To think that having a British translation of a foreign country or city name is nonsence?

[SlightlyJaded]

The 'Pav-a-lova' thread got me twitching about this again. It really annoys me because I don't understand why we do it, but am happy to be put right by a know all wiser person than me.

So why do we feel the need to have a British translation for the name of a foreign country or city? What's would have been wrong with calling Spain Espana or Munich Munchen? To me its an utter nonsense, you are not translating from an existing known word in one language to an existing known word in another language - someone has gone to the trouble of making up a completely new and meaningless word loosely based on a word that cannot be translated as it is a naming noun.

Equally mad in reverse - other countries inventing 'names' for the United Kingdom.

I take the point that countries with very different sounded in their alphabet would have been a challenge but still it would have been possible - and respectful - to attempt an English translation that is an approximation of the original name. For example, in Arabic, there is a guttural sound in the back of the throat which is similar to our K - certainly it would be less complicated than inventing a name that means nothing to us and nothing to the native country.

And yes i know other countries do it. I think it's madness regardless of who is at try 'translating' end.

those really are difficult to pronounce buzz lol

Roma is lovely, so is Firenze, Venezia and probably every Italian place name.

I'm English and use the English version of words unless I'm speaking a foreign language. Don't see the problem, to be honest.

I used to have terrible problems with one particular placename when I was abroad. I often had to visit the company HQ in Waltham, Mass. No Boston taxi driver could ever understand what I was saying. I'm English, Waltham is an English placename originally FGS, but I had to grit my teeth and drawl Waaaalthaam to get to where I needed to go.

Jaded, if you like Roma, use Roma - I agree, it does sound better! You could look at it another way and think you have a choice in what to call a city/town. I might try it (if I can pronounce the place names around here), just to see the reaction on peoples faces!

You are making something out of nothing here. Its the way language works. It couldn't possibly work any other way, its just couldn't.

cripes, I am steering clear of Icelandic volcanoes

and anything Finnish

Good job there grimma! I hate it when you have to pronounce English names foreign style to be understood - feels so weird, doesn't it?

Thank you SlightlyJaded. When I brought this up in the past, my family just rolled their eyes and marvelled at yet another one of my crazy thoughts. I too am intrigued.

And why change some names and not others? With Munich I guess its because of the Umlaut. The only other German town which has been changed is Cologne (Koln). Hamburg is Hamburg, Berlin is Berlin, Frankfurt is Frankfurt. So maybe there is one explanation.

Prague has always baffled me. Its originally Praha, not really difficult to say. The Germans made it into Prag and the English into Prague. Very odd. Fascinating nonetheless.

And a Taxi is a Taxi the world over....... unless you're in Wales where it is a Tacsi - go figure!

police and very similar - there is one country where police isn't police at all ...but can't remember which country

If you are British, tell me what you think of the British person who says this:

"Last summer we took the dc to Roma". Anyone? How does that sound to you?

Or : "Next year we're planning on travelling through the north of Italia and on to Oesterreich, maybe drive across to Budapesht for a day or so".

Apart from thinking these people have to much time on their hands, isn't this sounding totally twatty to you?

But many of these countries call England by another name usually...

Angleterre = French

its not a Taxi in Ireland, there is no x in Irish, its Tacsaí. There are plenty of countries where Taxi is something else.

two words that are the same all over the world:

Okay
Coca-Cola

Angleterre I like
Royaume uni is just blah

The people not from have always needed a name for it that they can use when they need to. Obviously the people in that city have their own name for it in their language. But in real life, in daily life, when discussing e.g. whether to pop a few goods in a cart and travel for a few days to sell them in , why would they automatically use the name it has in the language of the people who live there? Obviously they're likely to end up with something pretty similar because otherwise it's not so useful, but it doesn't make sense that they'd always use the local name.

For most of history most people's interactions with towns and cities in foreign lands has not been that of a tourist thriving to be terribly authentic (which we tend to do) but rather has been practical and names have been used that tend to work. I don't think it's trying to rename them. It's adding words to one language to use for towns in countries that speak another language - it's not 'renaming' those towns.

There's a separate issue with colonial powers renaming towns, or governments renaming cities according to the ideology of the time, but simply having 'Londres' and 'London' is just people using names that work in their own language to uniquely identify places to other people speaking that language, surely?

In fact what I've never understood is people speaking English refusing to say 'Paris' (iss) and insisting on saying 'Paris' (ee). In a francophone it makes sense but I couldn't do it, it would feel pretentious.

volcanoes, taxis, coca-cola...

ZZZenAgain

I think as well that you have to look at most names of countries, at least European ones, as being phrases rather than individual items of vocabulary - if that even makes sense???

So, for example Allemagne - the Alemanni tribe were occupying the land at the time of naming, but Deutchland - land of the teutsch (people, natives - named after themselves I suppose), Germany - land of the Germani, as the tribe were referred to by others. It shows the country's pre-history.

I also like that cities have different names in different languages, it shows that they were important enough outside of their own language area for someone to give them another name - it's an honour really. Bit miffed that Birmingham is Birmingham the world over though Obviously not special to anyone ....

You don't have to look outside England for spellings that don't match local pronunciation. Belvoir? Happisburgh? Leicester? Hautbois? Marylebone?

I think Florence is very like Firenze, and Peking like Bejing, just pronounced differently. With all the different pronounciations we have in the UK, never mind the world , it would be impossible to make everyone stick to one pronounciation. And why would you want to? Variety is better than conformity.

I do actually agree that it would be more respectful for us all to pronounce names as the native inhabitants term them. But the only way you can generally do that is by transcribing the sounds into your own alphabet.

Unfortunately, what people think is an accurate representation of a source-language's sounds in the target language can differ wildly. Take Peking versus Beijing, for example.

Another problem occurring to me: take the English name for a major Italian city: "Rome". In German, they don't have silent "magic e" at the end of words. I speculate that a German, looking at "Rome" might pronounce it the way I, as a native English speaker, pronounce "Roma".

was it Canada that actually means "village"? Not sure if I'm getting mixed up but I thought Europeans asked or thought they were asking what the land was called and the natives thought they meant the word village.

May be wrong about that but nice story anyway even if it is wrong.

Similarly, apparently "kangaroo" means "I can't understand you".