I was just wondering, I know that languages have different names for different countries but like would French, or German or Russian have different names for California or Illinois. I was watching the Spanish channel and on their weather map they used the American city names, except for New York which was Nueva York
And if they do does anyone know of a list? Like a list of all 50 states in French or German or Spanish?
For some reason they always do Nouveau York and such, when there’s a word in the name.
ETA - I realize that example was in the OP (see also states with South and North and the like) but was pointing out that they do it in French and other languages also.
No, IME, generally they don’t care that much. I mean, we’re sort of important in worldwide politics but not that important!
Not necessarily. For example, this Italian Wiki page Stato federato degli USA, has:
So in Italian, “New” three times and “Nuovo” once.
The Mandarin name for San Francisco is Jin Shan, “Gold Mountain”.
If you go to the Wikipedia article U.S. state, you can easily find the corresponding article in other languages, and their lists of state names. Some are very interesting. For example, in Swedish, 49 names are identical to English, but “Kalifornien” is different. Similarly, in Italian, most are the same, except for the directional prefixes, like ND, SC, and WV; curiously, NM is “Nuovo Messico”, but NH, NJ, NY are unchanged.
Here in Canada, there are French versions for several of our provinces and territories. If the province’s name is one word, no change: Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec (with an accent for Québec in French, of course), Yukon and Nunavut.
The other six provinces and territories, with names with more than one word, the name is translated:
Newfoundland and Labrador = Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador
Prince Edward Island = Île-du-Prince-Édouard
British Columbia = Colombie-Britannique
New Brunswick = Nouveau-Brunswick
Nova Scotia = Nouvelle-Écosse
Northwest Territories = Territoires du Nord-Ouest
I would imagine the same pattern would hold for US states, such as New Mexico and North Dakota - will go poke around and see what I can find.
German uses the English names (in English pronounciation), except for California = Kalifornien. Arkansas is often mispronounced, though.
What you’re asking about are exonyms, and yes, many languages do have them for North American place names. For example, in Icelandic the English city of York is known as Jórvík, so New York was originally referred to as Nýja-Jórvík (though less often nowadays). The English name for the German city of Braunschweig is Brunswick, so the German name for the Canadian province of New Brunswick is Neu Braunschweig.
You can find exonyms for American place names on Wikipedia. One place to look is the article List of cities in the Americas with alternative names. Another way of getting this information is to go to the English-language article on the location, and then look at the “Languages” portal for translations of the article. For example, if you go to the English article on California, you’ll see a link to the German article on Kalifornien.
That is probably because -en is a standard ending for country names where English use -a, but it’s not consistent as we use both Tanzania and Somalia.
In Canada, the following provinces get translated in French, more or less literally from English:
Nova Scotia -> Nouvelle-Ecosse
Newfoundland -> Terre-Neuve
British Columbia -> Colombie-Brittanique
Prince Edward Island -> Ile du Prince Edouard
New Brunswick -> Nouveau-Brunswick
EDIT: Oops, ninja’ed.
Keeve beat me to it - I was going to go to wiki.
Here’s the wiki map of les États-Unis with the French names for the states. Looks like there are some changes, but not consistent.
it’s “New York” and “New Hampshire”, but “Nouveau-Mexique” - I would guess that indicates that the older state names entered French as is, but newer ones got translated.
states with “North”, “South” and “West” in their names get translated: e.g. - “Caroline du Nord” and “Virginie-Occidentale”.
states with names that end in “-ia” get a different ending in French, to fit French vowel patterns: “Carolina” = “Caroline”, “California” = “Californie”. “Florida” becomes “Floride” - I would guess because that name probably entered French directly from Spanish, when Florida was a Spanish possession.
In China they do. Chinese characters are syllables that each have an independent meaning, so translating place names is a bit of an art. Sometimes they can come up with a name that sounds somewhat like the origional while having a good meaning. Sometimes they just do their best to approximate the sounds.
America is “mei guo” (美国), which translates into “beautiful country,” though the name was chosen for it’s sounds more than it’s meaning.
California is along the lines of “Jia li fu ni ya” (加利福尼亚), which I don’t think translates into anything in particular and was chosen for it’s sounds. I think sometimes I also hear “Jia Zhou” (加州) for California. I’ve read that sometimes the really old word for California, that translates as “Gold Mountain,” is occasionally used.
Basically in China, a place that has a long history of interaction with China might have an old name with a more literal meaning, while places that have only fairly recently been a part of common discourse will have a name based on phonetics.
Do the French everywhere use this? Or is it a French Canadian translation. In other words would French speaker all over the world use these?
I watched RCI (French version of CBC) once, and they were, iirc, talking about “La Nouvelle-Orleans” in “La Louisianne”, so the answer is yes for French. Note of course that Louisiana and New Orleans were once French areas so I would expect that there would have been French terms for them.
I’ve heard “Nueva York” used for New York in Spanish.
In Welsh, they’re not consistent: Efrog Newydd [New York] is normal, otherwise as in English. Sometimes the spelling in Welsh (Califfornia), sometimes not (Texas). Sometimes the direction words are translated, though the other “New” states usually aren’t. The Canadian provinces are all as in English except occasionally “Alban Newydd” (Nova Scotia) and “Tir Newydd” (Newfoundland).
Russian is a mixed bag. For states with “New” in them, Russian uses “Нью” which is just a literal transliteration of New.
For states with directionals, they put the directional in Russian, “Северная Дакота” or “Severnaya Dakota”.
There could be some cities in Alaska where Russian has a different name for the town given their prior ownership, but I don’t know of any.
I’d bet this depends on the speaker – since so many Welsh speakers are horribly incompetent at Welsh, but are native English speakers, there must be a lot of substitution.
I’d never dream of saying ‘Efrog Newydd’… but then I’d never dream of saying ‘Caeredin’, either.
pdts
It’s funny. I do hear “Efrog Newydd” for New York, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Efrog” used for plain ol’ York, though I’ve certainly seen it in writing.
Older phonetic terms often work better when pronounced in a southern dialect such as Cantonese, for obvious reasons.
