en français, on nomme cette ville « Béjaïa »

Bgayet:
Ttxil-k, beddel takbabt!!!

?

Sacredceltic:

I told Bgayet: "Please, change the flag".

Now, this sentence is available in Amazigh on Tatoeba ^^

http://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/show/1813900

By the way, some Kabyle journalists, in Algeria, refer to "Bejaia" as "Bgayet" even in their French language articles, and this is because they want to promote the Amazigh name of the city ^^ But, as Tatoeba is an international website, I too think that we should spell the name "Bejaia", so that people from other countries would know which city we are talking about.

Amike :-)

This is an old debate whether places should be named by their inhabitants or by the foreigners who refer to them.

Paris is written Parijs in Dutch, and pronounced "Pariiiisssss" by the English or German Speakers and Parigi by the italians, when the actual inhabitants of Paris call it « Paname ».

It's normal that places have names that are defined, not by their inhabitants, but by the different communities that refer to them in their different languages, each with their own history of relationships with the place, and with their own pronunciation rules. So the French name London « Londres » and it has been no problem to the Londoners for over a thousand years.

The best example of diversity in spelling I've seen so far:

[fra] Liège = [nld] Luik = [deu] Lüttich = [ita] Liegi

The first time I saw "Luik" on a post on the highway, heading for Liège, I thought I was in the wrong direction, so I asked a german-speaking person who didn't know Lüttich was Liège or Luik anyway...

The sound "bg" is very unfamiliar in French, and "yet" would be pronounced "yè" by most French.

Thank you for these interesting information, I like to talk about names (I'm interested in lexicography and onomastics [of Berber and other languages]). I am interested in French and European onomastics since the French occupation of Algeria (1830-1962) has left thousands of French and European names in our country. Many towns and streets are still known by their French names (although, most of them had their names changed officially), and it's always interesting to dig into a name's history.

As far as towns' and cities' names are concerned, I think this becomes an issue in bilingual countries like Canada (?), Ireland and Belgium. I have noticed, on TV, that many places in Ireland have signs with two names, one in English (spelling) and another one in Irish Gaelic. As a speaker of a minority language (Amazigh/Berber), I consider that in Ireland, in particular, Irish Gaelic is somewhat wronged because the Irish Gaelic name is always printed on the sign with smaller characters (take a look at this picture: http://www.emeraldtiger.com/general/lang.htm).

In Algeria, many towns with a majority of Amazigh-speakers have Amazigh names. In the 1970's, with a government-supported policy of arabization, many names were officially arabized. Hence, the municipality of Imceddalen [Imsheddalen] (in the province of Bouira) was and is still officially called "M'chaddallah". Most Amazigh-speakers strongly oppose this, however, till nowadays, no serious campaigns have been organized in order to oblige the authorities replace the arabized names with Amazigh names. However, not all Amazigh names have been arabized, and a very big number of Algerian place names still have an Amazigh name, including many places with an Arabic-speaking majority.

Nonetheless, Amazigh is still absent in most of Algeria's road signs, while, in many places in Algeria, we can see signs in three languages: Arabic, French and English.