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Mispronounce foreign names the VOA way

The Voice of America has an interesting but unreliable pronunciation guide to foreign names in the news.

Sorry, but Guenther is not pronounced GOON-tahr. Even if they assume their announcers can't handle the /ü/ or the German /r/ in Guenther, the least they could have done would be to get the final vowel right ("-tehr", not "-tahr"). Somehow I doubt that the names from the Balkans and the Middle East are any better.

Still, I suppose the guide is of some value. I had forgotten if I ever knew how the letter C is used in Turkish, and wouldn't have guessed that Cemil Cicek is even roughly jeh-MIHL cheh-CHEHK. And why on earth is the Korean name transliterated Roh Moo-Hyun with an R when it's pronounced no moo hyun with an /n/?

Oh man. Yeah, the main use is letting you know when the Turkish c has a cedilla (=ch) and when it doesn't (=j). They seem to be pretty clear about that. Otherwise... I really hate books, sites, &c. that provide what should be useful information (that's otherwise hard to come by) but do it in such a sloppy way that you can't trust it. Adrien Room's reference books are all like this; so is the Dictionary of the Peoples of the World (published by Henry Holt); so is the huge Columbia Gazetteer of the World (and they want $750 for it!). That's why I deeply respect people (like Andrew Dalby) who take the trouble to get it right.

Anyway, here are some of the grosser errors/stupidities of the VOA list (there's something wrong in almost every item): AL-ZAWAHRI, AYMAN - EYE-mahn al zah-WAH-hree: the -l in "al" assimilates to certain consonants, one of which is z, and it's not "Zawahri," it's Zawahiri (accent on the second a). Thus "az-za-WAH-hi-ree." BINALSHIBH, RAMSI - RAM-see bihn-ah-SHAY-buh: here they got the assimilation thing, but why SHAY and -buh rather than SHIBH? (If you can't make the effort to say the -h, just ignore it; it will sound better than their version.) Well, to save time let's just say all the Arab names are screwed up. LEVITTE, JEAN-DAVID - ZHAH dah-VEED LEH-veet. All I have to say is: What?? MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN - slow-BO-dahn mee-LOW-sheh-vih-ch: They get the "sheh" right (it drives me crazy to hear "mi-LOW-so-vich" all the time) and then blow it by giving the wrong stress for SLOW-bo-dahn. And can't VOA announcers do better than UR-jah-lahn and ERZ-kerk for Ocalan and Ozkok (all o's umlauted)? And what's the (n) doing in PAPADOPOULOS, TASSOS - TAH-sows pah-pah(n)-THO-poo-lows? In a word: feh. Also fie. And foo.

Also, why have English speakers ostentatiously rendering the Anglicized versions rather than native speakers saying them correctly, which would at least provide something to aim for? Grr.

If you click on the "Languages" link, you'll also discover that VOA bradcasts in Spanish, but not in Castilian. I'm not sure how they can do one without the other.

The Roh being pronounced Noh is historical; borrowings from Chinese words starting with l are now pronounced with n but are often still written with l/r.

Check out, First ever Gujarati blog"

For a long time I was keen on doing something for my language and that led me to start this Guajrati blog. Though it is very hard and tough to write. :(

If you have time, do visit and share it with your friends and maybe put a link on your blog.
http://sv.typepad.com/guju/

Thanks

SV, congratulations on the launch of your Gujarati blog. I need to link to it from my old neglected Gujarati language resources page.

However, do you know whether the Indic IME font you use can work with anything but Windows? The font download page doesn't meantion other platforms and when I downloaded it what I got was a .EXE installer, useless in a non-Windows environment. I've Googled a bit and couldn't find any Mac-friendly places to get it, either.

(I confess that multilingual font issues in general are a mystery to me. If anyone knows of a good site that makes sense of them, please let me know!)

hi friends,

check out my regional blog in Gujarati...Gujarati blog.

It is really fun to read your mothertongue on internet.

http://drsiddharth.blogspot.com

take care.

Siddharth Shah

સિદ્ધાથભાઈને ઘણા ઘણા અભિનંદન એમની નવી ગુજરાતી blog site શરૂ કરવા માટે. ઈન્ટરનેટ પર માતૃભાષા જોઈને ઘણી જ ખુશી થાય છે.

बहुत अच्छा लगा कि आप अपनी मातृभाषा एवं राष्ट्रीय भाषा मे टाईप कर सकते है वो भी ईन्टरनेट । बहुत मजा आ रहा है । भाषा का प्रचार भी हो रहा है ।