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

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

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 The trouble with the rat race is that even
 if you win,  you're still a rat.
                                             Lily Tomlin