Re: New pronunciation of Bangalore


Oliver Cromm wrote:
* Mike Wright wrote:

Oliver Cromm wrote:
* Paul D wrote:

Not knowing Turkish, I personally would have no idea how to say
"Türkiye" if I saw it in an English text. (I could make a pretty good
guess but it still wouldn't sound like English.)

Why do English-speaking people insist that the name of every place in
the world has to sound like English?

For the same reason that Japanese-speaking people insist that every
place in the world has to sound like Japanese and Chinese-speaking
people insist that every place in the world has to sound like Chinese?

Yeah, probably. So, self-centeredness it is.

Which is the norm in language. That is why languages rename foreign
places to fit their phonetics, and similarly modify loanwords.

To clarify, I am sympathetic to the arguments "I can't pronounce it" and
"If I pronounce it like that, I won't be understood" (which, together,
cover a lot of ground), but much less to "I can pronounce it that way,
and I will be understood, but I don't like it because it sounds
foreign", which is what your argument sounded like.

That is a perfectly legitimate argument. When you speak language X,
said language has the tendency to require you to to produce unforeign
sounds. Except, of course, for journalists, politicians and show-offs.

Not to mention that attempts to reproduce foreign sounds without some
basic knowledge of the foreign language in question can result totally
opaque to the people of the country or town whose name you are trying
to say in their language.

.

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