Does this mean I can stop ordering a Kwa-SOHWN-weesh when I'm slummin' at Burger King?
Seriously, can we get an *amen* for Mr. Elster? I think of him every time I hear anyone who's been a tourist in France pronounce it "Franz" (or "Fronds"), trying to sound as if they're fluent.
Thank you. I'll take my response (and my freedom fries) off the air.
Living here in a bilingual city (Montreal), this has always been a burning issue, at least with me.
Ideally, I'd like to see people use the same names that locals use, although I understand how impractical that is. However, there are so many exceptions that it is difficult to declare any hard and fast rules.
For example, Spaniars may call the US "Estados Unidos," but do they call New York "Nueva York?" I doubt it.
Some places have names that derive from words, like "United States" or "United Kingdom." But what about places that are named after names? Like Bombay/Mumbai? Why is "Bombay" an English word? Where does "Turin" exist in English except as the name of a city in Italy? Why does "Deutschland" become "Germany?" Look at a place like Nova Scotia, in Canada... "Nova Scotia" is not English, yet we don't call it "New Scotland." Yet in French it's "Nouvelle Ecosse."
It's all so mind boggling.
Look: It's too late to rejigger the way English and French and Spanish and Italian and who knows how many other langages are inconsistent on this issue.
What I'm saying is that there is no reason to make "Torino" the ONE AND ONLY EXCEPTION to the way we've always done things just to match some marketing genius's logo design.
Is the logic of that so hard to understand?
See my original post: This is not an issue exclusive to English, not by a long shot. Once you mend our horrible racist ways, are you then going to go after those horrible bigoted anti-American Spanish and French speakers who say "Estados Unidos" and "Etats-Unis" and even "Californie"?
http://blogs.baltimoresun.com/about_language/2006/02/italian_english.html
See also this entry by John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun, who points out that wholesale reform would be essentially impossible. (And his reductio ad absurdum doesn't even get into the issue of wholly different alphabets. When people accuse me of being a big meanie to K.D. Lang and Bell Hooks, I have to ask: How dare you write "Jiang Zemin" instead of "stick figure, stick figure, scribble, stick figure"?)
Call me naive, but I use the dictionary for pronunciation tips. For calzone, the Merriam-Webster says "cal-zone" and "cal-zo-nay" are both valid, as is "cal-zo-nee." Yay for variety. Is this topic making anyone else hungry?
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