Sometimes you can’t believe your own eyes.

I thought a comment from Katherine DeChevalle on my March 12th post about city abbreviations deserved a post of its own.

That little town in Wales that Yorkshire Pudding is so fond of, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, may appear to the untrained eye to have 58 letters (I’ll wait while you count them -- go ahead, you know you want to), but in reality it has only 51, because in the Welsh alphabet -- and it is a Welsh word, after all -- ch, ng and ll count as single letters. [Editor's note. This is not a unique phenomenon in the world of alphabets. In Albanian, for example, dh, gj, nj, rr, sh, th, xh and zh all count as single letters. I am not kidding. --RWP]

On the other hand, as Katherine has kindly pointed out to us, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (sorry, it wouldn’t fit on one line), a town in New Zealand, has 57 letters that actually count as 57 letters. Ya gotta love those Polynesians or Maoris or whatever they are.

Kate sent along a handy-dandy pronunciation guide in the form of this phonetically-spelled example:

Toe-mar-tar-far-car-tar-ngee-h­aa-ngaar-core-o-o-tar-mar-tee-­ah-poor-ky-fear-nu-ar-key-tar-­nar-tar-who

People, I may be crazy (don’t answer that), but I don’t see any R at all in the original word and Kate’s phonetic example is replete, I might even say rife, with the letter R. I can only conclude that Enzedders talk funny. (In my country, the phonetic example would probably be Toe-mah-tah-fah-cah-tah and so forth.)

Luckily for us, Kate also supplied us with a spoken example. And for all you slow learners out there, the word is spoken not once but three times.

So click here to hear New Zealand’s longest town name, Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu (oops, it happened again), spoken out loud three times.

The announcers will probably never say it at the Olympics in London this summer, but it’s U.K. 0, New Zealand 1.

For those who care, Taumata etc. means “The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.”

...little A, double L, A, S.

I was reading one of Punk Chopstick’s posts recently in which she mentioned having taken a nine-hour train trip to KL. Because I happen to know that Punk moved from the U.S. to Malaysia, I understood that she meant the city of Kuala Lumpur.

But does everyone understand that?

I started thinking -- always a dangerous activity -- and wondered how many other cities are easily identified far and wide by their initials or an abbreviation. Here in the U.S., for example, people fly from NYC to LA, or to SF, or even to NO and SLC (New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New Orleans, and Salt Lake City).

People in Minnesota know that MPLS means Minneapolis.

In Missouri, KC and STL mean Kansas City and St. Louis.

All Texans know that Big D is Dallas. My, oh, yes.

Southern Californians recognize the initials OC and Georgians recognize ATL.

But do other people?

What are some examples of abbreviations in your neck of the woods that the locals recognize immediately but that might cause quizzical looks on visitors’ faces?

Here are some place names to ponder while you’re thinking:

...and we mustn’t forget:

(Click to enlarge)

That little town in Wales, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, is the longest officially recognized place name in the United Kingdom and one of the longest in the world, having 58 letters (51 letters in the Welsh alphabet, where ch, ng and ll count as single letters).

According to Wikipedia, the name means [St.] Mary’s Church (Llanfair) [in] the hollow (pwll) of the white hazel (gwyngyll) near (goger) the rapid whirlpool (y chwyrndrobwll) [and] the church of [St.] Tysilio (llantysilio) by the red cave ([a]g ogo goch).

A plucky lot, the Welsh.