I’m picking “Colonel” needs to be respelled to match how it’s pronounced.

Try to pick a word no one else has picked. What word are you respelling?

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    “Arkansas” and “Kansas” are both from the Osage language, but the former passed through French on its way to English.

    • catharso
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      1 year ago

      i’m from somewhere in europe and always wondered why you guys would pronounce those two so different!

      • fubo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        America has a lot of place names that come from Native American / First Nations languages; but they also come via different European languages.

        And some of those names are actually words that refer to a different Native group. “Arkansas” and “Kansas” are from the Osage word for the Quapaw people. The name of the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho is a translation of the name that Plains people used to refer to the Shoshone: they were the “snake people” and that wasn’t a compliment.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’ve heard that, but “Ar Kan Saw” is nothing like how a French person would pronounce “Arkansas”

    • Carlos Solís@communities.azkware.net
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      1 year ago

      In Spanish they do rhyme and their endings are pronounced the exact same, as in Kansas. I was greatly puzzled when I discovered that the French managed to mangle the name Arkansas that badly back in the day