this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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[–] nesc@lemmy.cafe 44 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

But that's how c is pronounced in castillian, no? What's pretentious about it?

[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 91 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)

Pronouncing things as they would be in the language they're actually in is sometimes a faux pas in American culture, I've learned

[–] Agrivar@lemmy.world 79 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Let's be fair: doing things the correct way, or just being slightly educated, is often a faux pas in this wasteland pretending to be a civilization.

[–] Warl0k3@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The cultural backlash comes not from 'pronouncing things correctly makes you sound educated' but because people that do this are adopting an accent for one singular word, and that is often perceived as them attempting to imply some connection to that group/culture that they do not have.

Americans, white Americans especially, have essentially no cultural heritage to draw on. It's why we latch onto things like a grandparent being from Ireland and thence go around calling ourselves Irish-American, or the confederate stans. People with a rich cultural history are generally viewed as extremely interesting, too, so when another american adopts characteristics from a culture they have no real connection with, it's perceived as a deeply tacky attempt to gain social clout. Its akin to being presented with a lesser form of weaboo.

(to be fair, this does happen with the perception of educated people too. "Use real words" and all that, so you're not really wrong just a bit wide of the mark on the particulars)

[–] MudMan@fedia.io 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

What do you mean, "white Americans have no cultural heritage"? Your culture runs the planet and has been a going concern for several centuries across hundreds of millions of people. We are in twenty twenty five, good sir. AD. Place got colonized in the sixteenth century. Half of Europe was in a completely different country back then, even discounting all the American history that goes before that.

And yeah, it's weird that you latch on to foreign ancestry as a substitute. I'd joke about it, but I'm here getting all pissy about the US equivalent, so it'd be hypocritical, I suppose.

[–] ThisIsNotHim@sopuli.xyz 11 points 3 weeks ago

Not OP, but maybe it's better phrased as "white Americans have a limited shared cultural heritage."

Waves of immigration make it hard to tell what of that 5 centuries is actually shared. It's also viewed as tacky to try and lay claim to the bit before your ancestors arrived.

If your ancestors were Irish and Italian immigrants from around 1850, going off about the Mayflower can be viewed as similar putting on airs

[–] blackbelt352@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

It's our national Mythology, we're a land of migrants and refugees. People have been coming to this land for 500 years, yeah that's a long time compared to our perspective, but there are traditions and cultures in Europe that predate even knowing about the existence of other land in another hemisphere by an additional 1000 years.

And the culture you describe as dominant over the world while yes is predominantly white, is just unchecked capitalism and neoliberalism and a product of whoever controls the largest military and acts as the economic measuring stick to the rest of the world and that if any other nation were to unseat the US as the dominant economic and militant force, then their oligarch's culture would dominate the planet.

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[–] Michal@programming.dev 9 points 3 weeks ago

Let's not put them on the pedal stool

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I mean, I get it to an extent. I'm much more in favor of linguistic descriptivism rather than prescriptivism, so I acknowledge that terms and pronunciations can develop over time and are not wrong.

If someone pronounces "Beijing" in English with a softened J/G sound (like "beige") and someone else corrects them with "Oh do you mean bei-JING", truthfully neither are wrong. The correct pronunciation is whatever people understand and accept.

On the other hand, suggesting that there is a single correct/more authentic pronunciation (particularly in cases where it may not even conform to standard English phonemes) veers into prescriptivism and has problematic connotations.

[–] Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Hm, but reacting negatively to someone pronouncing it, for lack of a better term, the original way IS presciptivism. This isn't about someone who pronounces a Spanish word the Spanish way criticizing someone who pronounces it the English way, but the other way around.

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[–] hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 weeks ago (18 children)

But if you pronounce faux pas wrong, it's also faux pas

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[–] bestelbus22@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

Fowks pass!

[–] Anivia@feddit.org 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Only if you are not a native speaker of that language, or always? Am I supposed to imitate how Americans botch the names of German car manufacturers like Porsche or Volkswagen if I ever go on vacation there?

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[–] lime@feddit.nu 14 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

probably that he's not from there. absent other information, his lisp would then indicate that he is imitating the accent in order to sound more cultured. like someone from the us midwest saying "have you been to mehico?"

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 13 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Barcelona kinda has an extra layer of this too, because Catalan does pronounce "Barcelona" with an S sound rather than an unvoiced TH

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[–] MudMan@fedia.io 6 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

That's fine, I intend to aggressively say "Los An-heles" and "Ari-tho-nah" from now on, see how the anglophones deal with using a normal accent to say their names.

I mean, I get it, it sounds weird when people say "Los Anyeles" or "London" when speaking Spanish, too. But... you know, if the spelling is the same I don't see the problem using the way it's actually meant to be said.

I've gotten enough weird looks for ordering a "BuRRi-toh" in anglo speaking countries to be annoyed by this. And don't get me started with how Americans have chosen to pronounce "Los Gatos". If you're going to steal our word you at least could give us the deference of not mocking us for saying it correctly.

Now, if the anglophone in question is out there calling it "Barna" you know they're a poser.

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[–] bob_lemon@feddit.org 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

~~It's the opposite (as far as I could find). Pronouncing "c" similar to "th" is only done in Spanish in Spain. In Catalan (as well as Latin/South American Spanish) all pronounce it like "s".~~

Nevermind, I just can't read. You wrote Castilian, not Catalan.

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Castilian Spanish is the dominant dialect of Spanish in Spain.

Edit: A helpful map:

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[–] AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 28 points 3 weeks ago (30 children)

I know its sounds like im an asshole but i lived 4 months there and picked itnup lol. So now i alsways say it like that even tho my spanish is pretty bad. But i like to pick up the correct, native pronounciacion of place names anyways to show a bit of respect to the people living there and i dont judge you if you dont do it.

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[–] Phen 22 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Do you get to the cloud district very often? Oh what am I saying, of course you don’t.

[–] Dr_Box@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

The majority of my time playing skyrim I thought he was referring to somewhere in a different city like Solitude or something. Didnt realize he was talking about a place thats 10 paces away lol

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[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 21 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

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"

[–] TheOakTree@lemm.ee 20 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks 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.

[–] Kanda@reddthat.com 8 points 3 weeks ago

Yeah kinda because English speakers know it as Milan, Turin and Florence

[–] ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 7 points 3 weeks ago

Does this mean I have to start calling Los Angeles "The City of Angels"?

[–] TheFriar@lemm.ee 5 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I am all in to pronounce names & places correctly, aka according to the original language. So, so dumb when a name is "transliterated" to another alphabet and now it doesn't mean anything to anyone, and nobody can read it correctly.

However, for well established names, might not worth the trouble.

[–] JimVanDeventer@lemmy.world 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

I agree to a point, but try Bangkok.

Edit: For the uninitiated, that is: Krungthepmahanakhon Amonrattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilokphop Noppharatratchathaniburirom Udomratchaniwetmahasathan Amonphimanawatansathit Sakkathattiyawitsanukamprasit

[–] kSPvhmTOlwvMd7Y7E@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

lol do they say that colloquially? I don't think so?

[–] DankOfAmerica@reddthat.com 8 points 3 weeks ago

No. They use Krung Thep, which is short for Krung Thep Maha Nakhon.

[–] uninvitedguest@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Bangkok is also the first one that came to mind, bit as other have said the full name is not used locally, either.

Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik Lake in Manitoba, though.

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[–] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

The ancient Spanish basically all had a lisp. Nobody thought about it at the time and it eventually became the status quo and then correct pronunciation. I base this on absolutely nothing and will die on this hill.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

There is an urban legend that everyone in Spain started speaking this way because of the super-inbred Habsburg kings had a terrible lisp and everyone wanted to make him sound normal. There's no evidence of it, but considering this guy was king of Spain...

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[–] stevedice@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

When Spain invaded Latinamerica, they recorded the language of the natives phonetically but there were a lot of sounds that didn't have an Spanish equivalent so they just wrote X for all of them and now they're trying to retroactively fix the spelling of several words so you're kinda right. For example, Spain insists México is spelled Méjico.

Edit: Apparently, as of recently, Spain no longer insists México is spelled Méjico but still keeps it around as a correct spelling (it's not, it's literally only them).

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

If I ever go to Istanbul, I'll be telling people I visited Constantinople.

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 9 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)
[–] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

Fuck that Carigrad or Tsargrad

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[–] ytg@sopuli.xyz 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

That would be the (standard) Spanish, right? Catalan, the local language, has it with /s/

But it's very language-dependent. English has established names for many places, so you should probably use those. But some languages just don't, and if you borrow everything, you might as well borrow properly.

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[–] pencil_nerd@mander.xyz 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 7 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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[–] madjo@feddit.nl 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] letsgo@lemm.ee 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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