Having to correct several non-English speakers (and quite a few Americans) as regards the pronunciation of Leicester Square (LES-ter), Gloucester Road (GLOS-ter) or Greenwich (GREN-ich) in London, I thought I’d get this post off my chest. Queen of mispronounced locations is Davos in Switzerland that suffers from looking like a Greek resort such as Kavos. […]
Unfortunate Swiss names
OK, you’ve all heard of the village of Fucking in Austria; the mountain of Wank in Germany or the very well known Ville de Condom in France, all three of which suffer from pranksters stealing their city signs on the motorway as soon as they put another up. Can dowdy, demure Switzerland compete with the […]
Swiss Romansch
As if Switzerland isn’t peculiar enough, it has a corner – or rather several scattered ones – where Romansch, its fourth official language is spoken. These corners tend to be where Italian meets German meets Frenchand that’s what the language looks like: a mixture between the three with a Latin-based vocabulary but with a German […]