Stranger in a Not-So-Strange Land

I was recently on a plane for the first time in a while. When clouds obscured the landscape below, I decided to engage with the screen in front of me. Prompted to choose a language I opted for one I don't know all that well (as has been my habit) — this time I chose Russian. True to form, I quickly decided I was lost and scrambled to switch back into English. However, instead of giving up altogether, I spent a little time memorizing the screen and then switched back into Russian. Using my newfound knowledge of the screen layout, I was able to navigate to the in-flight map and explore the now-foreign landscape of the Western United States. I tested my reading skills with the transliterations of Salt Lake City (Солт-Лейк-Сити), Ogden (Огден), and Provo (Прово), but had to supress a laugh when I reached Tooele.

Defiantly Unphonetic

Tooele is the name of a city, county, and a valley in Northern Utah. The spelling is treacherous: Upon hearing the name Tooele spoken out loud, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was spelled Tuwilla instead. To add insult to injury, it seems the original spelling was Tuilla. Having tricked many people before, the unphonetic spelling certainly confused the Russian-language in-flight map, which offered the following transliteration: Тооел.

Words with double o's are rare in Russian, but there are a few examples such as сообщение (message) and зоопарк (zoo). Using the pronunciation of these words as a guide, it would follow that Тооел should be pronounced tah-ah-el or even tah-ah-yel.

Russian Clash with the West

Being confused by Tooele is an understandable mistake. However, the in-flight map commits a more serious transgression by failing to be self-consistent. Indeed, just north of Тооел, we find the transliterations of West Jordan and West Valley City. These are rendered as Уэст-Джордан (Oo-est Djor-dan) and Вест-Вэлли-Сити (Vest-Veh-lee See-tee), respectively.

Or perhaps the in-flight map is paying homage to Utah's love of unconventional spellings.