UKC

 I gave an extra star to a photo of Mount Snowdon 🤣 recently for using Yr Wyddfa. I've never seen or heard anyone use Beinn Nibheis though, even though  both names are used on the OS map.  I searched on Anglicisation in forums, expecting to find lots of fiercely argued old threads on this topic, but could only find a few touching on anglicisation of Welsh on the periphery, so here goes:

Should English-speakers and hill-walkers in particular not be making more effort to use the real names of the most well-known hills and also the names that are particularly easy like Beinn Mhòr. 

Nope. You don't tell people you're going to Napoli for pizza. You don't say you're off to Parreee this weekend to see the tuurrr effell. If you're having a conversation in English it's weird to change language for occasional words.

Snowdon and Yr Wyddfa are both ‘real names’. The mountain is just a big lump of rock and does not care.

I like the rich tapestry of names in the landscape of the British  isles.

Perhaps you should! Paris is a Greek mythology figure and the word tower comes from French. 
I mean the word pizza is Italian too.

There is a reticent mindset about anything not English in the UK culture that is somewhat at odds with the wander lust of Brits.

 It really would do you good to make an effort and this kind of small steps would normalise linguistic acceptance.

Caveat: this opinion comes from a frustrated Secondary school language teacher 😆😉 

So I was probably pronouncing it correctly then 😁

You should tell the French that while you're trying to stop them saying Londres or Angleterre...

Things are called different things in different languages. It's normal. And it's accepted.

Being indignant about it only in isolated cases seems odd.

Yes.

It's the same situation exactly as the Welsh names, and we'll see the same arguments put forward exactly from those who just think it's a bit too much effort and can't be arsed.

Regarding 'Napoil' and 'Paree' - Italian and French are not indigenous UK languages and a part of our culture in danger of dying out and being lost to us.  (Yes, even the English!)

As I understand it, the Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa isn't really an anglicisation in that both names have been around for a long time and have different origins.

Not taking the time to pronounce names correctly points to laziness and ignorance.

As deepsoup points out, Gaelic and Welsh are not foreign languages so it's not 'isolated cases' it's a different case entirely.

French has been an indigenous U.K. language - would be good to preserve the French names kicking about.

I think language in Scotland is a much more mixed picture than in Wales, which seems to have a pretty clear Welsh/English split.

you would need to ask a Greek person to truly know!

early doors whataboutry! But this probably has longer historical reasons which are not linked with post colonial hangover. The French aren’t amazingly better at this but mercifully have had to eat humble pie in the last 40 years or so.

objects yes, landmarks and names aren’t quite the same “thing”. A bit like a person making no efforts to call you by your name in a way you would recognise. It’s at best a bit inconsiderate at worse disrespectful!

It's not can't be arsed, it's weird.

If I'm in another country I'll have a go at speaking the language. If I'm at home talking about another country I'll use English. 

But if I go to Wales or Scotland you're saying I should carry on using English all the time except for names of hills? And if I'm at home talking about Wales or Scotland you want the local names for the hills?

I'm sticking with that's weird. You're not asking for that to apply anywhere else in the world outside the UK and it's a strange special case.

If trying to show respect in an unfamiliar language, it's normal to start with "please" and "thanks" before learning the words for all the local hills.

I've been mispronouncing your name for over 20 years!

Not really. Do you teach your students to say "je voudrais visiter Deutschland" or do you get them to say l'Allemagne?

Not weird, it seems to me that the majority of names on maps in Wales are in Welsh and in Scotland in Gaelic.

 I am not having a personal go at you. You are quite representative of the Anglocentric mindset though (and it’s not all bad!). 
 

I must leave to go try to change that attitude in younger minds. My job is cut out for me… 🤣🤣🤣

I do teach them that Germany is unusual in that it is called something different by each major European language! 

I feel weird applying pronunciation other than English when I'm saying things but I've come round to the idea that the weirdness is my problem and that the right thing to do is to try to pronounce things as they should be however strange it seems to me.

Embrace the weirdness.

But I have always known you to have a simple mind! 😉

That said, I react very differently when someone says “Ayreek” to “Oi you &£&£!” It’s a bizarre thing.

I am now late! Feumaidh mi a bhith anns an sgoil agam gu math luath a-nis. Chan ann freagarrach a tha Beinn Nibheis fhaicinn bhon sin!

If you watch rugby coverage on S4C the commentators refer to English teams with place names such as Bath, Gloucester, Leicester etc by their Welsh language names.

Given that it’s a Welsh language commentary for a Welsh language audience I don’t see the problem. I am Welsh and I can understand Welsh and speak a (very) little.

I think the problem of renaming features (Lake Australia being a case in point) needs addressing.

Overall, though, climbers and outdoor enthusiasts have been very good at using correct names - I can’t off the top of my head think of any Anglicised names for mountains in North Wales: Tryfan, Moel Siabod; Glyder Fach/Fawr; Crib Goch and so on. Most will also know what the meaning of the names is too. Perhaps the more recent converts to the outdoors (and we have seen a massive rise in participation) need to be educated by us old ‘uns, though.

I was thinking about this on a very wet run in to work.

Most hill goers do change language (or pronunciation norms) with regard to hill names. It's been a while since I've heard someone say An Teal-a-ch (with the first bit as the bird and ch as in church). Word has got out that it's something like An Challach (with a hard ch followed by a soft one) and that's how most people pronounce it. I doubt if anyone feels weird about this as they'll hear others saying it and get positive reinforcement on their pronunciation. The difficulty comes with the less well known names, the more difficult names and the long standing mispronunciations (shnechda?).  That's where it feels weird because people feel self conscious applying unfamiliar pronunciation rules and fear to get it wrong. If people and publications continue to make the effort then the weirdness will pass.

It's not simplemindedness, it's intentional disrespect.  

I've had a fair few holidays in France, and this is pretty standard out there.

• French person: What's your name?
• me: Richard
• French person: ah Rishhhhaarrd
• me: Close enough

It's not that they can't say Richard I don't think, they just prefer to convert it to their version. I have no idea why. If I can physically pronounce their name as they say it, I will.

I'm not going to suggest to people speaking Welsh please does say Llundain instead of London. Mainly because I don't care. It shouldn't happen the other way round either.

Language has many attributes one is communication,  another is honouring the pronunciation, a third is that it evolves and language has always been used to include or exclude.
 

Which can be summed by a classic MRT exchange. Search party radios in to control to say they are moving to sweep a feature and use an anglicised name.

Back at base the controller complains they could at least try and use the Gaelic name. The response to which was they immeadiately had understood what the search party were doing so the communication was effective, whereas if they’d tried the Gaelic name they would have corrupted it so badly base wouldn’t have had a clue, even if the static had softened the pronunciation.

As an aside the last native gaelic speaker of that area had died decades ago, and the base controller was using pronunciation from a different part of Scotland.

What do you want to achieve might influence how you say things, or equally how you want things to be said. 

That’s not a preference, it’s a French accent. They most likely have exactly the same experience of hearing you try to pronounce their name and introducing an unintentional English twang to it. I like to think I speak French with reasonably good pronunciation, and I certainly try my best, but any French person can tell I am English immediately.

Ever had the experience of someone repeatedly correcting your slight mispronunciation of a name or word from another language and you can’t for the life of you hear where you are going wrong?

At a very young age do essentially lose the ability to hear the difference between phonemes that aren’t used in our native language. A French speaker may well not hear a meaningful difference between your pronunciation of Richard and theirs, and the same will apply in reverse for lots of French names and words. 

Edit: my mum is bi-lingual and was brought up speaking Swiss-German. They have a word for a specific type of milking stoool, and mum reckons that if you can pronounce it correctly you can consider yourself to have mastered the accent. She’s been trying to teach it to me for decades, and I’ve never managed to do better than “that was close”. 

I don't agree with this. I've heard my name in different accents from many different countries. It's only in France where the actual sounds are swapped.

If France didn't have a tch sounds, I'd get it, but they do.

In English: ch -> sh (not the same sound)

French has both of these sounds: tch and ch (same order)

So if I say Richard, they would hear it spelt as Ritchard. But they know it's spelt Richard as it's a common name and pronounce it accordingly.

It's not that they can't hear the tch sound, as the French have the tch sound also.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care, I just find it interesting that France is the only country where people seem to do this. I guess it comes down to a massive pride in their language.

I often wonder which is worse for the locals- English names for mountains or whatever else in Scotland or Wales, or absolutely butchered pronunciation of Gaelic/Welsh names. 

Yr Wyddfa/Snowdon and Beinn Nibheis/Ben Nevis are examples of different things. The first is where a place has a different name in other languages, which as others have pointed out is commonplace and is found in most languages. It is entirely legitimate for an English speaker to call the mountain by its English name, "Snowdon", and a Welsh speaker has no more right to insist I call it Yr Wyddfa than I have to insist they refer to "London" rather than "Llundain".  If you choose to use the Welsh name I respect that, but it is a personal and to an extent a political choice.

"Ben Nevis" is a true anglicisation of the Gaelic name. Is it "unnecessary"? On the contrary, for a name which is in widespread use (unlike the vast majority of Scottish hill names) it makes perfect sense to try to render it using the conventions of English spelling. It is not perfect, but it is closer to the correct pronunciation than an English speaker with no knowledge Gaelic orthography is likely to achieve. Even with some knowledge, most English speakers have never heard these names spoken by a native Gaelic speaker (this is also probably true of most Scots) and even a well-meaning attempt is likely to be well off the mark. So I would say that "Ben Nevis" is entirely necessary. I would go further and say that it might be preferable to have an agreed English form for, say, Coire an t-Sneachda rather than the assortment of mispronunciations we are saddled with.

walkhighlands is good for this as it's got a recorded version of the correct pronunciation  for each hill. They just sound better in Gaelic - 'Beyn Varn' is much sexier than 'Ben Ban' for example...

I've just spent the weekend officiating at the Welsh Junior Athletics Championships, held in the same city that hosted a match of the 6 nations.

The location was referred to - by the Welsh - as Cardiff, not Caerdydd.

Damn locals - not using the correct Welsh names.

I think it's mainly an issue where the name has been wrongly assigned when the hill/area already had a perfectly acceptable name. e.g. Mount Snowdon. Ben Nevis is pronounced right (ish) and potentially we're just looking at a spelling correction. That shouldn't be too much of an issue considering the amount of names we use from Gaelic (same with Beinn Laomainn). Interesting article here https://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/document/?documentid=1410

Do they? Any examples? I’m struggling to think of any.

le match (game)

tchin-tchin (during a toast like cheers)

There used to be a regular poster on here who was I believe a Gaelic speaker and who always wrote the Gaelic name when referring to place names, hills etc. There was a nationalist undertone to it though and I thought it was a bit incongruous and pretentious, like saying you’d been to the München beer festival or were going skiing in Österreich.

I think Beinn Nibheis and Ben Nevis have a similar if not identical pronunciation? 
 

 You don't tell people you're going to Napoli for pizza.

Why has Bar Napoli dropped out of favour and you need to keep quiet about it?

As for Snowdon/Yr Wyddfa - they are different things. One is a hill, the other a specific summit on that hill.   Just like Carnedd Ugain, Crib Goch or Tryfan (no not THAT Tryfan)

"

like saying you’d been to the München beer festival or were going skiing in Österreich."

Brings to mind the horrible anglicisations of some hill names: Chrysanthemum  (Greek shurely) and Cheesecake.  So in the spirit of a sheet 25 munro bagger I offer you 

Ive been to the Munchies beer festival and skiing in Ostriches.

Big important places get names in other languages - small places do not.  There is no English name for  St Guilleme le Desert  or Rjukan.  Even famous alpine mountains  usually retain their local names.  Don't see Maidens, Monks and Shrek too often.

Cool. Agree to disagree. I’m not seeing a plausible argument that what you are hearing is anything other than French people speaking with a French accent.

They aren’t really “swapping” the sound, just softening it. It’s not like they are calling you Ribard. Pay attention to what your mouth and tongue do when you say “ch” and “sh”. The difference is actually pretty subtle.

I’ve a French friend called Marie. Everyone we know England pronounces it in the English way, with their English accents, rather than trying to use the throatier “r” sound that it should have in French. None of them are doing it as a choice to express their pride in the English language. This is definitely not something unique to French people saying English names.

Even when you can hear a clear difference it feels weirdly effortful and contrived to suddenly try to adopt someone else’s accent for a single word in a sentence, so people aren’t likely to do it. 

The perception issue is less about the sounds in isolation than how they are used in context. That’s when we struggle to differentiate then in other languages. Do they have any words where you would find “chard” (or a similar set of neighbouring phonemes) pronounced with the same hard “ch” we use for “Richard”? I’ve honestly no idea. It doesn’t change my opinion that it’s essentially just French people having a French accent, but I’d be interested to know the perception aspect was a red herring in this case. 

Have you heard your own name (same as mine) pronounced a la francais? It’s how I introduce myself when in France. 

I am an "Ian". My French teacher at school always called me "Jean"

 Best teacher I ever had in any subject and the prime encouragement to add German, French and Spanish to my Gaelic and English.

Both loan-words from English! As “Richard” is from French (I speak as another Richard myself).

Funny thing about Richard - I was renamed Richard due to a dislike of some family members calling me Iago. So James/Iago got dropped at 6 weeks and replaced with something that was not too dissimilar in Welsh.  

And of course the fun I used to have on Twitter when some brilliant genius thought he was the first to crack the "Dick" joke.

I have, although I wouldn’t introduce myself as such if speaking English. Possibly would if I was speaking French, or at least lean towards it. 

I don’t think I knew (until reminding myself of the French pronunciation just now - not heard it in a few years) that “Stuart” was originally the French spelling of the name. 

Caoutchouc, but that's rare and possibly borrowed. Je tiens... is kinda the same sound. But I've forgotten how this fits into the discussion now so no idea if that's relevant.

A key landmark in any UKC thread worth its salt.

The French can be very petty!

I have stopped saying my own name the French way when introducing myself in the UK: the pronunciation is so close as to being insignificant. I do appreciate when someone makes the effort 

[ayreek] as opposed to [‘ayrik].
 

To come back to the OP, I still think that there is a thing about non-English words, pronunciation that is perceived as “inconvenient”. 
The “why should I” attitude is very defensive. 
 

One has to wonder why  English speakers appeared to feel so “threatened” by anything not English.

 
France famously has something called l’Académie Française precisely because it felt a need to curb all otherness away https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Académie_Française

I don’t like it’s past or what it stands for.

If you're telling Italians in Italy that you're off to Naples you would say Napoli.  Your mates down the pub, obviously not.  Context is everything with language.  

I don't see why you wouldn't use Gaelic or Welsh place and landmark names in Wales and Scotland.  It is literally what they are called.

It could be worse.  It could be the bilingual abomination that is "Bayern Munich".

Surely it should either be "Bavaria Munich" or "Bayern Muenchen".

I know an Ian (whom you probably do too as he’s in Ullapool) who was called Yan by a French flatmate.

I’ve heard Ewan/Euan similarly mangled.

There's also this notable Russian chess player (runner-up in each of the two most recent world championship matches):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Nepomniachtchi

And there's this pair of cricketing twins from New Zealand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_Marshall

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Marshall_(cricketer)

If they'd been triplets, perhaps the third one would have been called Seamus!

I have noticed something slightly curious about the use of Gaelic words by English-speaking hill-goers. I once chatted to someone who proudly pronounced Coire an-t Sneachda "Corree Tray Yack", in a thick Yorkshire accent. I've also heard it pronounced 'Corree Trek'. To me these speakers had zero interest in fidelity to the true Gaelic pronunciation. Instead, I think they hoped I'd interpret their pronunciation - specifically their rejection of the traditional English phonetic pronunciation - as a shibboleth of authentic mountaineers.

 Until very recently, when it became possible to hear these on the internet, it is very unlikely that many climbers will have heard any of these names spoken by a Gaelic speaker.  I can remember seeing that given as the correct pronunciation, although I can't now remember where it was. They had probably got it from the same source, and if that is the case they were probably making a genuine effort to get it right.

You've really had to work hard to take offence there!

Not offended! But seems like I jumped to the wrong conclusion, possibly due to other aspects of the speakers' characters. I probably also overestimated how much exposure people get to audio pronunciations by Gaelic speakers, vs mangled written pronunciations.

Reading this thread reminds me of a silly but amusing video I saw a long time ago about embracing 'foreign' words in English.  

https://youtu.be/fKGoVefhtMQ?feature=shared

I suppose we make allowances - it's not as if anyone would jump down a visitor's throat for inadvertently referring to The Peak District as 'The Peaks'.

Written pronunciations are only mangled when the grammar of the language isn't understood. Gaelic grammar is extremely consistent. As a general point, modifications to a sound exist in predictable ways, where they help the flow of the language. Sharp edges are eroded away and the words flow better off the tongue, as in the example of Coire an t-Sneachda.

I can't ever be judgemental toward someone who wants to be more accurate in their diction whether they're from Yorkshire or Skye.

The whole thread is a bit of a non-subject. Whether you say Ben More or Beinn Mhòr, I know exactly what is meant.

Have you been to Chamonix?  

I wouldn't have thought it’s a feeling of being threatened, more a rolling of the eyes being told what they “should” be doing. 

I find it odd that anglicisation of names goes in at least 3 ways. 

1. Spell it like we'd spell the sound in English. Beinn -> Ben, Nibheis->Nevis

2. Give it a name we can pronounce Beinn Chìochan -> Lochnagar (from Lochan na Gaire)

3. Randomly swap it from one gaelic to another Seana Bhràigh was apparently Beinn Eag.

While writing this (and finding examples) I came across the same point on a blog:

https://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/document/?documentid=1410

Bringing it back to the original point. I like the idea that we use the name that has the most cultural significance to the hill.

I don't see an issue of Ben Nevis vs Beinn Nebheis - it's attempting to pronounce the same thing. It's akin to Long Sufferin Grope Holder's Paris vs Paree. It's even the same as England vs Angleterre - it means the same.

Maybe we could just have phonetics on the OS maps for places with gaelic origin - given only 1% of the residents of Scotland can speak Gaelic (~18% for Welsh in Wales).

Map names aren't going to preserve a dying language, evolution of language is whats killing it. But keeping the etymology alive even through phonetics seems important.

There's a historical legacy of poor anglicisation of Gaelic names on the OS mapping.  It's changing slowly but Loch Quoich will probably have a few generations of mispronunciation ahead of it.  

T.

I was brought up in Scotland and never heard a word of Gaelic spoken. It wasn't laziness or ignorance not to learn that language. 

Moreover, where I come from there are now bilingual signs appearing. Which is an unnecessary Gaelicisation of Scots names.

Edinburgh apparently is Dun Eideann, which is an idiotic, political indulgence.  Why can't Gaelic speakers learn to say Edinburgh?

Times change. Nobody is suggesting everyone learn Gaelic, just make the effort to produce hill names correctly.

Why can't English speakers learn to say Bidein a' Choire Sheasgaich? Or do your expectations only go one way?

One reason would be that outside the Western Isles, Gaelic names are essentially historic. Ben Nevis, for example, is the name now. In Wales Welsh is at least widely spoken

Lots of place names are historic, I don't see why that's a reason to not attempt correct pronunciation?

Well the question becomes what is correct? Why pick a typical pronunciation from 100 years ago (or whatever) rather than what most people say today?

The people at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig would be the ones to ask. I believe they are right clued up on this stuff.

Why not just use the pronunciation norms of the (still existing) language they are in?

I think that if it's correctness you crave then asking experts in Gaelic names and using the pronunciation* of that language is more correct than using English pronunciation.

*Yes, I know that varies!

As above, it's not meaningfully existing. I've lived in Scotland for 30 years and never heard it spoken

I thought you were the one wanting "correctness". Im not too fussed.

Where do you live? I'm in the Highlands and Gaelic feels like a very current and meaningful thing. Most of the high schools have Gaelic teachers, there are Gaelic primary schools and Gaelic medium education. I know a number of adult learners and although the number of speakers may still be low there is a huge resurgence of interest in Gaelic culture.

You've lost me now, you questioned how we could know what was correct, I told you who would know.

Inverness (and previously Edinburgh)

You misunderstand. Obviously there is Gaelic spoken in pockets in the west. I was saying that in areas it's not spoken (e.g. Fort William) insisting Gaelic is "correct" and English "wrong" doesn't make much sense to me. If you want to use Gaelic fine but I don't think you can say it's anymore correct.

FTFY.   

I'm not suggesting English place names be replaced with Gaelic. The point I've been making all along is that if a hill has an existing Gaelic name we should try to pronounce that as correctly as possible. 

​​​​​​Admittedly small numbers but there's a Gaelic medium primary school in Caol and Gaelic medium education at Lochaber High. I don't know figures for native speakers in the area but I'm willing to bet it's well over the national average.

Did you mean Chamouny? 😉

I've said on here before my home town has acquired a gaelic name that is has never had and takes priority at the top of the signs coming into the village. I am happy to use gaelic names where they have always been, I am happy to use anglicised names to aid communicaiton (use gaelic names and no ones knows where you mean) but vehemently object to pretending gaelic is Scotland's historical language when it is not. There are those of us Scots who regard the advancement of gaelic into nontraditional areas as not just cultural but nationalistic and political. I find it uncomfortable.

Your asking me to study Gaelic, a language I've heard spoken "in the wild" literally only once, to a sufficient standard where I can not only make sense of the spelling but say it entirely correctly, so that when I visit Scotland, which is usually for only a few days a year, I can pronounce the place names correctly to other English speakers who have only ever seen them in print and who won't have the faintest idea what I'm saying.

I'm willing to have a stab at it, as I do with Welsh, but some of the phonetic pronunciation guides are distinctly dodgy (see "corry trayack" above). The purpose of language is to communicate, and if I'm communicating with other English speakers I'll do so in a way which is most likely to be understood.  Should I meet a Gaelic speaker I'll be very interested to hear the correct pronunciation but I probably wouldn't use it except to another Gaelic speaker, because I wouldn't be understood.

Both are equally valid, Wales is a bilingual country. The Olde English derived name is first recorded in 1095, it's not recently been imposed🤣🤣

You're making this all horribly complicated. No need to study Gaelic, you could just click on the sound files on the Walkhighland website and model your pronunciation on that. Or look at the pronunciation guides that appear in many guidebooks. Seems pretty simple to me.

More and more people are making the effort to pronounce Gaelic place names correctly and lots of people understand the basics so the communication issue is rapidly becoming less of an issue if it ever was an issue.

If you pronounce it correctly and someone doesn't understand then that's an opportunity, not a problem.  

Even Gaelic speakers pronounce this differently. The Lewis Gaelic word for snow sounds different to the Skye Gaelic word for snow.

I wonder how many Gaelic pronunciations would be genuinely unintelligible to English speaking hill goers? Perhaps fewer than many people seem to fear.

Pretentious indeed. Sadly, often typical of a non-native Gaelic speaker.

The person you are referring to was a staunch Nationalist. Changed his name to Sour Alba or something similar.

we could start by banning pronouncing Abseil as  "Absail"

Yes, I wasn't going to name him. He posted a lot which was of great value especially on mental health and Scottish land reform. He and I were generally on the same side but his posts had a recurring whiff of, "You're not from round these parts."

I really think we should be using ALL the original names for everywhere in the entire UK.

Those names being, of course, the PICTISH ones.

This is quite a funny statement considering this preceding sentence:

If we go by the above, it's a Hellenic person, not a Greek person. :-P

I can be pedantic too. Guilty as charged.

back to OP: still the general tone is one of « why should I bother? ».  Justified by, not my language, noone speaks it, it impedes communication, there are variations of pronunciation.

Thise justifications are excuses, some of them better than others, and only excuses to refuse engaging with non-English.

Most posters on here are really decent and reasonable folks and this refusal to engage with otherness will lead to nothing. I would argue that if this feeling lies dormant in so many of you decent, moderate folks, it begs the question of what can it do in other less well behaved people.

To my Johnny foreigner’s eyes the debate highlights a less savoury aspect of my chosen host country. It is pernicious and more serious than anyone gives it credit.

Open-mindedness has a language: it is inquisitive of other ways to express oneself, call things and describe our environment.

I shall not respond any further as I come across as a pontificating linguist. I often am but not on this thread.

Some I agree are straightforward - if I were to hear someone say "Beinn Nibheis" for example I'd probably understand them. But in most cases we are trying to communicate names printed on a map. Gaelic orthography is very different to English, and in many cases the words look very different to English eyes than how they are pronounced.  Even the very common and apparently simple "Dearg" is pronounced very differently than it would in English.  

I am English, living in England. Nearly every time I refer to a Gaelic placename I will be speaking to my companions, who are mostly also English. It is only very occasionally that I will be using them with a Scot, let alone a Gaelic speaker. Learning the correct pronunciations, desirable though that may be, will not help me to communicate. I do make some effort - I'll say Allt a Voolin and Carn Jerreg, but if I were to refer to Sgurr Horror-midge I doubt my companions would relate that to Sgurr Thormaid.

I sympathise with your argument, and I welcome the resurgence of Gaelic and Welsh (although not the imposition of them in areas where they were not spoken). However it is simply not realistic to expect the majority of English speakers, when talking to other English speakers, to use accurate and correct Gaelic.

This is not pedantry, the whole argument is just flawed. In an English sentence, would you say you’re going to Köln or Cologne? Deutschland, or Germany? Ελλάς, or Greece? Zhongguo, or China? Pozsony, or Bratislava? Nippon, or Japan?

This is not unique to English either, a lot of languages use different names than the local names for places, languages, people.

It’s pretty standard.

Perhaps you could use that as an opportunity to expand their knowledge and understanding of the language? 

It seems a shame that so many posters here seem to have a reluctance to learn new things about the island on which they live. 

I suspect most  people will have a passing interest in gaelic names and meanings - I certainly do.  But equally I have a passing interest in the geology, wildlife, history, weather, buildings etc in the hills.    Sometimes something catches my attention and I study it more carefully.   Just because I don't study a particular language in detail doesn't mean I don't want to learn new things it just means my interest is biased towards other topics.

Hardly, when I have negligible knowledge and understanding of it myself.

There are other things about this island which I would benefit from learning about. For the few days a year I spend in Scotland I'm afraid learning Gaelic is way down the list. If I were to seek to improve my language skills, it would be Welsh which I visit far more often.

An inability to pronounce a name like that is hardly a cardinal sin.

Inventing Gaelic names for places like Edinburgh and Motherwell seems like a fraud to me.

I've heard some locals pronounce it more like  sha-moh-nicks probably to the horror of French from other regions.

Which amused me as it was coincidentally much closer to like some Anglicised mangling than a more high french sounding like sha-mon-ee

Sha-moh-nicks it is 😆

Back on topic, how about Cnicht? That's mangled Saxon. Not Gaelic. OP has a point though, what to do about the tourists who take the train, buy an "I conquered Mount Snowdon" T Shirt and go home again, they'll never try to learn much. Most regular walkers will probably follow what's on the maps, so maybe it's best addressed by getting Gaelic names onto maps 

Dùn Eideann is as old as Edinburgh, & is closer to the original British (old Welsh) name. Not a good example of inventing Gaelic names. See https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89dimbourg#Toponymie,_%C3%A9tymologie

It's still a fraud to pretend that the present day inhabitants call it that. We're not living in ancient Britain!

Perhaps you could indicate the point in the discussion where I suggested it was? Try not to misrepresent other people's points, it makes for poor discussion.

So a bit like making up English pronunciations for Gaelic names then?

I actually agree with you that creating Gaelic names for places that have never had them is a bit of politically motivated nonsense that does the cause of Gaelic no good. Although as Doug mentions, you chose a poor example to illustrate the point.

Why can't tourists just enjoy their day on the Snowdon Mountain Railway, and possibly buy a T shirt before heading home.  Why do they need to be preached to?   

This tourist likes to find out lots about the local culture whilst touristing. One of the reasons for doing it.   (Nothing wrong with calling it the Snowdon Mountain Railway of course).

It's not necessary to learn a whole language in order to learn how to pronounce a few place names. If you have gone to the effort of learning how to pronounce Sgurr Dearg, it seems a bit odd to say thus far and no further, and refuse to make the effort for other place names. 

That's how many Parisians pronounce it. Cha-mon-icks.

Yet (in the Highlands) almost every Munro you will walk up, crag you will climb on, pass you will hike through, loch you will look at, beach you will stroll along will have a Gaelic name. The Gaelic name tells you so much about your surroundings. Black loch, red mountain, hollow of the winds, pass of the cattle etc. You don't need to learn the language, just a few words is enough.

Why mangled? The pronunciation of Cnicht is much closer to the English that it derived from than the modern English pronunciation is.

Languages are important in so many more ways than can be seen through the lens of one other language, but one of the interesting things that the continuation of languages that have been in contact with English for such a long time does is preserve aspects of knowledge about English itself, including words and pronunciations.

youtube.com/watch?v=vEFpZmChbGw&

But surely Beinn Nibheis, when spoken, would sound almost exactly like, or very like, ‘Ben Nevis’ wouldn’t it (the Gaelic bh being pronounced as a v)? So you have heard people use it.

Forgot to add this:

https://learngaelic.net/dictionary/index.jsp?abairt=beinn&slang=both&am...

Scroll down for Beinn Nibheis

Thanks, enjoyed watching that

They don't, they're a lost cause, all I ask is they spend some money, don't drop litter (or leave used toilet paper and "presents" next to paths) and park more considerately.

But regular walkers should make a better effort, IMHO...

It'll always be Campum munitum to me 😉

Wouldn't giving Gaelic names to mountains in Wales confuse things even further?

Are you talking about anglisisation NOW or historically? I'd argue they are different.  Renaming a place NOW would rightly be deemed insensitive but its not the same as using anglisised names which are widely understood by everyone.

I can recognise quite a few Gaelic words when I see them in print and know their meaning, including some of the examples you give. I can even have a stab at pronouncing some of them, although I doubt a Gaelic speaker will agree. However when faced with something like Sgurr nan Ceathreamhnan or Meall Coire na Saobhaidhe I am going to struggle. A Gaelic speaker with no knowledge of English would have equal difficulty trying to apply the rules of Gaelic spelling to English names and the result would be just as mangled.

However this is a digression. My personal attempts to say Gaelic names are a different matter from the application of English names to places with their own local name. However this is commonplace in every language. In many cases, Ben Nevis being an example, these are actually attempts to write the local name phonetically. Any attempts to render a word in a foreign language are inevitably only approximate. I cannot see why there should be any objection to this, any more than an English person should object to the Gaelic or Welsh spellings for say London.

In general, yes - but it is not something that I can get too excited about, to be honest. 

I lived in North Wales (sorry, Cymru) for a couple of decades, I did make the effort of learning a bit of Cymraeg, certainly enough to be able to pronounce the hills reasonably correctly, but I still automatically use Snowdon instead of Yr Wyddfa, a hard habit to break. I imagine that it will take a generation or two for Snowdon to fall out of use, same with Eryri instead of Snowdonia.

A name is a name, and you’re stuck with it. Such is the logical nature of names. Two different names for one thing has always been problematic/confusing. E.g Blencathra/ Saddleback.

In the case of something like Twmpa/Lord Hereford's Knob I think we should always defer to the one that has greater comedic value

Agreed in that case. It’s wonderful. I think just about the only reason I climbed it was to be able to say I’d ‘done’ it.

I hesitate to say it but I've yet to have the pleasure of Lord Hereford's Knob

Yes, I certainly won't be changing any time soon. It almost comes across to me as slightly pretentious when non Welsh speakers use the Welsh name.

I'm trying to think of mountain names for which the common usage has changed. The only one I can think of is Denali - a long time since I heard anyone call it McKInley. Sagarmatha or Chomolungma certainly hasn't caught on. But there may be others. Has Aoraki become the common usage for Mt Cook?

As for the separate issue of anglicised spellings such as Ben Nevis or Ben More, if these help people pronounce the names of the some of our most popular hills more or less correctly, I don't think they can be too bad.

Let me assure you you’ve missed out.

For many years it was in the view from my window.   Sometimes I wondered if the knob was the American topographical meaning but soon dismissed such dismal antifun thoughts.  

Oh My God! Twmpa!! Thanks to you I now have ejected coffee all over my laptop [and clean tablecloth]. It's the way you tell 'em!

I hope that we are all going to abandon Sgurr Alasdair and call it by its correct name of Sgurr Biorach which it had long before those colonising, self-aggrandising southern climbers invaded the Cuillin.

 https://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/document/?documentid=1410#:~:text=Sgurr%20...)%2C%20to%20no%20avail.

An the idea that An Stac is a minor choss pile when the big stac next door was unnamed.  Not buying it.  (Come to think of it, was it not for sale once and no one bought it)

Naming hills after people is with thr exception of Skye very unusual in Scotland. I can only suggest 3 mainland examples in 2 of which cases the name is really applied to corries on the hills, namely - Ben Arthur(The Cobbler) and Mullach Choire Mhic Fhearchair in Fisherfield and Meallan Liath Choire Mhic Dhughaill in Sutherland. My favourite Gaelic hill names are probably Leabaidh an Daimh Bhuidhe(The bed of the yellow stag) on Beinn A'an and Taigh Mor na Sealga(Big house of the hunting) a top of the Munro Sail Chaoruinn north of Sgurr nan Conbhairean. 

To add to my  people's names list of course is Beinn Fhionnladh above Loch Mullardoch.

And the Beinn Fhionnlaidh above Glen Creran. 

Thank you Harry had forgotten about that "Finlay" -(Moran Taing ,in the spirit of bilingualism)

There are lots of low-level personal names. Barrisdale at a guess for example.

You should probably test this on the non-Gaelic-speaking english-speaking Scottish population first before you embark trying to get the rest of the english-speakers in the UK to comply.

Means you've got up to 5.4 million people in Scotland to deal with first.

Let us know how you get on.

How about Leum Uilleim?

Very good. Just remembered of course Beinn Macduibh(Macduff's hill),and Cook' s Cairn South of CorryhabbieHill and Carn Mhic an Toisich(Mackintosh' s Cairn) , a Graham 

On the climbing front I wonder who has most routes named after them? Harold Raeburn must be a leading contender in Scotland 

They don't come much more low level than me.The original "Watch' was a bit of a cattle thief and  hooligan. You can read about him in Nei Munro,' s novel " The New Road"

Not forgetting Beinn Chaluim or Beinn a Bheithir's Sgorr Dhonuill. I could well end up on the latter the morra....Is fhearr Gaidhlig bhriste na Gaidhlig anns a' chiste. 

Moran taing, mo charaid

Mount Blair after the Great Leader* . Although I think  Blair is an Atholl

*May contain factual inaccuracies or be misleading

Origin may be Gaelic"blar" meaning "plain-" Yer man Tony wouldn't t be happy with that!

Mount Keen looks like a possible but is an anglicisation of Monadh Caoin meaning smooth or pleasant hill.

If you look at the Scottish Corpus website you'll find an interesting paper by Pete Drummond, who is an expert on Place names and hill names in Scotland in particular.Some of you probably have his book.The paper is titled ,"The Hill names they are a changin" .We Gaels ourselves have changed some of the names over the centuries as he points out.Some interesting stuff vis a vis hill names on Timothy Pont's 16th century maps of Scotland and the "modern " names we now take for granted - see Beinn Alligin and Fuar Tholl as 2 examples he quotes.

As others have pointed out Gaelic like all languages has local/regional variations..The Gaelic of Wester Ross does indeed differ from that of the Isle of Lewis. Interestingly for those of you struggling with Gaelic pronunciation,do not despair - the greatest modern expert on the Gaelic of Wester Ross was the late Roy Wentworth who died in 2003 at the sadly early age of 56. Roy was a native of Tooting who moved to Gairloch in his youth and completed his Celtic Studies degree at Aberdeen University becoming a crofter and for a time the curator of the Gairloch museum.

Not at all it is the the norm, I can't see why it's the least bit controversial. We don't use 'Warszawa' in English sentences and that's no disrespect to Polish. If people want respect for the Gaelic language treat it as a living language, like we do other languages.

I believe Mount Blair has old connections with the Bush family ie the US presidents.

Ardnandave Hill above Loch Lubnaig is the only "Dave" hill I know of:

https://www.hill-bagging.co.uk/googlemaps.php?qu=S&rf=3956

Arivurichardich, the Stovies hut near the Keltie Water, has "richard" embedded within it.

There are the Donalds Andrew Gannel Hill (which I'm up on a regular basis, most recently on Tuesday this week) and Andrewhinney Hill. The derivation of the first of these is unclear - seem to recall Pete Drummond's book offers different ideas in different editions, one to do with an actual person's name, the other a translation relating to sandy ground.

Actually, on the contrary, it's so common it's done in bulk - Munros, Corbetts, Grahams, Donalds

How couldI I forget the " lists"!

Can we really trust the pronunciation claimed by Welsh/Gaelic speakers when they make basic mistakes with the spelling such as "eggs gas town" for Monmouth rather than Trefynwy.

Just for you, Mark. 

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/articles/opinions/in_praise_of_the_gaidhlig-1...

Dhonuill fae Ballachulish was in fine fettle yesterday and gave me a lovely cold welcome. 

Math fhein! Winter's come back in the north west.Niot a lot of sneachda but it' s looking nice..Bit blowy fae the east today.

Picked this up in the charity shop today. Happy to post it to you if you like? 😉

Wheyhey! I remember getting that in the old Aros Centre yeeeears ago.

Does it live up to the promise?

Interesting.

I do think there's another side to the discussion and the last paragraph can be questioned. To quote

'Question. Use anything that appears odd as a chance to interrogate the many anomalies of English. For example, you may find it strange that the insertion of an h after an m or b can change them to a v sound. But we've happily changed a p to an f sound for years in words like phone.'

The sounds of 'ph' and 'gh' or 'ce' are not anomalies of English, they are well know phonological features of the language (specifically digraphs). Gaelic has completely different phonological features. A convention has emerged in the Highlands to use both languages with very different phonology, together. That is an oddity, and fine oddities make life interesting, but it is going to lead to confusion and 'mispronunciations'. Given what's actually happening I don't think it is appropriate to be judgmental of people who get it 'wrong'.

Changing the subject slightly/reverting to the OP why do we change the names of foreign places at all? Why don't the French use the word 'London'; why don't we visit 'Firenze', or 'Torino', or 'Munchen'?

I suspect that in many cases the anglicised version - or indeed the frenchified one [is that a word?], etc - will be a corruption, sometimes quite a close one, of an earlier version of the name; and the anglicised version will have evolved at around a time when the earlier version, or a recognisable form of it, was still current. München appears to derive from the old High German Muniche. In Roman times Firenze was Florentia - which is arguably closer to our version than to the city's modern name; our word florin comes from the term used for its currency. I imagine that at some point the name went through a similar transformation - losing the 'l' - whereby the Latin word flamma evolved into our word flame but the modern Italian fiamma.

In the cases of cities which at times have had a fairly multilingual population or are close to national borders, the anglicised version may simply be the city's name in another language. Wien seems a likely example of this; I imagine that the name by which we generally know it, Vienna, is Italian - and the French call it Vienne. Being in the French-speaking part of Switzerland [and also partly in France] I suspect that Genève is the form used by most of that city's inhabitants; but with German and Italian being two other of the country's four recognised languages it's also known as Genf and Geneva - of which we generally use the latter.

I've no idea how long it took for Londinium to transform - by stages, presumably - into London, nor at what point Londres emerged as the French version of it!

Hi Mike

"The sounds of 'ph' and 'gh' or 'ce' are not anomalies of English, they are well known phonological features of the language (specifically digraphs)."

To you and me, yes. But the point I was reaching for in my article was to look at "ph" from the perspective of someone encountering English for the first time in adulthood. [A difficult scenario to envisage, I'll grant you] They'd probably be bemused to learn that the "p" from "pig" and the "h" from "hat" collectively made a "f" sound. And I think that's roughly analogous to the full-grown Anglophone encountering "Nibheis" for the first time, having never had cause to modify the letter "b" into another distinct sound. (Obviously, they'd be familiar with the silent "b" in "climb" and "debt", so "dubh" might be easier to grasp)

Do natives of Firenze call a florentine biscuit something else? And is it old enough to date back to a time when Firenze was Florentia or similar?

It is analogous, and a good way to suggest to people that something that mat may not seem familiar to them, really is, from their own language. 👍

I have to admit that, until now, I don't think that I'd ever heard of a florentine biscuit! A bit of digging suggests, however, that it was never Italian - but French. There appear to be several versions of its origin, ranging from about the 14th century to the 17th, all of which involve the Medici dynasty - whose power base was, of course, Florence. An early version claims that a chef from the Medici household knocked up said confectionery while travelling in France and it went down such a storm with the locals that it became a 'thing'. A later account relates that court chefs at Versailles Palace invented and named it in honour of the then queen of France who, in the manner in which things were done in those days, happened to be Catherine de Medici from Florence. Elsewhere it's suggested that the biscuit was named due to its resemblance to gold florins from Florence, fiorini d'oro, which originated in the mid-1200s - the Medicis, of course, being a banking dynasty. So clearly the French word florentine was in use at the time as an adjective to describe things relating to Florence - as was, and still is to this day, the Italian word fiorentino. What this doesn't tell us, though, is whether the name of the city itself was still close to its Latin roots or whether by this time it had evolved further towards its modern form. One wonders, too, whether the good citizens of Firenze/Florence were even aware of the existence, over in France, of their eponymous biscuit - although if they were I imagine they would have called them biscotti fiorentini, or somesuch [that's a guess].

This all points to something that I didn't mention in my earlier post. Most of the names that we use for Italian cities which differ from the Italian names - Rome, Naples, Turin, Milan, Florence, etc - are also their French names. I imagine that due to their proximity and other ties, plus the fact that French was in wide use as the language of court and diplomacy, it was not surprising that the French names existed; I suspect that they came first and that the English subsequently adopted them as being in a more familiar language. [Other opinions are available,] 

I imagine it didn’t take long (esp. for most people … who couldn’t write) to call Londinium London. It would have just gone through “Londium – Londum - London”. The French Londres seems a lot more odd to me (being a very bad French speaker). I can’t see why they couldn't just call it Londun, like Verdun.

People do use Beinn Nibheis, lots, just that you haven't seen or heard it.

There are a series of Londres in Herault - on the way from Montpellier to Ganges. The name is local and not derived from anything to do with that village north of Croydon. Something to do with marshland.  Perhaps a medieval diplomat was cracking a joke and it stuck?

If I went by (some replies on) this thread, I'd also assume that no one speaks Gaelic at all. I know a lot of them, and have worked with a lot.

Easy to assume it's not there at all if they're using English in company.

Nice theory. I’ll go with that