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To: RegulatorCountry

I take a somewhat more nuanced approach.

Foreign words should be pronounced as closely as possible to the way they’re pronounced in the foreign language.

But at some point, as it is used more and more frequently, a word stops being foreign and becomes an English word. At that point it should be pronounced as an English word, which it now is.

Used to hang out in southern MO. Little town there named after Simon de Bolivar, the Liberator of South America.

It’s pronounced Bolliver, which is perfectly logical in English. To my mind, insisting on pronouncing it BO-lee-var is precious and patronizing.

Also used to live in CO on Florida Road, pronounced FLO-ree-da. Now I live in the state of Florida, pronounced in the more usual American way.

The pretentious twits are also utterly inconsistent. They’ll talk about Torino and Milano, but not Roma. And they’ll never use Munchen.


46 posted on 06/10/2014 7:00:06 AM PDT by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

One of the best old neighborhoods in a city near where I grew up is Buena Vista. BYOO-na VISS-ta. There’s an entire published book dedicated to the correct mispronunciation of Carolina place names.

There’s a certain affected insecurity surrounding a prissy insistence upon absolutely perfect accent and pronunciation of foreign words, particularly present on network news, that is actually worse than butchering foreign words out of ignorance, imho.


50 posted on 06/10/2014 7:13:45 AM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: Sherman Logan
Well, the Spanish pronunciation of Bolivar is more like voh-LEE-var, and Florida should be flo-REE-da.

Plato thought that whatever the Greeks borrowed from others, they improved. Sometimes that's also true of Americans pronouncing foreign names.

68 posted on 06/10/2014 10:48:01 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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