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Akibun, Snowglider had this to say about it in another thread:

 

"Torino or Turin? a saw an lighthearted debate about it, if you say Naples Venice Florence Milan and Rome then to be consistent you would say Turin.

If you say Napoli Venezia Firenze Milano and Roma then Torino it is."

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I know a lot of places closer to the Austrian border have both a German name and an Italian name. Has to do with Austria owning parts of Italy before WW1. However I think Turin is a bit to far west.

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Torino - Italian name

Turin - French name

 

When people use different language, place names are also different which is confusing.

wakaranai.gif

Especially when you travel Europe, sometimes very hard to judge if you don't used to it.

 

e.g.

Wien(German)/Vienna(English)

Ljubljana(Slovenian)/Lanbach(German)

København(Danish)/Copenhagen(English)

Alsas-Loraine(French)/Elsass-Lothringen(German)

eek.gif

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 Quote:
Originally posted by quattro:
I know a lot of places closer to the Austrian border have both a German name and an Italian name. Has to do with Austria owning parts of Italy before WW1.
The people there still speak German as their first language and Italian as their second.
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When I drive into Suisse from Italy, I find that Italian is the language written and spoken for a significant distance after crossing the boarder. This is due in part to the fact that I enter Suisse via a reasonably large finger of the country that juts out to the south into Italy. German language doesn't start until you leave that finger heading north.

 

I make an effort not to Anglicize European city names, although I often forget. It comes more easily these days as my Japanese partner naturally uses the 'local' pronunciation - - Roma, Venezia, Torino etc. The only city that I continue to Anglicize is Paris, and that is because I sound like an utter tool calling it Pawee in the middle of an English sentence lol.gif (and dont forget, that is Pawee with a complicated throat cleaning 'r' in the middle).

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yep the Torino Shroud doesnt have the same ring to it as the Turin Shroud.

Growing up thinking and the names were Rome, Milan etc its hard to break the habit.

I guess if I lived there I would adapt and use the correct words.

Japanese with katakana seem to naturally use the correct pronuciation, its actually quite ironic when teaching them English and 'correcting' them to say the anglicized version when in fact the where totally correct in the first place.

I never really thought about it before, but now I wont bat an eyelid when they say Roma.

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It was only early last year that realised the same as Ocean. I always thought Turin was in the middle east, ie, where jesus apparently lived and hence where his shroud would have been found.

 

Glider - it was odd for me as well, hearing the katakana version which was of course perfectly correct. At first I thought it admirable for them to get it right, but then I remembered Shidonii....

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 Quote:
Originally posted by Thunderpants:
 Quote:
Originally posted by gamera:

København(Danish)

eek.gif
But can you pronounce it? \:\)
LOL Very difficult. You know I am not good at pronouncing Danish ø , German umlaut, Swedish å, Norweigian æ etc whatever like that. Too complicated
\:\(
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 Quote:
Originally posted by _spud:
I wonder how the London Olympics will be termed by the press etc in Italy?

London Olympics

or

Londra Olympics.
It will be Olimpiadi di Londra.
As you've seen, every city name gets italianized (not even sure if such a word exists) over here.
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To describe Italian, Spanish names etc, katakana works pretty good, I guess.

But if it's some other languages, things go different.

 

For example

Göteborg (Sweden) - I guess perhaps 'イェーテボリ' is the best fit for it, but still not completely the same - Thunderpants, help!

 

Beijing (China ) - 'ベイジング' is the best fit but if they describe it in kanji, we are to pronounce it 'ペキン'

wakaranai.gif

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 Quote:
Originally posted by number9:
you can have written communication much more easily with the Chinese than non-kanji users.
Sometimes I also do that written communication with guests from Chinese culture like from HongKong, Singapore etc. But a lot often their hand writing kanji are pretty differet from mine, sometimes hard to recognize which kanji they write. And because of gramatical difference, not 100% understandable.

Chinese sentence is like English - S + V + O + C order.
Japanese sentence is....... too flexible lol.gif

That's why when Japanese learn Chinese (Kanbun) in schools, usually books have some punctuation marks for beginner students to understand.
Same alphabet in diffrent usage - this is much harder than different alphabet language.
confused.gif

By the way
number9 -番号九
bushpig -藪豚
Maybe?
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Yeah, obviously you're not going to have 100% communication just because you each know kanji as they're different sets. But there's many of the kanji are the same, and if effort is made on each side to adapt to eachother (like 火車 is a train and 汽車 is a car in Chinese, not simplified), then using kanji should be more helpful than just verbal and gesture communications.

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