Comments on: Loss of anglicizations

By: Keith

Keith — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 16:14:06 +0000

One loss too far, for me, is Andalusia, a beautiful and long-standing Anglicisation, which in print now often appears in the Spanish form of Andalucía (the Rough Guide and Lonely Planet books on the region being leading examples). I adjudge this to be a specimen of politico-linguistic correctness, i.e., that the users of this form think it is “more correct” and more polite to use the Spanish form and that the Anglicised form is somehow wrong and rude.

Then they have to invent a new adjective, because ‘Andalusian” is beyond the pale for them, so they come up with ‘Andalucian’, or even more absurdly in some cases, ‘Andalucían’, a word which does not exist in Spanish, where the only adjective is ‘andaluz’. You then get people saying this non-Spanish word ‘Andalucian’ with a Spanish proununciation, the ‘c’ pronounced as the ‘th’ in the English word ‘bath’, the stress put on the ‘i’.

Meanwhile, in France, Italy and Germany, ‘Andalousie’, ‘Andalusia’ and ‘Andalusien’ continue in sublime defiance, or blissful ignorance, of Anglo silliness.

By: Adrian B

Adrian B — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:28:53 +0000

Is there a good reason why Encyclopædia Britannica’s Biography of the Day has just altered the anglicization of Yasser Arafat to Ysir ‘Araft? (Especially when the text in Encyclopædia Britannica’s online article still has the “missing” letter a’s in?)

By: John Maidment

John Maidment — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 05:31:13 +0000

I should also have included Florence (Firenze), Naples (Napoli), Milan (Milano), Rome (Roma), Turin (Torino) and Venice (Venezia).

I’ll shut up now.

By: John Maidment

John Maidment — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 12:47:14 +0000

But Genova is still Genoa for Brits, I think.

By: James D

James D — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:43:41 +0000

And don’t forget Agincourt, which those zany Frogs call Azincourt.

But what might be going on is English people *thinking* they can pronounce French….