From: jcowan@reutershealth.com
Date: Mon Dec 15 2003 - 15:12:21 EST
Doug Ewell scripsit:
> It's always bothered me that speakers of
> European languages, including English but especially French, have seen
> fit to rename the cities and internal subdivisions of other countries.
> An English speaker could travel from N)Bürnberg to München to Venezia to
> Milano to Firenze to Roma to Napoli, and never once call any of those
> cities by its proper local name. (Thank goodness "Leghorn" for Livorno,
> one of the worst examples ever, seems to have lost some of its
> popularity!)
To be fair, the English have always been a seagoing lot, and at one time had
a name for every feature of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic shore of Europe
within five miles (8 km) of the coast in either direction. Also, you have to
allow for changes in the source: when the name "Leghorn" was coined, Livorno
was still called Ligorno.
Similarly, both the French and the Germans have at different times dominated
the whole of Europe, and naturally needed names for its major natural and
man-made features.
> ("Pair-iss" is a bit over the top; English speakers are
> certainly capable of saying "par-ee.")
Again, when that name was borrowed, the French were still pronouncing the
final -s and had not yet adopted their phrase-final stress rule. The
[a] -> [&] -> [ej] change (the second of which has not affected my English)
is a purely English-internal process: names change with the sound-changes
of the borrowing language, after all, and even the sacred syllable AUM became
OM in Pali.
-- John Cowan jcowan@reutershealth.com www.ccil.org/~cowan www.reutershealth.com "The competent programmer is fully aware of the strictly limited size of his own skull; therefore he approaches the programming task in full humility, and among other things he avoids clever tricks like the plague." --Edsger Dijkstra
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