biombo

biombo

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Alternate Spellings

You may remember that a few days ago I wrote that the streets in my neighborhood are named after cities and states in the United States.  Sometimes, however, those place names are spelled differently in Spanish.  I gave you the example of Missouri, which in Spanish is spelled "Misuri".

As I was walking around the neighborhood a couple days ago, I photographed some more street signs that show examples of alternate spellings in Spanish...



Not surprisingly, when people talk about the city or state of New York, they use the Spanish word for "new".  So we have "Nueva York".

Some other things to notice about the street sign...

On the left, "Benito Juárez" is the "alcaldía" or borough of Mexico City in which I live.  It is named after Mexico's most revered President, and his portrait appears on the sign.  Obviously, the arrow indicates that it is a one-way street.  "Colonia Nápoles" is the neighborhood within the borough in which I live.  "C.P." is an abbreviation for "código postal" or zip code.



When spelling the city Philadelphia, Spanish-speakers get rid of that pesky "PH" and substitute it with a simple "F".



Pennsylvania is adapted to Spanish phonetics by getting rid of the extra "N" and substituting an "I" for the "Y".



Louisiana becomes "Luisiana".  Alejandro sometimes jokingly calls the street "Luis y Ana"... Louis and Ann.

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