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.

No. It's called having a native language with a common phonology (and a writing system that more or less fits that phonology).

Can you tell me how a Japanese or a Chinese should pronounce Austin, Yorkshire, Paris, or Maghreb?

Or, for that matter, how a Frenchman should pronounce St. Louis, Misouri?

And, what should a Spaniard should do about Los Angeles and San Jose in California, or Amarillo and Refugio in Texas?

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.

I'd hardly call my comment an "argument".

I would take Paul D's "still wouldn't sound like English" to mean, "wouldn't be recognizable to most of the people I talk to."

How are your tones when you pronounce Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, and Japanese place names? Are you careful about your Japanese vowel length? Do your Arabic consonants sound like the real thing, and do you adjust them (and the vowels) for the specific country? Do you aspirate the appropriate consonants in Hindi? Do you pronounce your h's at the end of Malay and Indonesian place names, but omit them at the beginning? What do *you* call the capital of Russia? And what do you call Russia when speaking English? How about Egypt?

Most people who could get some of those right would still fail at others. Most English-only-speakers faced with "Türkiye" won't have a clue. Most Chinese and Japanese will be even more clueless, because they're unlikely to even see it in the original orthography.

People will pretty much do the best they can. You can try to demand more, but you probably won't get it.

--
Mike Wright
http://www.raccoonbend.com
.

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