Watching or listening to the news I am bombarded with names of foreign cities and countries. It would be nice if everyone would just decide on a pronunciation and go with it. Is it pronounced I-rack or E-rack, Keerkook or Kurkook, etc, etc, la dee dee la dee da? I say this because whenever they pronounce something I always end up correcting them with the other pronunciation (bad habit, I know). As Americans, we have a reputation for butchering the names of other countries. How do you get Germany from Deutschland, Japan from Nihon, or Korea from Hanguk? How the heck do you pronounce Caribbean? We can't even get our own words right sometimes. Is it nu-clee-er, nu-clear, or as our president would say nuke-lur? We should just go with a pronunciation and stick with it. It would save me the embarrassment of realizing I have no idea how to say Mosol or Al-Qaeda.
Friday, January 12, 2007
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9 comments:
"Nuke-you-ler" makes me cringe. We made up a drinking game for "24," where one of the rules is to drink when ever someone says "nuke-you-ler."
Locals say it "Al-Karkuk," with no drawn out "oook" and more of a "car" sound on the beginning.
I absolutely hate when people say "nuke-u-ler". It's NUCLEAR!
"How the heck do you pronounce Caribbean?"I actually have a rule for that which I follow. If it's being used as a noun (Pirates of the Caribbean), then I say CARE-ih-BE-uhn. If it's used as an adjective (a Caribbean cruise), then I pronounce it cuh-RIB-ian.I believe Iraq is pronounced ee-ROCK. MOE-zool. keer-COOK.And yeah, it's NEW-clee-ur.
I think it comes down to the old vowel sounds. We had the whole vowel shift and most transliteration is based on the old sounds and not the new ones.
Congress needs to address this in the first hundred hours. Come out and set a standard on how we pronounce all those foreign places and words. Journalist would then have their birth city mispronounced if they misspeak a name.
I am even more freaked out when they change the name completely. Beijing/Peking, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Burma/Myanmar. I can't stay ahead of all this stuff. Who gets to decide when the change takes place. Do we still eat Peking Duck? Remember Usama Bin Laden versus Osama?
I couldn't agree more! While you're at it, can you tell my mother there's no "r" in 'wash'?
Bear- Istanbul was once Constantinople and old New York was once New Amstradam. Why'd they change it, I can't say, guess they liked it better that way.
Shark- I told your mom, but she said I had no idear what I was talking about.
You know what's kinda funny... I just asked my husband how Chinese people say Japan. In chinese, they call it Ri-Ben (pinyin spelling) aka Er-ben (American approximation of pronunciation). Of course, their excuse is that they go by the Chinese Characters that are used for Japan (日本). Oh, and to add to your list, China should be Zhongguo.
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