Originally Posted by
alanw
Barcelona is not pronounced "Barthelona" by the locals unless they are speaking Spanish, in which case they are probably not locals.
Yes, "Barthelona" annoys me too, and I don't really know any Catalan.
One curious thing I have noticed over the years is that German speakers persist in pronouncing "London" in the Germanic way (i.e. phonetically as it is written, pretty much, rather than the English "Lund'n") even when they speak English fully fluently or even better (approaching native-speaker standard) and in some cases after living in London for 20 years or more. This always strikes me as strange. One business acquaintance whose English is so good and so natural-sounding that many people, probably most people, would not pick up he isn't English, nevertheless still pronounces London in this way.
Interesting...