For anyone wondering about why it's being called "Magna Carta" instead of "the Magna Carta"...
From Wikipdia:
> Magna Carta was given its name in Latin, a language which has no direct, consistent correlate of the English definite article "the". As a result, the usual academic convention is to refer to the document in English without the article as "Magna Carta" rather than "the Magna Carta".
Of course, in proper English it's "the Magna Carta." The rules of Latin have no bearing on proper English.
Also: We don't call Paris "Par-ee" like in French. Words in different languages are different words. "Magna Carta" just happens to be spelled the same in English and Latin.
Leave it to the NYT to do the wrong but "fashionable" "academic" thing. At least we can count on that.
Language is prescriptive, but I don't want to have that debate.
Yeah, it's become so pervasive that it's not out of the ordinary for American reporters to say 'Mehiko" instead of Mexico while speaking an otherwise English sentence. Or they try to pronounce the surname Velazquez in Spanish, but when it comes to Van Gogh or 習近平, there is no attempt at native pronunciation. This kind of inconsistency is baffling --moreover their Spanish pronunciation is not Castillian even when the person is Spanish. So they are all over the map.
I've been down to Mexico and I'm quite sure people don't try to pronounce 'Nueva York' as 'New York'.
On the other hand, these same reporters mangle Chinese city names with abandon, so it's not as if they're just trying to say the names in a native fashion --which I guess at least would make some consistent sense.
If you're going for phonetic correctness, Mexico should be pronounced "Meshi-co" according to the original Nahuatl.
Transcription of foreign languages into Latin script is difficult in its own right since the "obvious" phonetic value of letters presumes certain phonosyntactic rules that don't always hold (e.g., Mandarin Chinese uses an aspirated/unaspirated distinction and not a voiced/voiceless distinction). It furthermore doesn't help that the main sources of transcription (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) don't agree on the phonetic values of letters, nor that people tend to retain the traditional spellings of place names even when proper phonetic readings of that spelling (or even the verbal pronunciation of the name itself) changes.
In my opinion, trying to enforce "native" pronunciation of foreign place names is misguided: those who argue for it don't argue for Österreich, Deutschland, or Hrvatska, so why should we elevate foreign place names that merely happen to be spelled the same in English as their native tongue to getting special treatment?
That's the problem. Either do it for all or don't do it. It's not as if English does not have the words or English pronunciation for all these places.
I don't see many Italians who speak some English saying 'I come from Roma. They say Rome. On they other hand you have people who will say OOrooguay instead of the English Yourugwye. Maybe it's more a Latin American thing, not sure. At least it seems pretty prevalent. Maybe psychologically it has to do with the slightly anti-american disposition of many of the politicians down there. Lot's of them trot out the old "imperialists" trope when it's convenient. so maybe it's a kind of psychologically subversive thing.
I remember someone saying, well that's the name of my country in spanish, so that's why I say it that way --something along those lines. As if saying it with the english pronunciation took something away from their country being whole. Or maybe that was just a one off weird person.
Regarding Chinese city names, in the 2008 Olympics, newscasters were trying to use the Chinese name for the location instead of the English name (which is Beijing). It was horrible. It was incorrect. It was "politically correct."
Beijing? Peking? Pei-ching? Peiping? What is the correct spelling and what isn't for foreign names changes over time.
(It's quite amusing how Germans go to great lengths to use the new, Polish names for cities in former Prussia, while for Belgian cities that haven't been under German control for much longer, they insist on German names.)
> There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.
In fact there are rules about when proper nouns require articles. While there are a few exceptions, and the rules are sort of tedious, they do exist, as proved by the fact that you usually (90+% of the time) know whether to use the article on a novel proper noun.
Native speakers don't even know that they know the rules. I only learned through ESL education.
Legal documents are preceeded by "the" unless they are numbered. So: the Constitution, the Patriot Act, the Articles of Confederation, the Freedom of Information Act, the Federal Register. But: HB 289, Title IX, Proposition 8.
This is probably just a species of a more general rule dealing with articles and things that have given names.
> There's no particular rule of when you use "the" before a name.
Well I don't know if the rules cover all cases, but one rule is you don't use "the" before place names. Or given names "the Barack Obama". Titles are OK "the President of the USA".
Clearly the names of "things" like books require the use of "the". Like "the Bible". It's important to distinguish between the "name" of a book and it's title. We clearly don't say "I read the To Kill a Mockingbird".
Children go to school, even though we mean a specific school, yet adults go to the pub, even when we have no particular pub in mind.
If there are rules behind this I certainly can't see them, and I'm sure foreign learners would agree :)
From Wikipdia:
> Magna Carta was given its name in Latin, a language which has no direct, consistent correlate of the English definite article "the". As a result, the usual academic convention is to refer to the document in English without the article as "Magna Carta" rather than "the Magna Carta".
Of course, in proper English it's "the Magna Carta." The rules of Latin have no bearing on proper English.
Also: We don't call Paris "Par-ee" like in French. Words in different languages are different words. "Magna Carta" just happens to be spelled the same in English and Latin.
Leave it to the NYT to do the wrong but "fashionable" "academic" thing. At least we can count on that.
Language is prescriptive, but I don't want to have that debate.