databases (was: Re: [Buddha-l] Tibetan for...?)

[jkirk]

Jim wrote:
>
> When we hear such outrages against the historical origin of such  names we 
> must remember that the person naming the place in many  instances was not 
> intending to be speaking the original language but  considered the name to 
> be just a name. When you are in places like  Texas or New Mexico, however, 
> the namers of places were using the  Spanish of their place and time so 
> presumably the correct  pronunciation would be Spanish rather than the 
> later anglicized version.
======
I take your point, but then we can't have it both ways, can we? Those who 
mispronounce names like Versailles (MO) do so I'd guess because they aren't 
speakers or knowers of French, not because its just a name. Same with some 
Spanish place-names that get mispronounced right next to the border. Plain 
ignorance. So, if denizens of New Mexico succeed in pronouncing some Spanish 
place-names correctly, I'd guess it's because they've learned a little 
Spanish, hearing it locally one way or the other.

To include a Buddhist reference, I'm always amazed by Americans who insist 
on pronouncing dharma as dhaarma. That's not correct,  nor is kaarma a 
correct pronunciation of karma but they/we do it all the time. Of course, 
ancient Indian languages are even more distant in time and place than French 
or Spanish.

In Spain, Yah Allah became Ojala! We aren't the only ones to muck up 
pronunciation of foreign words taken into our language. Happens everywhere,
no doubt.  Still, I think that a bit of etymology (say, using the OED for a 
few assignments) should be part of every primary school agenda (oops,
agendum?) because it might ease the provincialism of this country and our 
tendency to simply ignore anything outside our borders.
Joanna