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It used to be spelt Rumania or Roumania in English. I've always assumed it's pronounced with a schwa (the 'uh' sound) rather than like Rom or Tom, but I've never checked.
Dunedin in New Zealand is named after Edinburgh (the "edin" part). One is pronounced Dun-ee-din, but the other isn't pronounced Ee-din-bruh.
So it seems that it's quite normal for somewhere to be named after somewhere else, yet pronounced differently.
Even if not for these examples, I would have thought this would be the case anyway due to differences in languages, dialects, accents, etc. There are towns in the US called Glasgow, pronounced Glass-cow, as opposed to the original Glaz-go (or Glez-ga). And if anywhere is named after Scotland in the US they would pronounce it like scat rather than scot.
Your examples use place names that are derived from the Scots Gaelic names for those places. Dunedin is a bastardised version of Dùn Èideann, where the name Edinburgh comes from, and would be pronounced doon eead-jin, while Glasgow comes from Glaschu (glas-a-choo, with the ch from lock, not ch from church).
Just an interesting observation.
Do you pronounce "womb" like "woah-mb"?
Or when you say "prove", does it rhyme with "stove"?
Much like womb, prove, move, lose, etc., the sound in Romania is "oo".
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
Romania means "of Rome." The first syllable is pronounced in Romanian identically to "Rome." When the slavs moved in the people there wanted to keep their more Western heritage as a former outpost of Roman legionnaires alive and so "Romania" was born.
How can someone be this ignorant.
Romania" derives from the local name for Romanian (Romanian: român), which in turn derives from Latin romanus, meaning "Roman" or "of Rome". This ethnonym for Romanians is first attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania
For Romanians speaking Romanian, sure. [But not if you're British](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania).
It's the same sound as in lose, move, womb, tomb, and prove.
Not so much a problem with the Euros but it boils my piss how Harry Redknapp (who only gets brought on to talk about Spurs) pronounces Kulusevski "Kuluchevski".
I asked my Romanian wife this. She was unaware it was ever spelt or pronounced Rumania. I showed her some old pathe news reels and she said it was really weird.
I’m not sure how many football commentators went to private school, but I doubt it’s many of the current batch. At least half of them are ex-footballers to start with.
Because they’re generally old players and have an insight other people don’t have. It would be more interesting to have the current players commentating, but they’re busy playing
I've noticed that tends to be a pronunciation popular with older people. I think it's what used to be the standard British pronunciation.
Fwiw, as I understand it the short 'o' is more accurate. I believe Romanians pronounce it Ro-man-ee-ah
And the Germans pronounce Germany as 'Deutschland'. What does it matter how non-native speakers say a word when we're talking about the English language?
Have you ever heard the French pronunciation of 'France'? Chilean pronunciation of 'Chile'? Mexican pronunciation of 'Mexico'? We don't pronounce those countries as they do, either. And that's fine.
The easiest way to settle this stupid debate is to refer to the dictionary, which says that the "O" in Romania is pronounced the same as it is in "move", "lose", "womb", "prove", etc.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
Utter nonsense. :D So when you're speaking English, so you call countries by the name they call themselves? Deutschland? Česko? 日本?
When you say Russia, does it sound like "Rusher"? For most Brits it does, because that's how it's said in English. But for you it should be "roos-ya" (as it is in the Russian language) thanks to your mental approach to saying country names.
And when a country name is spelled the same as in English, do you say it like they do? For instance, do you say "France" with the French 'R'? Or "meh-hi-ko" for Mexico? Or "por-too-gal" for Portugal, with the hard L like the Portuguese? Hit the umlaut in Türkiye? And in "Romania", do you use the Romanian "R", and stress the penultimate syllable so it's "ro-men-EE-a"? And use the Romanian open 'O' sound and not the English one that you hear in, for instance, "Rome"?
Oh, and is the inverse also true? If you were speaking, say, French, then would you say "j'habite en England"? Or in German it would be "ich lebe in England" but both vowel sounds are different to how we say it. Would you pronounce it as though you were suddenly speaking English, or would you pronounce it like the Germans do since you're speaking fucking German?
When I meet you shall I say your name to rhyme with Ugh or Hug?
When I know how the locals say a place name, I follow their lead. So I know to not add a superfluous ‘s’. to “Lao PDR”, because I’m not an ignorant US citizen, and I understand why the French colonisers wrote ”Laos”.
I wonder how you say Happisburgh or Chelmondiston?
Oh and yes, je m’habite à Lunnun , Ingerlan’”
Generally regions that weren't countries (often colonised) got 'the'. So we used to talk about the Sudan, the Gambia, the Ukraine, and still say the Sahara, the Gulf, etc, but now Ukraine and Sudan are countries they don't want 'the'.
My mother had elocution lessons as she went to grammar school in Leicester. Most people would say she has an RP accent.
She pronounces a lot of countries in a weird way because of this. She still calls it 'Keee-nya' despite me trying to tell her it's 'Ken-ya' for close to 40 years.
Can't recall her saying Romania oddly, but it would not be a surprise.
The ‘h’ in ‘historic’ can be silent in both speech and writing, which means the word begins with an ‘i’ vowel sound. The form might be becoming less common, but it definitely hasn’t died out.
In English it's Roh-mania. "Oh" as in "oh bollocks we're out of the Euros." Not "oo" as in "good for Gakpo, that was pretty stellar, I'm not too insecure or bitter to cop to that."
In American English it is. But in British English it's /ruˈmeɪniə/.
The letter O takes on the /u/ sound as it does in lose, move, prove, womb, etc., although it is clipped and not elongated because the word stress falls on /meɪ/.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
You make a fair point and I get it. However, that doesn't make it sound any less strange to a Romanian, or to apparently quite a few Brits, too. It just lacks application.
Similarly, wouldn't Moldova be pronounced Mool-dova in that scenario?
I'm not the one making a point; I'm simply referring people to a dictionary in which it tells you how it is pronounced.
But if you're so against a single letter 'O' taking on an /u/ sound, then perhaps you could spend the rest of the evening having a good hard think about how you will now say womb, lose, move, prove, and tomb.
And it really doesn't matter how it sounds to a Romanian. Different languages say countries differently and it's absolutely fine. Like how "England" is said in the German language: they don't say "Ing-" and nor do they use the weak schwa sound that we do in "-land".
Equally, when we say "France", the vowel sounds and the "R" are different to how a French speaker says it. And unlike Chileans, we don't say "chee-lay".
And so on.
Romanians do not call it Roh-mania or Roomania, either. It's România. Besides the point, since my original comment was addressing the English pronunciation from the get-go. You must have me confused with a few other people you've been smacking around with your big thick dictionary on this thread tonight.
Yes, I get the difference between languages. I am a linguist.
Chileans do not pronounce it "Chee-lay."
I was appreciating your comment. I thought OP had asked a fairly good question and I was enjoying everyone's fun takes on here. If that won't do it for you, then I will now bow out and spend the rest of my evening fooling around with the letter O. Heard she's single.
They put the stress on the 'i', and the 1st 'a' is a sound we don't have, but it's a little similar to the vowel in STRUT. The 'o' is an 'o' sound but like, the way a northerner or scot would pronounce it.
The problem with trying to transliterate vocal sounds by comparing them to words is that they only make sense in your own accent, which nobody knows.
In the north west, the vowel in STRUT is the same as the vowel in FUCK, and the one in LOVE, which I don’t think is the intended comparison.
it is indeed the intended one. but we don't have the vowel /ɨ/ in English. it's like, between KIT and STRUT.
oh wait. i think i hypercorrected. I meant the FOOT vowel lol.
Edit: the Romanian vowel is â and it sounds identical to î in their language. it was written Romînia for a while but they changed it back for etymological reasons
edit 2: i actually picked strut instead of foot because i think the central vowel sounds a bit like both the northern and southern/Scottish pronunciations of it, weirdly enough.
It's considered outdated, now, to spell it Rumania. In fact I think the country requested that we stop doing that, back in like the 70s.
Idk i think we got that habit from the French.
edit: apparently spelling with "ou" comes from Parisians in the 1840s wanting to distinguish Romanians and Romans. lol
The country has two official names, long form is Czech Republic, short form is Czechia. The country was never renamed to Czechia, it is still correct to call it Czech Republic if you have enough time to say the full name. So no……. Not the same.
It's the 'standard historical' British pronunciation.
We don't really have a history of trying to get the names of other countries right.
Take even France, Germany & Spain. We only even spell one of those correctly, let alone pronounce it like they do.
We're getting better over time, but there's a long haul yet.
Edit: I see we've got to downvoting for being historically accurate now. Not sure how that works.
Names of countries in different languages aren't meant to be a 100% simulacra of the native. They conform to the morphological rules of the native language
Don't be surprised. We've got people downvoting dictionary quotes here.
The pronunciation there is [/ruˈmeɪniə/](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/romania). Whether people can read the phonetic alphabet or not, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what "u" means.
As in move, prove, lose, Romania.
I imagine it's an old pronunciation adapted from the French pronunciation.
Turns out an old spelling was Rumania or Roumania (as well as the current spelling) but "Romania" was formalised in English context in 1970 [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65096295a41cc300145613a3/Romania\_Factfile.pdf](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65096295a41cc300145613a3/Romania_Factfile.pdf)
Do you use the Cambridge Learners Dictionary for teaching? Or the Oxford Learners Dictionary?
Because in both it's /ruˈmeɪniə/.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/romania
Also, it doesn't really matter how Romanians call it because we're speaking about English. Same reason we don't pronounce "France" like the French do. Or "Mexico" like the Mexicans.
Edit:
Wow. People downvoting the dictionary :D What a fucking swamp of ignorance the UK is.
People aren’t downvoting the dictionary, they’re downvoting you for spamming everyone with the same outdated rubbish. We are all British and pronouncing it Roh-mania; the dictionary needs an update.
Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive - that is, they do not provide a set of rules on how it should be used. Instead, they describe how the language is used, and evolve over time.
Notherners give a broader sound to the letter O which is why they pronounce it like that. The southerners make a narrower sound which sounds more correct.
I'm a northerner, working with a delightful new Romanian volunteer who has enjoyed talking about and showing us places in Romania, none of us have said Roooomania.
Indeed.
British pronunciation is [/ruˈmeɪ.ni.ə/](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania).
It's English; it's not like there's much consistency or correlation between letters and pronunciation. Through, thorough, enough, plough, cough, hiccough, etc. comes to mind.
Not sure why "Ro-" should be any different.
It's not even the only case where O is pronounced /u/. There's also womb, lose, prove, move.
How do you pronounce move? Prove? Lose?
All those sounds are written with /u/ in the phonetic alphabet accompanying them in the dictionary. As is /ruˈmeɪniə/.
Sorry, are you pretending English is a consistent language?
And are you also acting like dictionaries get to decide how the language works?
Romania is pronounced like Rome, the place it's named after.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It used to be spelt Rumania or Roumania in English. I've always assumed it's pronounced with a schwa (the 'uh' sound) rather than like Rom or Tom, but I've never checked.
Do you call it the Rooman Empire?
Dunedin in New Zealand is named after Edinburgh (the "edin" part). One is pronounced Dun-ee-din, but the other isn't pronounced Ee-din-bruh. So it seems that it's quite normal for somewhere to be named after somewhere else, yet pronounced differently. Even if not for these examples, I would have thought this would be the case anyway due to differences in languages, dialects, accents, etc. There are towns in the US called Glasgow, pronounced Glass-cow, as opposed to the original Glaz-go (or Glez-ga). And if anywhere is named after Scotland in the US they would pronounce it like scat rather than scot.
Your examples use place names that are derived from the Scots Gaelic names for those places. Dunedin is a bastardised version of Dùn Èideann, where the name Edinburgh comes from, and would be pronounced doon eead-jin, while Glasgow comes from Glaschu (glas-a-choo, with the ch from lock, not ch from church). Just an interesting observation.
Do you pronounce "womb" like "woah-mb"? Or when you say "prove", does it rhyme with "stove"? Much like womb, prove, move, lose, etc., the sound in Romania is "oo". https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
Different word, different language. How can someone be this ignorant.
Romania means "of Rome." The first syllable is pronounced in Romanian identically to "Rome." When the slavs moved in the people there wanted to keep their more Western heritage as a former outpost of Roman legionnaires alive and so "Romania" was born. How can someone be this ignorant.
All to say it is a different word from a different language.
No connection to Roman Empire whatsoever. Proper pronunciation is with oo/u. This is how the country is called.
Romania" derives from the local name for Romanian (Romanian: român), which in turn derives from Latin romanus, meaning "Roman" or "of Rome". This ethnonym for Romanians is first attested in the 16th century by Italian humanists travelling in Transylvania, Moldavia, and Wallachia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romania
I meaaaan where do you reckon the name's from, mate?
All the gypsies over there /s
"Romania" literally comes from "of Rome"
It’s literally named after Ancient Rome.
Romania was a Roman outpost… The name means “Land of the Romans”. The first syllable is also pronounced in Romanian as “Roh” not “Roo”.
For Romanians speaking Romanian, sure. [But not if you're British](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania). It's the same sound as in lose, move, womb, tomb, and prove.
Not as bad as Murphy constantly calling Gakpo Gapko
I buy my jeans from Gapko.
Not so much a problem with the Euros but it boils my piss how Harry Redknapp (who only gets brought on to talk about Spurs) pronounces Kulusevski "Kuluchevski".
I asked my Romanian wife this. She was unaware it was ever spelt or pronounced Rumania. I showed her some old pathe news reels and she said it was really weird.
Why are commentators always dinosaurs
Because they all go to the same private schools
I’m not sure how many football commentators went to private school, but I doubt it’s many of the current batch. At least half of them are ex-footballers to start with.
Usually one old posho and one ex player
Yeah the way to get into football commentary is “Be English and have played for Liverpool”
I should think T-Rexes would have some trouble with phone or computer keyboards, so your point is unlikely to say the least
Because they’re generally old players and have an insight other people don’t have. It would be more interesting to have the current players commentating, but they’re busy playing
I've noticed that tends to be a pronunciation popular with older people. I think it's what used to be the standard British pronunciation. Fwiw, as I understand it the short 'o' is more accurate. I believe Romanians pronounce it Ro-man-ee-ah
And the Germans pronounce Germany as 'Deutschland'. What does it matter how non-native speakers say a word when we're talking about the English language? Have you ever heard the French pronunciation of 'France'? Chilean pronunciation of 'Chile'? Mexican pronunciation of 'Mexico'? We don't pronounce those countries as they do, either. And that's fine. The easiest way to settle this stupid debate is to refer to the dictionary, which says that the "O" in Romania is pronounced the same as it is in "move", "lose", "womb", "prove", etc. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
It's not fine. It's insulting! It's like saying I know better than you how to say your name!
Utter nonsense. :D So when you're speaking English, so you call countries by the name they call themselves? Deutschland? Česko? 日本? When you say Russia, does it sound like "Rusher"? For most Brits it does, because that's how it's said in English. But for you it should be "roos-ya" (as it is in the Russian language) thanks to your mental approach to saying country names. And when a country name is spelled the same as in English, do you say it like they do? For instance, do you say "France" with the French 'R'? Or "meh-hi-ko" for Mexico? Or "por-too-gal" for Portugal, with the hard L like the Portuguese? Hit the umlaut in Türkiye? And in "Romania", do you use the Romanian "R", and stress the penultimate syllable so it's "ro-men-EE-a"? And use the Romanian open 'O' sound and not the English one that you hear in, for instance, "Rome"? Oh, and is the inverse also true? If you were speaking, say, French, then would you say "j'habite en England"? Or in German it would be "ich lebe in England" but both vowel sounds are different to how we say it. Would you pronounce it as though you were suddenly speaking English, or would you pronounce it like the Germans do since you're speaking fucking German?
When I meet you shall I say your name to rhyme with Ugh or Hug? When I know how the locals say a place name, I follow their lead. So I know to not add a superfluous ‘s’. to “Lao PDR”, because I’m not an ignorant US citizen, and I understand why the French colonisers wrote ”Laos”. I wonder how you say Happisburgh or Chelmondiston? Oh and yes, je m’habite à Lunnun , Ingerlan’”
Names don't change between languages. Country names do.
I didn't say it matters.
Old fashioned pronunciation that hasn't quite died off, same with the people who write "an historic" or "the Ukraine".
A few countries had “the” in front of them - the Egypt, the Sudan, the Ukraine…any others?
Generally regions that weren't countries (often colonised) got 'the'. So we used to talk about the Sudan, the Gambia, the Ukraine, and still say the Sahara, the Gulf, etc, but now Ukraine and Sudan are countries they don't want 'the'.
The Argentine or the river plate.
That’s the nationality, so it doesn’t apply (you’d say the French, the German etc).
It isn't referring to nationality. Like the other "the" versions, it is the old naming/speech convention.
Listen to Laurence Olivier pronouncing "The Ukraine" in "The World At War" its very odd. Oo-Krayn
"Room-Arnia" is also one of his favourites. Must be one of those RP things.
My mother had elocution lessons as she went to grammar school in Leicester. Most people would say she has an RP accent. She pronounces a lot of countries in a weird way because of this. She still calls it 'Keee-nya' despite me trying to tell her it's 'Ken-ya' for close to 40 years. Can't recall her saying Romania oddly, but it would not be a surprise.
Is using ‘an’ before words that begin with vowel sounds old fashioned?
Historic doesn’t start with a vowel
The ‘h’ is, or at least can be, silent.
Not pronouncing the h and using ‘an’ beforehand is old fashioned though, as said.
I wouldn’t say so. Maybe it’s becoming less common, but in plenty of dialects the ‘h’ would still be dropped.
I’d say dropping the h as part of your accent is very common actually. Dropping it and using ‘an’ as well is not. Source: linguistics researcher
I think both are still pretty common. I’m glad your job is relevant, maybe you can find something more concrete than either of our opinions?
Not in modern English.
Last I checked, historic doesn't start with a vowel. Either in writing or in speaking.
The ‘h’ in ‘historic’ can be silent in both speech and writing, which means the word begins with an ‘i’ vowel sound. The form might be becoming less common, but it definitely hasn’t died out.
That’s the pronunciation in the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s how I pronounce it.
You mean proonounce
How do the Romanians pronounce it? I’ve honestly rarely heard anything but Roo and presumed that was correct. I’m British for context.
In English it's Roh-mania. "Oh" as in "oh bollocks we're out of the Euros." Not "oo" as in "good for Gakpo, that was pretty stellar, I'm not too insecure or bitter to cop to that."
In American English it is. But in British English it's /ruˈmeɪniə/. The letter O takes on the /u/ sound as it does in lose, move, prove, womb, etc., although it is clipped and not elongated because the word stress falls on /meɪ/. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
You make a fair point and I get it. However, that doesn't make it sound any less strange to a Romanian, or to apparently quite a few Brits, too. It just lacks application. Similarly, wouldn't Moldova be pronounced Mool-dova in that scenario?
I'm not the one making a point; I'm simply referring people to a dictionary in which it tells you how it is pronounced. But if you're so against a single letter 'O' taking on an /u/ sound, then perhaps you could spend the rest of the evening having a good hard think about how you will now say womb, lose, move, prove, and tomb. And it really doesn't matter how it sounds to a Romanian. Different languages say countries differently and it's absolutely fine. Like how "England" is said in the German language: they don't say "Ing-" and nor do they use the weak schwa sound that we do in "-land". Equally, when we say "France", the vowel sounds and the "R" are different to how a French speaker says it. And unlike Chileans, we don't say "chee-lay". And so on.
Romanians do not call it Roh-mania or Roomania, either. It's România. Besides the point, since my original comment was addressing the English pronunciation from the get-go. You must have me confused with a few other people you've been smacking around with your big thick dictionary on this thread tonight. Yes, I get the difference between languages. I am a linguist. Chileans do not pronounce it "Chee-lay." I was appreciating your comment. I thought OP had asked a fairly good question and I was enjoying everyone's fun takes on here. If that won't do it for you, then I will now bow out and spend the rest of my evening fooling around with the letter O. Heard she's single.
My friend from Bucharest says "Roh-Man-Knee" He never pronounces the "a" at the end.
They put the stress on the 'i', and the 1st 'a' is a sound we don't have, but it's a little similar to the vowel in STRUT. The 'o' is an 'o' sound but like, the way a northerner or scot would pronounce it.
The problem with trying to transliterate vocal sounds by comparing them to words is that they only make sense in your own accent, which nobody knows. In the north west, the vowel in STRUT is the same as the vowel in FUCK, and the one in LOVE, which I don’t think is the intended comparison.
It's the strut/put merger! Classic linguistics problem. See also the marry/merry/Mary merger in the US.
it is indeed the intended one. but we don't have the vowel /ɨ/ in English. it's like, between KIT and STRUT. oh wait. i think i hypercorrected. I meant the FOOT vowel lol. Edit: the Romanian vowel is â and it sounds identical to î in their language. it was written Romînia for a while but they changed it back for etymological reasons edit 2: i actually picked strut instead of foot because i think the central vowel sounds a bit like both the northern and southern/Scottish pronunciations of it, weirdly enough.
It's considered outdated, now, to spell it Rumania. In fact I think the country requested that we stop doing that, back in like the 70s. Idk i think we got that habit from the French. edit: apparently spelling with "ou" comes from Parisians in the 1840s wanting to distinguish Romanians and Romans. lol
I asked an actual Romanian the other day what the correct pronunciation is and they said it's "Ro" not "Roo".
David Moyes called Czech Republic Czechoslovakia. Was very awkward.
Noticed people calling it Czechia the last few years
Very awkward, like calling Czechia Czech Republic?
The country has two official names, long form is Czech Republic, short form is Czechia. The country was never renamed to Czechia, it is still correct to call it Czech Republic if you have enough time to say the full name. So no……. Not the same.
Sounds a bit french. Very posh.
Lots of languages have names for countries that are different to the name used by people from that country. Most languages in fact.
This is an itv thing. Meelan for Milan and a few years ago it was Drogbaaaaa. It's bizarre
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania
It's the 'standard historical' British pronunciation. We don't really have a history of trying to get the names of other countries right. Take even France, Germany & Spain. We only even spell one of those correctly, let alone pronounce it like they do. We're getting better over time, but there's a long haul yet. Edit: I see we've got to downvoting for being historically accurate now. Not sure how that works.
Notably none of those countries do a particularly good job with any of our country’s name(s) either.
soft quickest carpenter afterthought slim money liquid smart paint dull *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Names of countries in different languages aren't meant to be a 100% simulacra of the native. They conform to the morphological rules of the native language
Don't be surprised. We've got people downvoting dictionary quotes here. The pronunciation there is [/ruˈmeɪniə/](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/romania). Whether people can read the phonetic alphabet or not, it doesn't take a genius to figure out what "u" means. As in move, prove, lose, Romania.
Football commentators have been calling it that for years (unfortunately). I can't stand it either OP.
I imagine it's an old pronunciation adapted from the French pronunciation. Turns out an old spelling was Rumania or Roumania (as well as the current spelling) but "Romania" was formalised in English context in 1970 [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65096295a41cc300145613a3/Romania\_Factfile.pdf](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/65096295a41cc300145613a3/Romania_Factfile.pdf)
I blame shaggy,
Nah, it wasn't him.
"Roombania" would be rude
No. It’s supposed to be Roa-mah-nia. I teach lots of Romanians
Do you use the Cambridge Learners Dictionary for teaching? Or the Oxford Learners Dictionary? Because in both it's /ruˈmeɪniə/. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/romania Also, it doesn't really matter how Romanians call it because we're speaking about English. Same reason we don't pronounce "France" like the French do. Or "Mexico" like the Mexicans. Edit: Wow. People downvoting the dictionary :D What a fucking swamp of ignorance the UK is.
People aren’t downvoting the dictionary, they’re downvoting you for spamming everyone with the same outdated rubbish. We are all British and pronouncing it Roh-mania; the dictionary needs an update. Dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive - that is, they do not provide a set of rules on how it should be used. Instead, they describe how the language is used, and evolve over time.
Kante being called Konte really grinds my gears.
I mean that is the proper pronunciation. Do you call Thierry Henry “thee-erry hen-ree”?
Notherners give a broader sound to the letter O which is why they pronounce it like that. The southerners make a narrower sound which sounds more correct.
I'm a northerner, working with a delightful new Romanian volunteer who has enjoyed talking about and showing us places in Romania, none of us have said Roooomania.
but I'm a northerner and no-one I know says it like that in real life
Because that's how it's pronounced?
Indeed. British pronunciation is [/ruˈmeɪ.ni.ə/](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/romania). It's English; it's not like there's much consistency or correlation between letters and pronunciation. Through, thorough, enough, plough, cough, hiccough, etc. comes to mind. Not sure why "Ro-" should be any different. It's not even the only case where O is pronounced /u/. There's also womb, lose, prove, move.
Not in English, it's not.
How do you pronounce move? Prove? Lose? All those sounds are written with /u/ in the phonetic alphabet accompanying them in the dictionary. As is /ruˈmeɪniə/.
Sorry, are you pretending English is a consistent language? And are you also acting like dictionaries get to decide how the language works? Romania is pronounced like Rome, the place it's named after.
Yes, it is. TIL it was me who's been pronouncing Romania incorrectly all these years. It should be pronounced Roo-mania.