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Five stars to you. Rush Limbaugh has made it his trademark to flamboyantly and comically mispronounce the names of anyone who not a red-state American, that his ditto-heads, well, ditto.
Read a news article concerning Iraq, and I noticed I go with the Spanish pronounciation more than anything. I don't say "ee-rahk" or "eye-rak" I say "ee-rak" and the people as "ee-rakis". With iran, I also say it "ee-ran" but the people I call them "ee-rain-ians"
Some Americans even pronounce Italy as 'eye-taly'.
I think you'll find that people hate eye-talians, but think it-talians are just like everybody else. Like the Rush Limbaugh reference above, if people want to insult somebody, the first thing they do is pronounce their name wrong. And the insulters are usually too ignorant to know how to pronounce them respectfully.
What is the correct pronuciation of Copenhagen. Is it pronounced as Copen haygen or Copen hargen.
In Danish, it is spelled København. The Danes have a way of pronouncing things that is hard to emulate for this Swede, but it sounds like "Kew-bin-hauwn." The V in Danish turns into more of a W sound. And they live in Danmark, not Denmark.
Similarly, Sweden in Swedish is Sverige, but Stockholm is still Stockholm.
Five stars to you. Rush Limbaugh has made it his trademark to flamboyantly and comically mispronounce the names of anyone who not a red-state American, that his ditto-heads, well, ditto.
Wasn't Rush the first one to use the expression "Democrat Party" instead of "Democratic" Party?
There's a metro stop in the DC area where I live called Grosvenor, and I've heard tons of people mispronounce it "Grovesnor", complete with the "s"sound.
I would pronounce it based on where I am located, in the US I would say "Mel Bourne" when I am back in Australia I would pronounce it as "Mel buhrn". SSimilarhen I am in Ontario I would pronounce "Toronto" in the states "Toronto"
What the Americans call Gothenberg, is pronounced something like Yut-ta-boy in Swedish.
True. It also has an alternate spelling, Göteborg. Though it would be more along the lines of Yuh-ta-borje. The R is there, but the G turns into the Swedish J sound, which is more like a Y in English.
I suspect these cities have alternate names in English because the native names are hard for non-speakers. That would be the common sense reason, at least.
That said, I would prefer that people use the name they CAN pronounce, rather than butchering the native one.
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