Sunday, February 12, 2006

Pet peeve

The name of the Italian city in which the winter Olympics are currently being held, in Italian, is Torino. In English, it's Turin, probably best known as the home of the shroud that carries its name. If we never, ever, in English, talk about the Pope in "Roma" or the capital of Greece being "Αθηνα" or the capital of the Czech Republic being "Praha" (with the hard guttural "h") or the capital of Russia being "Moskva," then we probably should be talking about the Turin Olympics, rather than the "Torino" Olympics. But what makes no sense at all is to say, as the NBC people are repeatedly doing, "Torino, Italy." It's "Torino, Italia" in Italian. But in English, it's "Turin, Italy."

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