The Sandwich That's Not A Sandwich

For decades, the Italians are quite tickled about the unexpected globalisation of their humble pizza, which had managed to conquer the great part of the planet, even way up the mountains of Mongolia. Many a life of a travellers has been saved from starvation by the internationally recognised name, even you don't speak a single word of the country you are visiting.

As to the Spanish, who are so bent on giving foreign anything with a Hispanic name, necessary or not - like Londres for London. Isn't it just as simple, easy and more reasonable to let it stay as London, seeing they would pronounce it exactly correctly with their own alphabet for this word? But they had left the word pizza well alone. What's the point calling it Pisa? Piza? Or Picha?

Now they are having a bit of a problem, debating on how to call the recently on the market and becoming almost as popular as the pizza, the Shawarma. The Arabic 'sandwich', a savoury with tasty grilled lamb meat stuffed inside the 'pocket' of the Pita bread. No way would they call it Shawarma, not just because of their enthusiasm of giving a foreign product a Hispanic name in this case, but that they simply can't pronounce it. In fact they can't pronounce any word at all beginning with 'S'. That's why they would say espaghetti, esport instead of spaghetti and sport.

The sound produced by 'sh' ( sheriff, show ) does not exist with the Spanish alphabet or pronunciation. Just like they can't pronounce the French word beginning with 'ch' ( Champagne, chef ). So they have to modify it a little calling Shampoo as Champu.

So now Shawarma would simply be xawarma I hope, not like Londres for London, so illogical and unrecognisable. Same as in the case of the name Pekin in China. For no valid reason at all the English speaking countries call it Pekin instead of Beijing. This is to me a real puzzle. Because, using entirely English pronunciation the correct name Beijing will sound exactly right as it should be, while Pekin sounds totally foreign to all Chinese, whatever part they come from. To the Chinese, there isn't such a city in China called Pekin!!! They all need to learn that foreigners are a bit weird!

Tags:Pizza,Shawarma,Beijing

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