hi cwojo,

and the local calcio team [soccer = calcio in italian] in firenze, is [wait for it....] Fiorentina!

regards, ann

I asked for a ticket to Florence at the train station in Milan and was told that there was no such station in Italy. However I remembered the Italian name Firenze. I should not have bothered-I was pickpocketed at the Firenze station.I was pickpocketed in Prague in a train station too and had to put up with an attempted pickpocketing episode in Malaga in Spain.Take care!

Sounds like you need to polish up your "someone is stalking me" antennae.

"... Note too, though, that there are 2 stations in Florence: SMN (S.ta Maria Novella) and the suburban Campo Marzio. ..."

Close. It's three stations:

SMN Santa Maria Novella (named after the adjacent church which is in turn named after guess who) is the principal station,

Firenze Rifredi is near a hospital and a public university

Firenze Campo di Marte is on the other side of the historic center from SMN - quite handy for many locations close to and in the center and beyond, and well served by buses 12 (northbound) and 13 (southbound).

If you're a train buff and fluent in Italian, here's more:

http://www.firenze-online.com/traspo...ie-firenze.php

It does get complicated if you don't know the local names. I have always rather disliked the use of "Roma" "Napoli" Firenze" "Milano" "Venezia" used on this board by people posting in English. It seems a little pretentious .

Having said that, if giving directions then I now use these Italian names having experienced people on Pisa airport railway station looking in vain for trains to Florence and wondering why they couldn't find "Fire enz" on their maps.

When you get to Firenzi tell them you want to buy a ticket for Pariggi and watch what happens..
but make sure you get a transfer to the Refredi station in Firenzi

pretentious - moi?

Probably the oddest 'translation' of a town name - Leghorn for Livorno.

This thread is screamingly funny... :)

On the other side, we in Italy generally call the american cities with their original american name.
If sometimes it could happens to see an Italian saying "Chicago" raising a smile, this is because in our language it sounds funny (= "sh..ting here").

They're not translations. Words like Leghorn are the name people in one language use - or used at one point in time - to describe a city that's better known as something else.

There's all sorts of reasons. Pressburg was the standard name among all language groups in the area for the city Slovak nationalists rebranded Bratislava. Mons and Bergen are just the same idea (mountain) in French and Flemish. Aken/Aachen/Aix are just how Aquae Grani morphs into the three languages that are almost interchangeably used in that part of Holland/Germany/Belgium.

I'd argue the oddest example is Mumbai. A hokey pseudo-Hindi translation of the anglicised version of Bombay's original name (the Portuguese Bom Bahia: the city didn't exist till Europeans invented it). Candy (the 19th century English for Heraklion) and Christiania (ditto Oslo) were esssentially the names used locally for centuries: as with Constantinople, our grandfathers didn't see the point of changing how they described a city because of some foreigner's politics.

The fad of using locals' names is actually quite recent, and mainly limited to English speakers. Medieval Italians referred to places as unlikely as Bincestro (Winchester) Contisgualdo or Chondisgualdo (the Cotswolds, which the medieval Flemish called Colswout), Boriforte (Burford) and Norleccio (Northleach). No modern Italian refers to Wales vas anything other than Galles: every Greek lecturing us on why we should give some damnfool name to Athens calls my capital city Lodino.

....I'd argue the oddest example is Mumbai...

I was amused that when locals were interviewed after the bombings, everyone seemed to be calling it Bombay

They still call it Bombay in French. (And they still say Pékin, too)

Best way to get from Luik to Liège via Lüttich, anyone?

"Best way to get from Luik to Liège via Lüttich, anyone"

By going round in circles, of course

In everyday conversation with compatriots it may indeed be a little pretentious for an Englishman or American to always use the local name of a town, but since this is a travel forum, people need to get used to the local language - if only for their travel purposes. If the OP had met a bit more "pretentious" people, he would have known that Florence and Firenze designate the same place.

If you travel to more than one country, you may even start to hate the custom of most languages to come up with their individual version of a city's name, e.g. when you plan to take the train from Florence to Munich, or drive from Venice to Prague via Vienna.

Also odd that even the most language-challenged Anglo seems to have no problems with San Francisco or Las Vegas.

Hi CB,

>odd that even the most language-challenged Anglo seems to have no problems with San Francisco or Las Vegas.<

But we can't agree on how to pronounce
New Orleans, LA
Cairo, IL
Nevada
Colorado

((I))

ira,

can't we? just how do you pronounce "cairo"? is Cairo, Il pronounced differently to Cairo, Egypt?

is this a case of you say tomato, we say tomato? [doesn't really work in print but you get the idea.]

regards, ann

I don't understand Cowboy's remark that 'even the most language-challenged Anglo seems to have no problems with San Francisco or Las Vegas'. Why would anyone have a problem with those names? So far as I am aware those names are written the same in every European language. I could understand if he were talking about New York, which is Nueva York in Spanish and Nuova York in Italian. The only person who seemed to have a problem with Las Vegas was Elvis Presley, who sang "Hey, Los Vegas," at least, that's how it sounded to me.

bert, we meet again.

i never understood elvis's pronunciation of Los Vegas either.

regards, ann

Cairo, IL: KAY-ro
Peru, IN: PEE-ru
Versailles, PA: Ver-SAILS

and so forth