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Bogotá, official Spanish Bogotá, D.C. (“Distrito Capital”), capital of Colombia. It lies in central Colombia in a fertile upland basin 8,660 feet (2,640 metres) above sea level in the Cordillera Oriental of the Northern Andes Mountains.
- thuh. kah. – pih. – duhl. uhv. kuh. – luhm. – bi. – uh. ihz. bo. – guh. – ta.
- ðə kæ – pɪ – ɾəl. əv. kə – ləm. – bi. – ə ɪz. boʊ – gə – tɑ
- English Alphabet (ABC) the. ca. – pi. – tal. of. Co. – lom. – bi. – a. is. Bo. – go. – ta.
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How do you pronounce the capital of Columbia?
- thuh. kah. – pih. – duhl. uhv. kuh. – luhm. – bi. – uh. ihz. bo. – guh. – ta.
- ðə kæ – pɪ – ɾəl. əv. kə – ləm. – bi. – ə ɪz. boʊ – gə – tɑ
- English Alphabet (ABC) the. ca. – pi. – tal. of. Co. – lom. – bi. – a. is. Bo. – go. – ta.
How do you spell Bogota Colombia?
Bogotá, official Spanish Bogotá, D.C. (“Distrito Capital”), capital of Colombia. It lies in central Colombia in a fertile upland basin 8,660 feet (2,640 metres) above sea level in the Cordillera Oriental of the Northern Andes Mountains.
How is Havana pronounced in Cuba?
Spanish Ha·ban·a [ah-vah-nah] . a seaport in and the capital of Cuba, on the northwestern coast.
What do you call a Colombian girl?
In Colombian slang, you don’t call people “hombre” or “mujer”. They “colombianized” the word “man” with their intonation so it’s used to refer to a guy and, on the other hand, an old woman which is “vieja” is used to refer to girls or women.
How do you say drunk in Colombia?
Jincho/Jincha
This word is solely Colombian jargon, and it means to be straight up “drunk.” Está jincha.
Why do Colombians say Miercoles?
In short, Agustín actually meant to say the Spanish curse word “mierda,” which translates to “s—t” in English. But he refrained from doing so and instead said “Wednesday.” According to #Encanto Twitter, this is a common practice in the Colombian community as a way to avoid profanity around children.
Is Bogotá a word?
a city in and the capital of Colombia, in the central part.
Is Bogotá safe?
Bogota is actually one of South America’s safest urban areas, with a violent crime rate lower than Indianapolis. It has dozens of distinct neighborhoods, full of music, food, dance, and art. It’s also one of the world’s best places to drink coffee.
What is the richest city in Colombia?
| Rosales | |
|---|---|
| Country | Colombia |
| Department | Distrito Capital |
| City | Bogotá |
| Locality | Chapinero |
Why is Medellin pronounced with AJ?
The double L (‘ll’) is commonly pronounced as ‘y’ in Spanish, but the Paisas pronounce it as ‘j’. For example, ‘Medellin’ is pronounced as ‘Me-de-jin’. The letter ‘s’ kind of sounds like ‘sh’. The Paisas use the word ‘Pues’ very often.
How do you pronounce Ciudad in English?
Break ‘Ciudad’ down into sounds: [THYOO] + [DAAD] – say it out loud and exaggerate the sounds until you can consistently produce them.
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Bogotá | national capital, Colombia | Britannica
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You Say Bogota, I Say Bogotá—And That’s A Beautiful Thing : NPR Public Editor : NPR
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Bogotá | national capital, Colombia
Bogotá, official Spanish Bogotá, D.C. (“Distrito Capital”), capital of Colombia. It lies in central Colombia in a fertile upland basin 8,660 feet (2,640 metres) above sea level in the Cordillera Oriental of the Northern Andes Mountains.
Colombia: street theatre Street theatre performance in the Plaza de Bolívar, Bogotá, Colombia. © Filipe Frazao/Shutterstock.com Bogotá, Colombia Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Bogotá occupies a sloping plain at the base of two mountains, Guadalupe and Monserrate, upon whose crests stand two imposing churches. The city is laid out in a grid pattern and has a number of plazas, or squares, including the Plaza Bolívar, along which face the principal public buildings and churches. Modern apartment towers stand alongside buildings dating from the colonial period.
Britannica Quiz Countries and Capitals Quiz How well do you know the world’s capital cities? In this quiz you’ll be presented with the names of 195 capital cities. You’ll need to match them to their countries.
European settlement in Bogotá began in 1538, when Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada conquered Bacatá, the main seat of the Chibcha Indians. The settlement was christened Santa Fé de Bacatá: “Santa Fé” after Quesada’s birthplace in Spain, and “Bacatá” for the original Indian name, which was soon corrupted to Bogotá. Bogotá’s fate was closely allied to that of the viceroyalty of New Granada, of which it was made the capital city, soon becoming a centre of Spanish colonial power in South America. Bogotá’s citizens successfully revolted against Spanish rule in 1810–11 but had to contend with Spanish loyalists until 1819, when Simon Bolívar took the city after his victory at the Battle of Boyacá. With independence from Spain achieved, Bogotá in 1821 was made capital of Gran Colombia, a confederation that included the present republics of Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama, and Colombia. When the confederation was dissolved in 1830, it remained the capital of New Granada, which later became the Republic of Colombia.
Turbulent struggles for political power in the capital city, as well as its geographic isolation, stunted Bogotá’s growth and prosperity in the 19th century. In April 1948 the city was severely damaged by riots, and a wave of violence, known as the bogotazo, swept the region. Undercurrents of unrest continued in Bogotá until 1958, when the Liberal and Conservative parties reached a settlement.
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Bogotá is the home of the nation’s tire, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, but its chief activities are commercial. A stock exchange (1928) and the main banks are located in the city. It is the hub of air travel in Colombia and the home of Avianca (Aerovías Nacionales de Colombia), the first commercial airline in South America. Railroads connect Bogotá with the Caribbean coast to the north and via Puerto Berrío with the Pacific coast to the west. Bogotá is on the Colombian section of the Pan-American and Simón Bolívar highways and has road connections with all major Colombian cities.
The Xavier Pontifical University (1622) and the University of Santo Tomás (1580) are among the several excellent universities in Bogotá. Other cultural institutions include the Botanical Institute, the National Conservatory of Music, the National Museum, the National Astronomical Observatory, the National Library, and the Columbus Theatre. There are also a planetarium, a museum of natural history, several modern art galleries, and the Gold Museum, which houses the world’s largest collection of pre-Columbian gold objects.
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Numerous parks adorn the city and its outskirts. Prime tourist attractions are the 515-foot (157-metre) Tequedama Falls, about 20 miles (32 km) south, and the tram and cable car that climb more than 1,800 feet (550 metres) to the church and shrine atop Monserrate mountain. Pop. (2003 est.) city, 6,850,505; (2005 est.) urban agglom., 7,881,156.
Bogotá pronunciation: How to pronounce Bogotá in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Hungarian
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You Say Bogota, I Say Bogotá—And That’s A Beautiful Thing
You Say Bogota, I Say Bogotá—And That’s A Beautiful Thing
Enlarge this image toggle caption Allison Shelley/NPR Allison Shelley/NPR
What better time to tackle the issue of NPR’s policy around on-air pronunciation of non-English words than when the devastating fire in France’s Notre Dame Cathedral has been in the news?
Some accents have been better than others, but across the board on NPR I’ve heard only a French pronunciation: “No-treh Daahm,” instead of the Anglicized “Noter Dame.” Not that a single listener has objected when hearing it pronounced more or less as the locals in France would say it. And that’s telling.
The public editor’s office hears regularly from listeners who have questions or objections when it comes to how NPR’s on-air staff pronounce non-English-origin names and places. Often these letters are about mispronunciation, an issue the newsroom takes seriously, in my experience. On occasion, multiple emails will fly before the newsroom lands on a pronunciation that everyone can agree on.
To a casual listener, NPR’s pronunciations could seem arbitrary. In the same breath as they say “No-treh Daahm,” NPR’s on-air folks talk about where it’s located — in “PAIR-iss” (not “Pah-REE”). That’s the most obvious example, but there are many more. NPR refers to Moscow, not Mosk-vah; Rome, not Roma.
One of the guiding factors is clarity for listeners: Many listeners would be confused to suddenly hear those capital names rendered in their native language. Over the years, NPR has changed newsroom guidance on its pronunciation for some well-known places, including, in 2013, Kiev, and in 2014, Edinburgh. Both of those changes, however, were subtler (in the case of Kiev, it was a switch in which syllable to emphasize). So yes, the choices may seem arbitrary, but they are also carefully considered and understandable.
So far, so good. But then there’s the flip side of this issue: the letters we get from listeners complaining precisely because NPR staffers are using the proper pronunciation for that language. In all cases I recall, these listeners expressed those concerns only about accurate Spanish pronunciations.
Here’s a typical letter:
I am writing to inquire about NPR’s editorial policy on the pronunciation of foreign names. Lately, NPR announcers … have been pronouncing Latin American names using Spanish pronunciations. Yet when pronouncing Swedish, German, Chinese or Vietnamese names, NPR announcers pronounce the names using the American English pronunciation. I am perhaps a minority, but I find the sudden influx of a foreign pronunciation in Spanish, but not for any other language, to be irritating. … I would be very pleased if NPR announcers pronounced Chinese and Swedish names in Chinese or Swedish, but this isn’t the case.
The listener is not quite correct. NPR does pronounce many names and places with local language pronunciation; the guidance to the newsroom for names in particular is to “get as close as possible to the source.” But authentic Spanish pronunciations are indeed more prevalent.
Three weeks ago on Twitter, Weekend Edition Sunday’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro, the first Latina to host an NPR newsmagazine, posted a snippet of a voicemail from another listener. He was a bit more direct than the letter cited above. For those who don’t want to listen, here’s a transcript (pronunciation rendering is mine):
But when are we going to start saying, for instance, “Vlad-ee-meer Poot-een” when we refer to the president of Russia? And every time someone mentions the prime minister of England, should we go into a cockney accent and refer to “Theresa May?” I mean, would it only be equal? So kudos to speaking the Spanish names in a Spanish manner. But to not be exclusive to one ethnicity, which is racism, I think it should be done for all ethnicities.
It seems a stretch to argue that using authentic pronunciation for Spanish but not for other languages represents a form of racism. And actually one could argue that the racism in at least some of the complaints runs the other way. As Eric Deggans, NPR’s TV critic, put it to me, some of these concerns seem “rooted in a paranoia about cultural dominance – some version of ‛Spanish is taking over everywhere’ – that is ultimately racist and unfair.”
Garcia-Navarro’s ensuing Twitter thread and the comments from others who jumped in help explain why listeners hear a difference.
As she wrote:
My thoughts are these. A) I’m bilingual. I’m not affecting an accent or trying to be pretentious. I speak the language. I think people aren’t used to hearing things pronounced correctly because we are not used to hosts from different backgrounds on the air.
B) Actually everyone tries to pronounce the words correctly. At NPR we ask native speakers to give us the best pronunciation of their city or name and then we give it a try. It is anglicized only because we frequently fail at getting it right. The anglo version is imperfect.
C) I know sometimes it’s hard to listen to if you have a stream of words in what seems like a foreign language. So I do mix it up if that happens. Soften it or slow it down. But I’m not going to mispronounce it.
D) A frequent question is why don’t we say PAREE for Paris. Well, there are longstanding English words for some [capital] cities. Of course we use them if we are speaking in English. But I will say the President of France’s name correctly (I also speak French).
I could go on (and obviously the caller mixes up an accent from East London with a language like Spanish). But this is the way I do it. It is still the subject of debate. There are no rules, necessarily. But I feel good about where I’ve landed. Appreciate your thoughts too! LMK
And the reason I’m writing about this is that I do feel we should be more transparent about why we do things in the media and get feedback.
Eyder Peralta, NPR’s reporter based in Kenya, also jumped into the conversation:
Lots of assumptions in this thread. I grew up in Miami, where we added English to Spanish. And of course, easily, naturally interjected Spanish into English. One of the reasons, I like hearing @lourdesgnavarro on the air is because she validates my experience as a Brown American.
So many times in our lives, we are forced to “assimilate.” To accept white and English as default. But @npr especially has a responsibility to represent the vast experiences of Americans.
That means that someone from Miami will pronounce Caracas in Spanish, but a 5th generation Mexican-American will anglicize San Antonio.
The thing is all of these are American experiences. The problem I have is when we try to make white the default in a country as diverse as the United States. And as I’ve said before Spanish deserves a special place in the US.
We can’t forget that it’s a language that predates the Union and is at least somewhat spoken by a bunch of us Latinos in the US. To demand anglicization feels personal and, honestly, feels designed to deny the Americanness of our experience.
As Garcia-Navarro said, this issue is far from decided in the newsroom. Many I heard from internally told me they support any effort to pronounce non-English words as they are pronounced in their original language. One suggested that it depended on whether the reporter or host was a native speaker. A few, however, said NPR should stick with Anglicized place names in particular.
Law enforcement correspondent Martin Kaste, a native German and Portuguese speaker (and a former NPR correspondent in South America), added his counterthoughts to the Twitter thread.
He wrote (and told me, as well):
My priority as a radio journalist is clear communication in an aural medium. Pronouncing a place name with a foreign pronunciation distracts the listener, and [they’re] liable to miss what I’m trying to communicate. Anglicized place names evolved because they’re easier for an English-speaker to understand. I think @NPR sometimes tries to use “authentic” pronunciation to virtue-signal (or education-signal) … which listeners pick up on. It can be interpreted as arrogant. (Not saying it’s meant that way, but it can sound that way.)
(Here’s a 2017 Reddit thread on the topic, where some of those “arrogant” interpretations surfaced: Why do the NPR hosts over pronounce Latino names/places and not others like Asian or African?)
To get back to the first listener’s query: The policy boils down to editors and on-air staff who make judgment calls about whether or not the audience will be confused; the decisions are not always consistent, and some of the decisions depend on who is doing the speaking, a native speaker or not. Garcia-Navarro called it “an art, not a science.”
Mark Memmott, NPR’s standards and practices editor, told me, “We want our correspondents and hosts to speak naturally.” For some who are dual- or multi-language proficient, their natural pronunciation might be different than that of an English-only speaker, he said, and all are welcome “as long as it’s understandable to the bulk of the audience.”
He made the same point as Peralta did to me: NPR has made a commitment to sound like America, “and America has many accents.”
As the country changes, NPR needs to change with it (or rather, catch up to changes that have been happening for some time now). Even though more than 40 million U.S. residents spoke Spanish at home (just over 13 percent of the population over the age of five) according to 2016 U.S. Census Bureau data, NPR is unlikely to start broadcasting much content in Spanish any time soon (although there’s also an argument to be made for allowing more extended Spanish-language clips). But authentic pronunciation of names and places seems logical to me.
In fact, Garcia-Navarro said NPR has already been changing. She joined NPR in 2005 as the Mexico City-based correspondent and had many more conversations with editors then about acceptable on-air pronunciation, she said. (Here’s what NPR’s first ombudsman, Jeffrey Dvorkin, had to say on the topic that year.) “I think times have changed. I hope we have a better understanding now of how multicultural the country is,” she said.
So should there be a carve-out, an exception for Spanish, as Peralta suggested? In my opinion, yes. Language mirrors society. But why not go further and gradually expand the number of names and places that are pronounced authentically, to the extent that it’s possible for the journalist? Eventually, I’d expect that the audience would catch up. Garcia-Navarro put it well: “I fundamentally believe it’s a matter of respect.”
As Peralta reminded me, founding program director Bill Siemering’s original vision for NPR talked about regarding individual differences “with respect and joy” and celebrating the human experience as “infinitely varied.”
Update: Here’s the NPR Training team’s guidance on pronunciation.
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