Your city or country local pronunciation ?

Question

In Belgrade they told me that it's Beograd .
In Greece they told me it's Ellas .
What about a name of city you think that the world don't pronounce it correctly .

Answer 1

Many places are different in their own language. some are completely different
eg, Germany - Deutschland Cologne is is Köln in german (not that different but meh!) etc
Japan - Nihon
Bangkok- Krung Thep (Full name is a lot longer (longest place name))
Kyyiv - Kiev (In Ukraine (country not language))

Answer 2

Finland is Suomi in Finnish (or actually in 'suomea'). Finnish has its own variants for almost all the neighbouring countries, like 'Venäjä' for Russia, 'Ruotsi' for Sweden, 'Ranska' for France.
German has an interesting variant for a Ukrainian city Lviv - 'Lemberg'.
A Russian name for Texas 'Texac' looks good but resembles it more externally as it is pronounced 'teh-khahs' with the last syllable stressed.
The name of China has lots of different variants because of the first 'ch' letter which can be pronounced differently depending on what source it came from, for example 'k', 'ch', 'h', 'sh', as in Finnish 'Kiini', Russian 'Kitay', German 'China' (soft 'h'), French 'China' ('sh').. i just wonder how it is in Chinese..
Ukrainian has a strange name for Germany, which is hardly motivated and is basically not seen in any other languages (except probably one or two Slavic, but not Russian) - 'Nimechchina' (pronounced 'nih-mech-chin-ah')..
But i find the English way of pronouncing a Belguian town Brugge situated between France and England most amusing..
Locally it sounds somewhere like 'Broog-gheh' ('g' like in 'go', doubled) and in French like 'brooge' (with 'g' as in 'gin' and no 'e' at the end). So the English adopted French pronounciation, persuading everyone rigourously that it is the right one, no matter that a few miles further they see another town, called 'Zee-Brugge' and with the same rigorousness use the local pronounciation of '-brugge'...

Answer 3

Philippines is a usually a misspelled word.

For locals the Philippines is known as Pilipinas (This was taken from the Spanish Philippine name Filipinas)

Manila (Philippines capital) is known as Maynila

People from the Philippines are called Filipino (men) or Filipina (women). Philippino is wrong. What adds to the confusion is that the official language of the Philippines is called Filipino or Pilipino which is actually derived from the Tagalog dialect. The Philippines speaks 80+ dialects all over the archipelago.

Answer 4

Ok, there is a town not far from here called Beowawe and no one ever gets it right the first few times. (Bee-oh-wow-ee)
In southern Utah, USA the local names are pronounced very differently. The town of Hurricane is pronounced Herrican and St. George is St. Jarge.

Answer 5

London - Londres (Spanish), Londres (French)
Moscow - Moskva (Russian)
Prague - Praha (Czech)
Germany - Alemania (Spanish), Allemagne (French)
German - Aleman (Spanish), Tedesco (Italian), Deutsch (German)
Don't get too worried about it!

Answer 6

montreal - foreigners always call it "mawntreal" but here english speakers always call it "muntreal"

toronto - foreigners always pronounce it the way its spelled, but here its pronounced "tronno" with a ch sound as the t

Answer 7

Imagine: ”Chalmondeley”, but you say: [chomly]

Happens all the time, not only with names.

Consider this: you spell ”Bush”, but you say:
”President of America”, and actually it means:
”criminal super-clown”!!!
Makes you think, doesn’t it?

You are welcome