Posted on 08/02/2016 11:45:06 PM PDT by HarborSentry
There is no Guantánamo Bay.
That's right. In English, the name is "Guantanamo Bay." There is no accent in the English spelling.
It's not "Guantánamo Bay" in Spanish either. They call it "Bahía de Guantánamo."
But we're usually not even talking about Guantanamo Bay itself. Most of the time, we're talking about Guantanamo Bay Naval Base or the detention center. Being American facilities, neither of them have accents in their names.
Do we do this for Deutschland or München? No, we call those Germany and Munich. We do this even though just about anybody dealing with Germany knows that they call it Deutschland.
Admittedly, this is a small thing. But I have to admit I find it funny.
First, most Americans are monolingual. Using an accented character allows people to feel pretendo multilingüismo. It's like saying "internationale" when you really just mean "international." (Yes, people actually do that.)
And second, let's face it: Guantanamo is a hot-button issue that progressives like to claim they care about. Calling it by a half-Spanish name must appeal to their "¡No pasarán!" spirit of Résistance.
This is the kind of stuff you get when people learn Orwell from Stalinists.
I wasn't even going to post this one here until I realized that some of you might feel the same way.
First, most Americans are monolingual. …Uh-oh; you used a non-English loanword there that combines two languages (Greek monos for “one, single” and Latin lingua for “tongue”) ☺
Oh, for crying out loud.
I’ve spent the last six years working on my family tree. When I add someone to the tree who was born with a name with a diacritical mark, I keep it so that it’s historically correct. The same with places.
It’s not a big deal.
That’s OK. Near Ventura, CA, there is Conejo Pass. Not Rabbit Pass, or Paseo de Conejo. Conejo Pass. No Moslem can live in the town of Manteca, for the town isn’t ‘clean’. LOL. Atascadero. Mud Hole. Don’t get me started
And there is only one lake in the English Lake District
Speak American!
How about St. Francis Bay, with St. Joseph about fifty miles south? (And “saint” is a loanword from Latin “sanctus”, which means “holy”, which itself may be a Greek loanword via “hagios”.) And as for “Joseph”, which is Hebrew for “The Eternal God Shall Add”, how do we fix that?
(Oh yeah; it’s not “Ventura”, but “Luck”.)
Schmartypants!
I’m only saying we use the same format we use for everything else. If Guantanamo’s Spanish name was more different (e.g. Deutshland), they’d probably keep the standard English spelling.
It’s just a bit childish to keep the accent for this. Even that would be okay (forex: this post is a bit flippant) if it wasn’t the press doing it, too. They’re probably breaking a rule in their style guides.
Well, since our current standard spelling is influenced by French orthography and older forms of English are more phonetically correct, I’m probably one who would want more diacritical marks in English writing in particular and fewer digraphs for single vocal sounds (and no silent letters masquerading as diacritics).
But there are good reasons for you to do that.
Look at it this way: Suppose a number of people in your family tree were born in Guantanamo, and spent their entire lives there. They’d surely use the accent.
But then let’s say one of them moved to the U.S. His kids’ records might then say “Guantanamo” without the accent when listing the parent’s name. You’d probably want to log it exactly as it’s written.
That’s different for a newspaper story.
Again, it’s like Deutschland or Germany. There are times when you’d say one instead of the other.
Maybe, but a newspaper should call it by whatever name is proper at the time.
That’s true.
Il y ont bien des gens américains qui ont fait l’effort d’apprendre une autre langue. (Plenty of Americans have made the effort to learn another language.)
That said, I have mixed feelings about the Anglicization of foreign words or names. If the name is in a language I know, like French or Spanish, I might say it as it would be said in the original language.
The one that really irritates me is the Anglicizing of “Sevilla” (say-bee’-yah) to “Seville (suh-vil).” The English version is as gross a corruption of the actual name as the pronunciation of “quesadillas” by the grandmother in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. She said “kwes-ah-duh-luhs.”
I do say the names of American towns and cities the way most Americans say them. My husband and I went to Cadiz, Kentucky on vacation a couple of years ago. Since we have lived near Cadiz, Spain, when we learned the local pronunciation of Cadiz, Kentucky, we had a difficult time remembering to pronounce it the local way.
Kinda like Qhadafi?
And while we're on the subject....Whyizit that whenever in a group discussion I say the name "Hiroshima", whether I accent the second OR third syllable, someone, always with a college education, will invariably pronounce it the opposite way? (One friend has picked up on the game I've made of this)
People do it when they pronounce the word ‘muslim,’ ‘junta’ and ‘chile.’ They go all middle-eastern and use a little Spanish lingo. So pretentious and annoying!
Well, it’s one example, but there are many more.
Mumbai, not Bombay - but Rome, not Roma
Yangon, not Rangoon - but Spain, not España
Côte d’Ivoire, not Ivory Coast, but Brussels, not Bruxelles
You say to-may-to, I say to-mah-to. Big hairy deal.
It will remain Guan-ta’-namo until hades has a coldsnap. You’re bailing out the Titanic with a thimble.
Gitmo...much simpler.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.