That's an interesting one because the Spanish for coast doesn't get translated when we talk about the Costa Del Sol, Costa Rica or other places. However, like Köln, the French word for coast has the issue of accents.
Strictly speaking, diacritics (although everyone calls them accents, even linguists). In the modern world, there aren't many reasons for not knowing one of the at least four ways of entering such codes available on a modern computer - and my phone allows me to select them fairly easily too... easier than on a keyboard, in fact! In some languages the diacritic is just a pronunciation guide, whereas in others, it changes the meaning of the word completely (see below). I believe the former is the case with Welsh.
I'd suggest ERR WITH-VA
Err as in " to err is human", With as in "wither" , and Va as in "Van" or "Valerie". Emphasis on the middle syllable.
No significant regional variations in pronunciation.
Thanks - I'll take my ending and forget the bit I mangled at the start! (I cringed when the Radio 3 presenter this morning read an e-mail from someone in a place called "Clanethlee"...). I've never taken a Welsh placename at face value since my Welsh colleague took great umbrage at my falling into the trap of using "Betsy-Co-ed", instead of "Betus-e-coyd"...
Locals often do not bother using the full names, they are talk about Mach, Aber, Llan etc, simples.
An Umlaut is equal to adding an e after a the, so the Rheinmetropol is 'Koeln'.
True (Um = change, laut = vowel), but when I asked whether that was still acceptable spelling when learning German in the late 90s, the answer was "only if you're using an English keyboard typewriter". Does help with pronunciation though, especially if you're having Kaffee and Kuchen in the Küche in Köln...