On this October, 12th I went to the most incredible art museum I’ve ever been to. My family and I went to Inhotim. It was amazing! We could see paintings, sculptures, dance, performances and other types of art. But the most interesting point for me was checking the way foreigners say the name of that museum. As you may know, Inhotim is much more visited by foreign tourists than by Brazilians. That is astonishing, right?
Well, at first I heard some foreign people saying simply “museum”, but after some time I noticed they had problems on pronouncing the name of the museum properly. They said: in hot in, in hot tin, but never Inhotim!
Inhotim, according to what I was told, is named after a very old local man who owned that area. He was known as Mr. Tim, or in plain Portuguese, senhor Tim, that later became sinhô Tim and after all, Nhô Tim.
My point is: have you noticed that famous places may have interesting names, names with history and that many times some names are impossible for non-locals to pronounce?
Check these ones, can you say all of them correctly?
Arkansas – Idaho – Trafalgar – Worcester – New Orleans – Leicester – Tucson – Houston – Quebec
NYT note: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/03/10/world/americas/20120310Paz.html?ref=brazil
no I can’t what now?
Try harder