Posted on 09/21/2011 9:05:11 PM PDT by stolinsky
If your confused on how to pronounce things in California, don’t even try getting around southern Loosiana. Some of those places around Nawlins are pronounced French, some English, but many have a pronunciation all their own.
as does Norfolk, when it’s in Virginia...
Nice piece. Right on the money.
Good article.
I remember seeing a comedian on TV a few years ago who made fun of this by pretending to be a newscaster pronouncing Irish names, with a heavy Irish acent like “O’ Leeereeee.”
And a lot of those names are Indian in origin.
Fine, I’ll agree with you when newscasters report that Sarkozy is president of “Frahnce,” that Merkel is chancellor of “Deutschland,” that Putin (pronounced sort of “Putyin”) is prime minister of “Rossya,” or that the capital of Scotland is “Edinburrah” (with a rolled “r”). Until all foreign names are pronounced as they would be in their native tongues, and not just Latin American ones, I’ll keep plugging away.
We have a whole hell of a lot more important problems in our nation than how a TV personality pronounces an ethnic name.
I think we should all pronounce Hispanic names like the lady on the Garman does. L Conqwistadoor. Valedjo.
NPR reporters are especially bad (or good, if you’re a liberal) about using the ethnic pronunciation. I wonder if there’s an actual written policy that guides them on which pronunciation to use. My guess is that it’s unwritten because they’re liberals and they know the rules by instinct.
A name gets the native treatment when it’s owned by someone who associates or should associate with a minority group that’s been subject to dominance, or indifference, or anything other than total appreciation for its otherness by an anglophone nation at any point in its history. On the other hand, names that belong to white bread flyover types will be pronounced according to the standard rules of American English.
Actually, to be honest, my guess is that their policy is simply to ask people how they would like their name to be pronounced and to be studious about actually using that pronunciation, and that since they have a bias towards interviewing people who use the ethnic pronunciation, there is a high likelihood that the ethnic pronunciation will be used. But of course this doesn’t account for things like town names where it’s up to the reporter to decide how to pronounce.
Another interesting case is Obama and his ingratiating use of Pahkeestahn and Tahleebahn. The media totally accepted his leadership on that one and fell right into line. Again I wonder if the change made it into their style book or if it became policy strictly by instinct.
Trying to figure out the rules of PC is always an interesting business. What you realize if you’re paying attention is that there really are no rules, nothing that can be consistently applied. And this gets at something fundamental about liberalism, which is that it relies on an arbitrary, situational understanding of justice, and thus has lawlessness as a *requirement*. PC name pronunciation is the perfect example, with its bucking of the consistent “law” of standard English for the sake of righting historical injustices.
Ask a Mexican why do they speak Spanish instead of Mexican?
This is complete ignorant rubbish. If a name is Spanish in origin why would you use English phonetics to pronounce it? Spain, not Mexico, left its linguistic imprint on the American Southwest and the Spanish language has never gone out of use here.
It’s true about the newscasters, and not just in LA, the hispanic ones in Chicago do a bit of that stuff do. I joke about it, doing a normal “caucasian” style newscaster voice talking about something, then at the end saying in a extravagant Latin accent “this is Juan Valdez San Miguel Villalobos signing off!”
So I suppose you pronounce Des Moines as Day Mowen, Saint Louis as San Louise, and Detroit as Daytwah?
Scheißkopfen!
In the past that caused big trouble.
What was that Churchill quote? Something about at your feet or at your throat? Ah, here it is ...
The proud German army has by its sudden collapse, sudden crumbling and breaking up, unexpected to all of us, the proud German army has once again proves the truth of the saying "The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet".
Before a joint session of the US Congress, 19 May 1943.
Mexico never could get over that great-grandad brought Santa Ana to Sam Houston after the Battle of San Jacinto. I'll pronounce it an America J anyday, thank you very much.
Spanish spoken in California is called Chicano-
Chicano is the slurry version of Mexican Spanish- just as Quebec French is all slurred together-
Chicano has no ``Tingle`` to it as the consonants are not sharp at all and all the words are run together.
Just call an operator in Mexico City D.F. and you will hear real Mexican Spanish, every word is crystal clear- Chicano is porridge from the pot-
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