Re: CHAT: F.L.O.E.S.

The French decided once for all to ignore any
diacritics not belonging to the French system. I think
there are special methods for journalists for ex,
teaching to pronounce and write foreign words like
they shouldn't be written and pronounced.

When something happens somewhere in the world, French
journalists are there, among others of course. The
difference is that, even if they've stayed six months
on the spot, they don't know yet how the name of the
place should be pronounced. It was so in Yugoslavia.
No true French journalist would ever pronounce
'Srebrenica' the right way. To do so would be
considered by them as utterly degrading. The same for
Dutch names (when Tour de France occurs, because there
isn't any other possible occasion of mentioning any
Dutch name. No, I'm wrong, there WAS one: Maastricht.
Not only they cannot understand how the *ch* should be
pronounced, but they even think it's necessary to
inverse the phonemes, thus like it was *Maastritch*.
This is pure dislexy. Dislexy helps a lot to become a
French journalist).

There once was a full page article about the
Vesteraalen Islands in Le Monde (the more respectable
French newspaper). I can't write it correctly here,
but that's because of Yahoo, not me: normally, it is
Vesteralen with a small circle upon the a. This can be
seen on any map of Norway. This letter can be obtained
very easily with Word, for ex, by 'Insert / Special
Characters'. Well, the big and heavy title in Le Monde
mentioned Vesteralen with a trema on the a (this
letter exists in Swedish, although the sound is
completely different, but not in Norwegian). What can
we conclude from that ? I wrote to Le Monde to
protest, but they ignored me.

When you want to have an idea of how the name of a
foreign place or person should be pronounced, always
listen to Anglo-Saxon radio or TV, or read Anglo-Saxon
papers. It might be approximative, but it will NEVER
be so bad and false as in French.

There is an interesting TV sending every Friday,
called Thalassa, and presenting various topics related
to the sea, from all over the world. I've NEVER heard
any foreign name pronounced correctly in it, be it
Spanish, Portuguese, Scandinavian, Russian, Arabic or
whatever (maybe the English ones, to some extent). As
to Russian, we sometimes wondered for quite a long
time, my wife and I, about what could be the real
Russian name of the place they were talking about. We
had to think hard to make it out. I think there is a
rule if you want to be a reporter at French TV: NEVER
pronounce any foreign name correctly, or you'll get
fired immediately.


--- Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...> wrote:
>  --- Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...> wrote: >
> At
> 01:42 25.2.2004, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
> > >  Silly Swedes. Couldn't you've
> > >done the logical thing and spelt /o:/ as 'au'? I
> > mean,
> > >isn't there something underlyingly /o:/-y about
> > 'au'?
> > >:)
> >
> > No 'tis inherently /Au\/-ish.
>
> No-no, you're mistaken. The French agree with me,
> even
> if they don't go all the way and add length, and
> except for when they contradict me, the French are
> always right! (I'm sure a compromise could be reacht
> where you use a small U atop the A... though
> English-speakers have a remarkable affinity for
> ignoring any and all diacritics.)
>
> --
> Tristan.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"Le langage est source de malentendus."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

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