- May 5, 2010
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It's a bit of a joke in my family. Not this guy, in particular, but the name 'Høst' in general.
It's a bit of a joke in my family. Not this guy, in particular, but the name 'Høst' in general.
- Jul 25, 2012
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Also, I'm pretty sure both of those names are older than the current modern language pronunciation/name. Paris, pronounced the "english" way was the original pronunciation, it came from the Parisii tribe. I wouldn't be surprised if the same goes for Milan and it became Milano later.
- Jul 25, 2012
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- Sep 26, 2020
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My uncle once brought his car to a French garage. The mechanic knew that the letter "h" isn't silent in English, so he asked my uncle if he wanted him to change the hoil. He definitely made an effort, although he didn't get it completely right.
- May 5, 2010
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Just goes to show that sometimes you don't pronounce the "h", because there is no damn "h".
- Jul 25, 2012
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Yes, and the race was established when modern French was the dominant language in France, so the pronunciation is fine. The city was known be the "English" pronunciation since the Romans and, unsurprisingly, that's the pronunciation that has survived in English.
- Jul 25, 2012
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He may have just been pronouncing the h in the French word.
- May 5, 2010
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I also wonder if some of it could be because of "flow". "Paris-Nice" just sounds a little... chunky... if you have to strongly pronounce the 's' in 'Paris'. Same with names; for me pronuncing the surname of the French 'Martin' in, well, the French way just comes naturally, because it comes after the very French name 'Guillaume', and please, OP, don't tell me you want commentators to somehow anglify 'Guillaume'.
- Jul 25, 2012
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honestly, I don't know why. It could be Rob learnt the name of the race pronounced that way, but the city pronounced the other way. He might have started pronouncing it differently and that changed. I don't really care, I'm really just pointing out why saying Paris the English way when referring specifically to the city, and saying it the French way when referring to races, fits historically with the development of the different languages, the city and the races.
Gwilliam...
- Sep 14, 2020
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- Jul 25, 2012
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Gwill surely?!
Edit: Although we then need to determine if there is a gap after the G...
- Sep 14, 2020
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Sorry was talking about anglicising it so it would be Will or Bill in the manner of
those daft Liverpool fans who refer to Bobby Firminio.
- Jul 25, 2012
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I know, I was just poking fun even further with the whole pronounce the word in a phonetic-English way.
- Feb 20, 2010
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I think literally every Eurosport commentator has pronounced Paris-Nice with the silent S, except Sean Kelly.
The talk earlier of going with dialectal pronunciations may be excessive, but I see nothing wrong with trying to pronounce a name as it would be in at least the standard phonology of the rider's native tongue, although I know that even that can cause some variation, such as use of the dental fricative for z and ci/ce in Spanish. You might not need to go as far as pronouncing a name in Züritüütsch or broad Boarisch, but you could at least enunciate the name in standard German. Sure, if you don't have a particular sound in your phonology then you might need to find some kind of substitute or approximation if you can't enunciate that sound comfortably or struggle to differentiate it, but that's all, really.
The talk earlier of going with dialectal pronunciations may be excessive, but I see nothing wrong with trying to pronounce a name as it would be in at least the standard phonology of the rider's native tongue, although I know that even that can cause some variation, such as use of the dental fricative for z and ci/ce in Spanish. You might not need to go as far as pronouncing a name in Züritüütsch or broad Boarisch, but you could at least enunciate the name in standard German. Sure, if you don't have a particular sound in your phonology then you might need to find some kind of substitute or approximation if you can't enunciate that sound comfortably or struggle to differentiate it, but that's all, really.
- Oct 15, 2020
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I'm not sure if you're just being deliberately obtuse here - but those places have English exonyms that have been taken into common parlance and Fribourg hasn't. To be even more specific, Milan is the name for Milano in Lombard language so our name for it probably stems from that; and the silent 's' in French (as in Paris) was only developed in the middle ages so perhaps the pronunciation is derived from the old French style that or just from seeing it written rather than spoken.
Exonyms are probably more common in other European languages as border areas and hinterlands see lots of crossover in language - it would be normal for an Italian to call Zürich 'Zurigo', a German to call Geneva 'Gänf/Genf' or a French person to call Basel 'Bâle'. Here's a wikipedia page with all English exonyms which you can see all of the place names if you're still confused with anything else https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_exonyms
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Apparently Rob Hatch's normal voice is tinged with a strong Scottish accent which you would never know listening to his commentary - Think Hatch is talented at linguistics.
- Oct 15, 2020
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I just googled as his voice is hard to place accent wise to find out where he was from (Blackburn FWIW), and found this quote in an interview which elicited a chuckle
From here: https://www.cyclist.co.uk/in-depth/7487/the-biggest-problem-in-our-business-is-ego-rob-hatch-qa
- Jan 4, 2020
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Actually there are some talking points here which are intermingling.
I don't want to dwell on the Anglo-Saxons, as some of them are really nice people
, but from my experience it's really common for them to anglify foreigner's first names especially - Luciana becomes Lucy, Matthias Matt. I haven't experienced this in other languages as much, although sometimes Chinese or Thai for instance in Germany change their name themselves so that they won't feel like an outsider so much and their name doesn't constantly get butchered. It's actually sad, I'd rather make the effort to pronounce them (half-)correctly.
Isn't part of the discussion here actually the difference between how a word is written and how it's spoken, and whether you should follow the written letters or the sound of a name?
I would never say Milano in German. It's Mailand, because, yes, Milano sounds totally artificial if used in a German conversation. Same with Paris or London.
But I think there's a huge difference between using the common pronounciation in your country for a big, known city, and germanizing/anglifying, whatever, a town which has no such standard pronounciation.
Same goes for proper names, actually. Cäsar is Cäsar in German, Cesar in English. I wouldn't use Kai-ssar in a conversation.
To me it's less important to not change a city's name, I'm okay with it getting home-sized, but when it comes to people I'm actually annoyed because that feels disrespectful to me, like you are not respecting who that person is.
Which name you use for a city can be extremely political, sometimes I don't even know about it, but who has used the name before is quite important - not so much when it's about whether Fribourg should be pronounced French or English (personally I never know whether to pronounce it German or French when I'm in a German conversation), but for instance Stalingrad-Wolgograd, or cities in Eastern Europe which often have German names as well, but if you use them it's indicating a bit these cities should belong to Germany...
I would never have thought this question could be one of modern English politics, though, I'm quite surprised!
I don't want to dwell on the Anglo-Saxons, as some of them are really nice people
, but from my experience it's really common for them to anglify foreigner's first names especially - Luciana becomes Lucy, Matthias Matt. I haven't experienced this in other languages as much, although sometimes Chinese or Thai for instance in Germany change their name themselves so that they won't feel like an outsider so much and their name doesn't constantly get butchered. It's actually sad, I'd rather make the effort to pronounce them (half-)correctly.Isn't part of the discussion here actually the difference between how a word is written and how it's spoken, and whether you should follow the written letters or the sound of a name?
I would never say Milano in German. It's Mailand, because, yes, Milano sounds totally artificial if used in a German conversation. Same with Paris or London.
But I think there's a huge difference between using the common pronounciation in your country for a big, known city, and germanizing/anglifying, whatever, a town which has no such standard pronounciation.
Same goes for proper names, actually. Cäsar is Cäsar in German, Cesar in English. I wouldn't use Kai-ssar in a conversation.
To me it's less important to not change a city's name, I'm okay with it getting home-sized, but when it comes to people I'm actually annoyed because that feels disrespectful to me, like you are not respecting who that person is.
Which name you use for a city can be extremely political, sometimes I don't even know about it, but who has used the name before is quite important - not so much when it's about whether Fribourg should be pronounced French or English (personally I never know whether to pronounce it German or French when I'm in a German conversation), but for instance Stalingrad-Wolgograd, or cities in Eastern Europe which often have German names as well, but if you use them it's indicating a bit these cities should belong to Germany...
I would never have thought this question could be one of modern English politics, though, I'm quite surprised!
- Oct 15, 2020
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Never underestimate the outright stupidity of English politics when it comes to language, we get articles in our right wing press about whether having road signs in English and Welsh in Wales causes English drivers to crash because they are confused by the Welsh language.
- May 25, 2018
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Even more confusing is the Italians call Munchen/Munich as Monaco same as the country
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