It’s always bothered me that we have English words for foreign place names.  It seemed so unnecessary- I always wondered why not just sorta anglicize them rather than come up with something new altogether.  I never think or talk much about Germany, but I’d prefer to call the country Deutschland, Munich Munchen, Cologne Koln, etc.I suppose it’s a bit complicated in German, given that the people in Munchen are likely to call it Minga.  Perhaps Germany is a bad example.

Anyhow, I was thinking abou tthis while looking at a map of Europe, and I decided I wanted to learn how to say the names of all the European countries in their own language, or at least try to.  Easy enough.  Sweden: Sverige.  Finland: Suomi.  Norway: Norge.  (I’m not even gonna bother with Danmark cause I figure its close enough as is.)  Poland: Polska.  Et cetera.

Easy enough.  Find a country, figure out what the native folk call it, you’re done.  Problem is, I don’t know how to pronounce Sverige or any of the others, and I don’t know anyone to help me out.  WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Enter forvo.com, my new favorite website for learning how to pronounce foreign words.  You type in a word, and it will give you a list of pronunciations from various people, along with a helpful map of where the speaker is from, which is particularly handy.  I’m not terribly interested in how an Ecuadorean might pronounce Suomi.  (Not that I had that option, but its nice to know that I’m getting tips from people with the relevent expertise.)  M-w.com also offers pronunciations, however they’re done in their weird robotic-American accent, which, though it is what I’ll eventually produce on my own, is not what I’d like to base it off of.

Next time you’re headed to another country, check it out, sound local, be awesome etc.

Also, this is almost totally unrelated.