Pronunciations and Anti Thread Derails

You understand that Kiev originates from the Russian spelling and pronunciation and Kyiv from the Ukrainian, right?

How do you pronounce “France”? Do you say “France” or “Fronce”?

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We still call Deutschland ‘Germany’. This is a really silly point to belabor.

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Hmmm can you tell me how the pronunciation of fraaaance is linked to genocide and oppression?

Lots of Ukrainians seem to take that seriously, don’t see why we shouldn’t follow.

How do you pronounce Constantinople?

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I’m not suggesting anyone spell Kyiv in Cyrillic, only that they use the English language and pronunciation that derived from Ukrainian rather than Russian.

I can’t even get the people in my state capital Boston to pronounce the name of their own city correctly.

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Seems like Ukrainians want us to write “Kyiv” instead of “Kiev”. That’s good enough for me.

If Germans decide that we should call it “Deutschland” from now on, I will try to do so.

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You Euros are going to lose your minds when you learn how the Midwest pronounces your city names.

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More than once I’ve been in a Midwestern or Southern town named after a major European city and been stunned by how they pronounce it.

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Not just Euro names either.

Lima, Ohio
Montevideo, Minnesota
Cairo, Illinois

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Imagine how you think a dumbass would pronounce “Lima.” Some how the Ohio pronunciation is even dumber.

My assumption is they pronounce it like the bean, not the Peruvian city

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Posters here enjoy pointing out how midwesterners pronounce towns like Versailles wrong yet we all say Los Angeles the wrong way. We all say Paris the wrong way. What is the difference? If there is a good answer to this question I’ll be mildly embarrassed but I honestly can’t see it, and comments like yours just sound like snobbery to me.

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So the lie-muh pronunciation is odd but certainly matches the spelling so is kinda forgivable. Kay roh Illinois is awful.

we spell France like the french do, but pronounce it as incorrectly. so Kyiv/Kiev is the same thing

Is Lima pronounced like Ligma?

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The real way to look at it imo is to call and pronunciate things by what the people who live there want us to, because we’re not dicks.

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fwiw, most russian speakers who grew up in Ukraine say “Kiev”. even the ukraine MP (who was born in Odessa) code switches to “Kiev” because being bilingual is involuntary.

I sense a thread extraction coming.

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