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Why does English use the French spelling for Bruges, but the Dutch spelling for the Bruges suburb Zeebrugge? |
Travel Info Why does English either both French spellings (Bruges / Zeebruges) or both Dutch spellings (Brugge / Zeebrugge)? Travel Tips First of all let's get something straight: Zeebrugge is by no means a "suburb" of Brugge. It is a large industrial and passenger port (ferries) and is the connection with the sea of the canal connectng Brugge, a leftover from the days Brugge was an important port by itself , before that part of the North sea silted in. Now as to the spelling of our English friends: could it be that the English (for somewhat pedantic reasons) have a predilection for using French words or expressions (of which they sometimes have not the slightest notion) mixed with their daily fish and chips English? Examples: d茅ja-vu; double entendre,etc. And so they prefer the French spelling as this sounds more "chic". Note for the previous answerer: when you say the see withdrew surely you mean the Holy see??When was that??? Others do we??? ...i've heard of neither... because they want to stay friends with everyone. Besides, if they did not use Dutch, we would allow them in our coffeeshops anymore. Don't know about this particular example, but the English spelling of foreign names is inconsistent across the board. For example, why Paris = Paris and Rome = Roma? It probably has to do with misspellings based on the phonetic pronunciation of the name. Bombay = Mumbai is an example. Whatever spelling made it onto the first official map(s) became the common English spelling. in french : Bruges in dutch : Brugge in English : Bruges The name of Brugge is from the dutch name Bridge(s) because in that city (also called the Venice of the north) there are a lot of channels = so many bridges ( the same as in Venetia - Italy) The small city Zeebrugge (big harbor) as nothing to do with Brugge, the only connection between them is a canal. It is historical. At the glorious time of Bruges, the city was on the see and had various translations (French, Flemish, Spanish, etc...). But progressively, the see withdrew and they created a new town : Brugge on the see (Zeebrugge) which has never been translated in other languages. When Belgium cities are old, there is a translation in both languages (Liege/Luik, Mons/Bergen, Anvers/Antwerpen, Gand/Gent) but when the cities are more recent, people use the original language (La Louvi猫re, Charleroi, Genk for example). |
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