• 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    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”

    • TheFriar@lemm.ee
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      17 hours ago

      Well, most of the Spanish speaking world calls Barcelona the same way we call it. With slightly different inflection, but only the castellanos have the “Spanish lisp.” Which derived from some king who had a lisp, if I’m remembering that correctly? So other Spanish speaking people—most of them, in fact, don’t call it “barth-elona.”

      I learned Spanish in Spain, so I started speaking in that lispy Spanish. But as I continued to get way more fluent, living in the other parts of the Spanish speaking world, my accent changed.

      • sik0fewl@lemmy.ca
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        2 hours ago

        The Spanish king with a lisp is a folk etymology.

        If it were true, then ‘s’ would also be pronounced that way.

    • TheOakTree@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      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.