I notice that for some years now a linguistic plague has come upon us, and it irritates me more than Nancy Pelosi’s goggle-eyes.
I’m talking about people who pronounce city names according to the local idiom, e.g. “Barcelona” becomes “Barthelona” (probably the most egregious one, by the way). I think people are trying to fool others into thinking they speak the language, or trying to impress / over-awe their audience, or maybe it’s a “we’ve been there and this is how the locals pronounce it” piece of nonsense.
Stop it.
Here’s a clue: we’re speaking English, and English has a long and proud tradition of changing furrin names to suit our language — yea, even unto spelling, sometimes. “Köln” is pronounced (and spelled) “Cologne” (which is the French name for the place) but FFS at least pronounce it Coll-ohn and not Colloña (which is how the French pronounce it).
And let’s be consistent: for example, unless you also say “Moskva” (Moscow), “Praha” (Prague), “Firenze” (Florence), or “Wien” (Vienna) when you say those cities’ names, use the fucking Anglicism, because otherwise you sound like a pretentious tool.
And by the way, for that idiot I overhead in the airport the other day: the pronunciation of “Bruxelles” is “Brussels” and not “Bruxx-ellas”.
Also, to those TV newsreaders / reporters on U.S. TV stations: you may think it sounds cool to roll off a name or place-name which sounds like someone clearing their throat (e.g. Los Ancheles or Mechico Seety), but here’s the (real) news: you’re speaking to Americans who mostly don’t speak Spanish and therefore have no fucking clue what you’re saying. Save the linguistic purity for UniVision.



