I am still surprised when I have heard and said the name of a city in Haiti several times and see it spelled for the first time. It is almost always spelled so different than how I pictured it in my head! I think how it sounds must be how it's spelled, forgetting that this is French and French has all kinds of random letters they like to throw in there :)
For example, what I thought, because of how it is pronounced, was "La Cay" is actually "Les Cayes." For years I have referred to a town we visited on our first trip and spelled it as "Quadabouque," but really it is "Croix-de-Bouquets." Ha! And then there's Anse-a-Pitres (which I have been referring to a lot recently), that when I first heard it, imagined it as "Ansapeid."Also, what I thought was "Gontye" (and confused with the popular band, Gotye..) is actually "Ganthier."
One of the best ones so far, though, is "Chote"... which is actually spelled "Thiotte." I might need to stick to Spanish...
P.S. A parody of pronunciation videos.
I noticed the same thing while working in Louisiana; many of the Cities have names that are spelled very different from how they sound when you pronounce them. Like Brobridge which is actually spelled Breaux Bridge or Goshea which is spelled Gautier. Louisiana was a French holding until the U.S. purchased the land in 1803.
ReplyDeleteThose are funny! The list goes on and on.
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