Re: Rhys Ifans! Welsh fans, another pronunciation pop question

----- Original Message -----
From: "B. Garcia" <madyaas@...>

> On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 01:44:38 -0500, Sally Caves <scaves@...>
> wrote:
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "B. Garcia" <madyaas@...>
>> >
>> > Agh. It's so grating when I hear /vijEt n&m/ or /n&m/. I can't help
>> > but imagine uneducated bigots when I hear that pronunciation. I
>> > suppose growing up in a city with a large Vietnamese population it's
>> > even worse to hear it said that way.
>>
>> Uneducated?  Maybe.  Bigoted?  Not necessarily.  I tend to think of it as
>> a
>> pronunciation quirk in otherwise ordinarily educated Americans.  And I
>> knew
>> soldiers returning from Nam and calling it /n&m/.  I've also heard my own
>> father, who was a research chemist, i.e., a "rocket scientist," pronounce
>> "drama" as /'dr&m@/.  Until we corrected him vigorously.
>
> You misunderstand me.
No, I think I understand you.  I knew you were imagining.

> I didn't say they were uneducated bigots, i simply said to me, when I
> hear it pronounced that way I can't help but *think* of uneducated
> bigots.
Yes, a fine distinction that I respect, Barry;  I only wondered where you
derived the sense that mispronunciation of a foreign word reminds you of
bigotry.  That's what I was responding to.  Perhaps it was the comment made
by John that Italian and Iraq (pronounced eye-talian and eye-wrack) were
deliberate insults, which WOULD constitute bigotry.  More about this below.
Kris disagrees, and writes instead that:

> most Americans are pretty damned
> lazy/arrogant about international pronunciation.  The American palette
> just "ain't" that flexible.
No more so than the Brits of latter years, who liked to pronounce Don Juan
as "Don Joo-inn" and the river Guadalquivir as "Gwaddle Quiver."  Or the
recent arguments raised by Pascal that English pronunciation ought to be
purged of its /T/ /D/ sounds.  I think every native speaker tends to
transform foreign names and words into his/her own phonology.  Look at our
pronunciation of "Paris."  I don't think this rises to the level of bigotry.
Peer pressure, I guess, is a strong inducement, or as Kris writes, the "fear
of social suicide."

> It's social suicide to attempt to
> pronounce a name correctly in public here.  Back in my German classes
> in High School, I got laughed at a few times for trying to enunciate
> correctly.  Here, in college, my roommates chuckle when I attempt to
> pronounce Spanish (California is filled to the brim with Spanish names
> for cities, streets, and geographical landmarks, but our
> pronunciations are all Americanized).
Yeah, like Huerta Verde, my old street name.  Pronounced /'hwErt@ 'vrdi/;
and in older times, "Hurdy Vurdy."

Here is where bigotry, or perhaps just embarrassment (also envy) comes in:
I'm so very sorry, Kris, that you got laughed at when you pronounced German
correctly in the classroom.  I never had that problem in my French classes,
but I was surrounded by women students.  Maybe it's a "guy" thing.  I've
seen this anti-intellectual trend in American male students, and it disturbs
me.  Recent polls indicate that young male students are falling behind
female students in college attendance, grade point average, higher
education.  Is it bigotry?  ignorance?  or a need to capitulate to the
mannerbund, the socially hip, the street-savvy but savvy about nothing else
crowd (which is educational suicide)?  I don't know what college you're
attending in California (that's where I went to college--Scripps, and
graduate school--Berkeley), but I thought the sneering would stop,
especially over Spanish.

I think many young Americans are terribly embarrassed by language issues and
the "deformation" of what sounds "normal" to them, such that bilabial
fricatives, tense vowels and other sounds in Spanish would make them
uncomfortable.  And envious.  Or maybe your pronunciation expertise makes
you sound Mexican Spanish to your California bozos; we're a nation that
hates its Latinos, or associates them with gardeners and hotel maids.  So
this laughter would, in fact, constitute bigotry, whereas I don't think that
"Viet n&m" does in quite the same way.  I hope you get some ambitious,
linguistic-minded ADULTS for friends.

Maybe graduate school will put you in touch with some.  Bonne chance!

Sally

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