Comments on: Follow the links at your own peril. Also, Dayenu.

By: BookWoman

BookWoman — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 09:53:01 +0000

Just to upset the boat more, I thought that this change in pronuncation for English speakers was instigated by the BBC through the radio (see article: http://www.yaelf.com/rp.shtml). There was a point at which the BBC tried to become more culturally sensitive, but only in the case where the spelling was already the same and it was a question of mispronuciation.
I believe there is now a RP guide, both for the BBC and for America. The two seem to be less distinct as time moves on.
Interesting point.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 07:28:46 +0000

I'll buy that the change in pronounciation is to make it closer to how it's pronounced in the native language. But it isn't like it's an imperialist thing. Names of cities and countries change from language to language. I don't say pair-ee. I say pair-is. I don't say knee-pohn. I say jah-pan. Likewise, when I speak with folks from other countries they have localized names of OUR cities and even our country. "Nueva York" or "Los Estados Unidos" etc.. and sometimes it isn't a straight translation, it's a phonetic one and sometimes it's not that close.

I think it's a leftover of poor communication in the 18th/19th centuries when most of these names were given. It wasn't like someone could just call up a native and ask them. These names were published in papers by people who were traveling. Or by talking to someone who knew someone who went there.

I do find the constant tweaking to be a bit fascinating. I also think it's a healthy and good thing.

By: John

John — Wed, 10 Aug 2005 07:02:31 +0000

I really didn't think that wikipedia article was long enough, but that's the great thing about wiki, isn't it?

I think of the word a lot when I read the newspaper.

By: elaine

elaine — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:58:29 +0000

It reminds me of a great Eddie Izzard bit, now I think about it. "You can’t claim us. We live here!" "…Do you have a flag?"

By: elaine

elaine — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 22:56:59 +0000

Speaking as someone who grew up (and, in fact, made it to her 30s) saying NI-jur and who now, after a couple of years of dealing with text about Africa every day, says nee-JAIR: it’s kind of about courtesy. The people who live in Niger–who are very different, culturally, from the people who live in Nigeria, by the way, besides being astronomically poorer–never said NI-jur. The people who live in Lesotho have always said le-SUIT-oh, not leh-SO-tho. The people who live in Cote d’Ivoire say Cote d’Ivoire, not Ivory Coast. And so on. Much of Africa speaks French, many of the countries (from Mozambique northwest to the Atlantic, really) were named in French, and we English speakers have spent centuries simply pronouncing stuff wrong. . . . However, we know our limits when it comes to the names of African nations; at least we still don’t spell Tchad with a T like everyone else does. (By the way, it’s Asia too: remember in junior high when Peking became Beijing? A few years ago when East Timor became Timor Leste? Years before that when Burma became Myanmar? It’s all the same. It’s part of admitting–finally–that the names an imperialist nation gave to a land they landed on were not the same names given to that land by the people who were already there.)