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Re: USAGE: Cool idioms (was Re: Bibliography)

From:FFlores <fflores@...>
Date:Sunday, March 28, 1999, 14:37
Tom Wier <artabanos@...> wrote:
> > Which reminds me, does anyone have city names or other proper > names that they spell unphonetically, because of some conhistorical > or concultural tradition? I know there are quite a few British cities > whose names would stump most any American (Leicester, e.g., IIRC, > is /lEst@/)...
The only one I can think of here is Ushuaia /u'swaia/ (it's the southernmost city on Earth). I don't have a clue why it's spelled like that, totally un-Spanish, which inevitably causes every foreign person to pronounce /u'Swaia/ or /uSwa'i.a/. It doesn't seem English either. In Argentina there are a lot of English names in towns especially in Buenos Aires, like Hurlingham, Wheelwright, Armstrong, etc. and Welsh names in the south (Madryn and I think Trelew). But Ushuaia is very strange. --Pablo Flores * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat. Lily Tomlin