3w ago

Barcelona

96 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.
  
  But if you pronounce faux pas wrong, it's also faux pas
  
  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?
- 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 saying it correctly.
  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. 😺
- 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. 🙃
- The english Th sounds different from the spanish C. Source: spaniard.
  It's similar though.
- 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.

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Look ma, a cunt
  
  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
  
  Language is indeed for communication, which is why both ways of saying it work...
  
  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.

Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.
- The majority of my time playing skyrim I thought he was referring to somewhere in a different city like Solitude or something. Didnt realize he was talking about a place thats 10 paces away lol
  
  The sense of scale has always been off with these games. Huge battles have 20 people fighting, cities have less people than a small apartment building.
  
  And like... I'm just guessing... 800 square feet? That's a district? Nazeem is crazy

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"
- 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.
- Yeah kinda because English speakers know it as Milan, Turin and Florence
- Does this mean I have to start calling Los Angeles "The City of Angels"?