A Very Guilty Feeling: Or How To Pronounce Givenchy

Last August I did an amazing road trip with an old friend of mine from high school, with whom we took a car, charged iPad with an European SIM-card and made an approximate hand-written map of what we wanted to see and how to go about doing it in just less than 10 days - [yes, American vacation times are very short...].

Our 'Napoleon's' plan - [in other words - our GRAND plan] - involved to see much - [if not all] - of Montenegro, the east side of Italy - [starting with the south of the country] - [but happened to see the central part as well] - and everything in between, which happened to be Croatia and Slovenia. Without a right navigation system and certain , it could have been a disaster, especially if we didn't know the specificazioni...

I wrote about this exhilarating trip many times - broken in many vignettes, where I talked about amazing beaches and seafood of Montenegro, the biking culture and fashion-forwardness of Italy and the beautiful simplicity of Croatia. So, this post is not about my trip, but more about the recallation of the navigation system (GPS) that we had to have in order to manage to see and pass through one, two - and sometimes three cities in just one day.

When we first got in the car and pointed GPS to get us out of Bari (south-east of Italy, the home of one of the largest seaports, to which we sailed on a boat with a car from the coast of Montenegro) and into Bologna, I realized that the local (European) GPS, whenever we drove, pronounced the local places the way a local would pronounce.

A generic - [and must say - very British] - overall voice-over of the GPS would switch to a complete different voice of someone pronouncing the names of towns and cities just as the locals would do - be it an Italian, Croatian and/or a Montenegrin. I was very amused by that, as the American GPS do not switch to any other voice-overs, they are just plain generic...(Although, don't you think it'd be so much fun to drive through Alabama, Texas, and/or Boston, for example, and hear the GPS pronounce the places with a local accent/dialect and just as the locals would do it?)

And the reason I'm tell you all of it is because, believe it or not - we are all guilty of mispronouncing the foreign names, be it a famous fashion designer, a film director and/or a politician. We just do - we mispronounce and it ain't right, because no matter how 'nice' the other people are, they do not like it when you get their names wrong.

So, here are a few videos on how to pronounce some of the famous fashion figures, the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Comme des Garcons, Burberry, Giorgio Armani, Salvatore Ferragamo, Prada, Bvlgari, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Chanel, Hermes, Givenchy, etc.

(Believe me, I'm guilty as well...)

I just couldn't help myself from not sharing it with you, remembering how awesome - [and helpful] - it was to actually know how to correctly pronounce Ascoli Piceno and Trieste, when we happened to stop to see the places and talk to the locals there...And they did appreciate the correct pronunciation of their home towns!