Re: How you pronunce foreign place names

In a message dated 1/20/2007 9:04:15 PM Central Standard Time, 
un.doing@GMAIL.COM writes:


> Ditto for "Paris", "Seoul", "Kagoshima", "Iraq", "Madrid", "Havana",
> "São Paulo" etc.
> 
> Using Beijing as an example, I find that for me, rule 1 kicks in when
> speaking to other people who know Chinese; rule 2 when reading a
> passage, or when speaking in a decidedly English-only environment
> (such as with people of a multitude of races in the conversation); and
> rule 3 never.
> 
> The curious thing is, the above pattern does not happen to, e.g.
> "Paris", which I always pronounce as per the French, "Madrid", which
> is always missing the final -d for me, Japanese place names, always as
> the Japanese would, or any other "prestige" languages/places like
> Arabic or German; whereas the pattern applies to Seoul, to Havana, to
> many Eastern European place names and so on.
> 
> Subconscious cultural uppity-ness?
> 
> Eugene
These all have standard English pronunciations (except Sao Paulo - the 
nasals, you know), meaning they aren't felt to be foreign words.  Foreign names 
typically cause problems only when they aren't well known.  And using the native 
pronunciation (or an attempt at it) typically is done only for effect.

stevo