Who changed the pronunciation of Niger?

[jebert]

I have always pronounced Niger as NY-jer. Recently I have heard most radio and TV reporters pronouncing it as nee-ZHAIR. My Webster’s new Collegiate from 1975 and my American Heritage from 1985 both show NY-jer as the only pronunciation. However, Webster’s New Collegiate 10th edition from ca. 2003 shows NY-jer as primary and nee-ZHAIR as an alternate. Judging by the dates of publication the alternate pronunciation seems to have been a recent development.

How did this alternate pronunciation come about? Is that the way natives of the country pronounce it? Was someone affecting erudition and others picked it up, or did someone just mispronounce it from ignorance but sounded convincing?

I can't help it - this crap bugs me.

[silenus]

Well, it was a French colony until 1960. Most style-books are slowly switching from Anglacised pronunciations to ones more in line with that of the country. French colony = French pronunciation.

[Rayne Man]

I was in Nigeria in the 60's and even then we referred to its northern neighbour as nee-ZHAIR.

[Squink]

Uranus strikes back!

Rayne Man, was Nigeria also pronounced nee-ZHAIRia?

[Pjen]

Nijer has always been Nee-jzher according to the BBC, and Nigeria has always been Nai-geeria. Niger as in Nai-jer is a US mispronunciation.

[Rayne Man]

Originally Posted by Squink

Uranus strikes back!

Rayne Man, was Nigeria also pronounced nee-ZHAIRia?

No. Because Nigeria was a former British colony it was pronounced ny-geria while, as stated above, Niger was a former French colony- so nee-zhair.

[Sunspace]

Nigeria was a British colony, wasn't it, so it would never have been pronounced ni-ZHAIR-ia.

For Niger, being formerly French, ni-ZHAIR makes sense, especially when you see that the inhabitants are referred to as 'Nigerien'/'Nigerienne', not 'Nigerian'.

I have to admit though, that I thought Niger was NY-jur as well. I'd never seen the word 'Nigerien/ne' and I knew nothing of its history...

[Sequent]

I was struck by this watching a recent CNN report, and I came to the same conclusion: that the media were simply trying to pronounce as the French would. Now, my French isn't the best in the world, but wouldn't Niger, as a French word, properly be pronounced: nee-ZHAY?

Typically, the final "r" isn't vocalized, is it? Whereas the pronounciation I keep hearing (nee-ZHAIRE), would only make sense if the country's name was actually spelled "Nigere" instead of "Niger."

I also thought, maybe, just maybe, the media were a little apprehensive to continue to "anglicize" a name that's only one letter away from the American racial slur. Kind of like when everybody switched from "har-ASS" to "HAR-ass" during the Anita Hill hearnings.

[Sequent]

Er, not that "har-ASS" would be a racial slur, but that the media didn't want to say "ass" (everybody has the right not to self-incriminate, I suppose).

But back to the OP, I still think it's due to the American habit of vocalizing the last letter of any French word, whether it should be vocalized or not.

cache: should be pronounced "CASH", but lots of people here say "cash-AY"

forte: should be pronounced "FORT", but I always hear "fort-AY"

Kind of like bad jokes where people feign Spanish by putting an "o" on the end of every word.

[anson2995]

the country name "Niger" is given a french pronunciation, but the etymology of the word is Portugese. How curious.

What about the river for which the two countries are named? How do the folks in Nigeria pronounce it? What about in Guniea, Mali and Benin?

[Rayne Man]

The river is pronounced nyger in English speaking countries. I don't know about the Francophone ones.

[Acsenray]

The same reason we say "Belarus" instead of "White Ruthenia," "Moldova" instead of "Moldavia" (or "Bessarabia"), "Thailand" instead of "Siam," "Iran" instead of "Persia," and "Myanmar" instead of "Burma." The media seem to believe that it's incorrect to have an English name or pronunciation of a place name that's different from one that is used by natives.

Frankly, I think it's bogus. So far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly legitimate for names of places to be different in different languages.

Pretty soon we're going to have to start saying Hrvatska (Croatia), Deutschland, Suomi (Finland), Bharat (India), Espana, Italia, etc., because Anglicised names are just not acceptable. How should we choose amongst Suisse, die Schweiz, and Svizzera?

[Sunspace]

Yes, Sequent, you're right. Ni-ZHAIR would be 'Nigère' in properly-spelt French.

And as for the verb 'niger':
je niges
tu niges
il/elle nit*
nous nigeons
vous nigez
ils/elles nigents

_{*I couldn't figure out what to do here}

[Sage Rat]

My French teacher had us remember that "in French you don't pronounce the last consonant--but be 'careful'" The consonants in 'careful': c, r, f, and l are pronounced if they come at the end of a word.

Paris = Paw-ree
Chirac = She-rawk

[Sequent]

It also depends on the initial letter of the following word. I forget the term for it (liason?), but in certain situations where the following word begins with a vowel, you should vocalize the normally-silent consonant:

vous n'avez pas (VOO nah-VAY PAS)
vous avez (VOOZ ah-VAY)

[Sequent]

Oops, should be: liaison.

And "pas" is pronounced "PAH", without sounding the "s" (unless the first letter of the next word is...oh, nevermind).

[Sal Ammoniac]

Well, I used to live in Niger, and we always pronounced it... nee-ZHAIR. As everybody here has pointed out, that's because Niger is a French-speaking country, and that's how the name is pronounced there. NYE-jer is also correct for anglophone countries, and that's typically how the name of the river is pronounced. My own experience here is that if you say NYE-jer, people think you're talking about Nigeria. With nee-ZHAIR, you avoid that problem (and run against the opposite problem, namely that people have never heard of it).

[hibernicus]

Originally Posted by Sequent

Er, not that "har-ASS" would be a racial slur, but that the media didn't want to say "ass" (everybody has the right not to self-incriminate, I suppose).

But back to the OP, I still think it's due to the American habit of vocalizing the last letter of any French word, whether it should be vocalized or not.

cache: should be pronounced "CASH", but lots of people here say "cash-AY"

forte: should be pronounced "FORT", but I always hear "fort-AY"

Kind of like bad jokes where people feign Spanish by putting an "o" on the end of every word.

Are they saying "cache" meaning a hidden supply, or "cachet" meaning prestige or status? If the latter, then they are pronouncing it correctly. "Forte" is correctly pronounced with two syllables, because it's Italian, not French.

[bordelond]

Originally Posted by Pjen

Niger as in Nai-jer is a US mispronunciation.

Not a mispronunciation, but a legitimate variant.

[Sequent]

Originally Posted by hibernicus

Are they saying "cache" meaning a hidden supply, or "cachet" meaning prestige or status? If the latter, then they are pronouncing it correctly. "Forte" is correctly pronounced with two syllables, because it's Italian, not French.

Cache, as in "supply." During the Iraq war coverage, I always heard soldiers speaking about a "cash-ay of weapons."

And you're right about the Italian pronunciation, but I'm right about the French. From dictionary.com:

The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôrt), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.

So I guess if you're going by the "50,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong" rationale, it's two syllables. But then, I'd point out that Hitler had at least twice that many fans. It's a delicate situation, you see. I propose a duel.

[Mister Rik]

Originally Posted by Sequent

cache: should be pronounced "CASH", but lots of people here say "cash-AY"

forte: should be pronounced "FORT", but I always hear "fort-AY"

"cash-AY" is the pronunciation for another actual word: "cachet" which, according to Webster, means, "1: a seal used esp. as a mark of offical approval; 2: a feature or quality conferring prestige; 3: a design, inscription, or advertisement printed on or stamped on mail"

Again, Webster gives "for-TAY" as a legitimate alternate pronunciation. And of course, "forte" meaning "loud" as musical instruction is correctly pronounced for-TAY. All of my music teachers said "FOR-tay", though.

Also, cachet is French while forte is Italian, and different rules apply

[Sequent]

Originally Posted by Phase42

Also, cachet is French while forte is Italian, and different rules apply

It's French, too; both words share the same Latin root, fortis. We can quibble about which language the English usage is primarily borrowed from, but consider the context in which I would say one usually hears the word in English:

"Pronunciation is not my forte."

Here the term is used as a noun, as it is in French, to mean an area in which one excels. The Italian word is a musical term used to indicate the manner in which a passage of music should be performed, either as an adjective or an adverb:

"This passage is to be played forte."

I would submit that, in English, one most often hears the word used as a noun, which clearly borrows from the French. In fact, I can only recall hearing the word used as an adjective or adverb in the context of music.

[Sequent]

I should also point out that the French word can be used as an adjective or adverb in addition to being used as a noun.

[Ezstrete]

Originally Posted by Pjen

Nijer has always been Nee-jzher according to the BBC, and Nigeria has always been Nai-geeria. Niger as in Nai-jer is a US mispronunciation.

I assume you mean mispronunciation as in the UK "Jay kweeze" for Jaques and "Jag yOU -are" for jaguar.

Remember -----Neezhair is the french pronunciation of an applied word for a country[area]that was there before they horned in!

EZ

[Jake]

Originally Posted by Squink

Uranus strikes back!

Rayne Man, was Nigeria also pronounced nee-ZHAIRia?

Squink, you know it's pronounced UrANUS. Otherwise it would be dirty. Not UR-anus of course.

[Johanna]

I read somewhere that the name of the river Niger, which gave its name to the 2 nations, although apparently from the Latin word for black, since black people lived there, similar to the name Sudan from the Arabic word meaning 'black peoples', the name Niger is really derived from a phrase in the Berber language Tamashek of the Touareg, native to the upper Niger River. Something about flowing water, IIRC. I really wish I knew Berber. There's practically no school that teaches it, let alone finding good study materials on it. I'm Sicilian, so I undoubtedly have Berber ancestors from North Africa. Sicilians are African-Americans in a sense, you know. Spike Lee proved that to John Turturro in Do the Right Thing. Dennis Hopper was murdered by Christopher Walken in a sudden fit of rage in True Romance for saying the same thing. Dice che i siciliani erano generati da neri. Ha ha. BANG! BANG!

Where's the Moroccan gentleman who used to post here? Haven't seen him around since it went pay. Maybe he could help out with some Berber vocabulary.

I'll tell you what's confusing. The adjectival form, what you call people from that country. Nigerian was already taken. What's left? People from Niger are called Nigérien, essentially the exact same word, only in French. Mais hélas, one despairs of ever getting Yanks to pronounce the French uvular r, let alone the final nasalized vowel. Faute de mieux, I imagine its pronunciation would be adapted to be American Anglophones' phonemic capabilities, while still being able to be told apart from "Nigerian." Nee-zhair-i@n as opposed to Nai-jeer-i@n. N'est-ce pas?

[Sal Ammoniac]

Originally Posted by Johanna

I'll tell you what's confusing. The adjectival form, what you call people from that country. Nigerian was already taken. What's left? People from Niger are called Nigérien, essentially the exact same word, only in French. Mais hélas, one despairs of ever getting Yanks to pronounce the French uvular r, let alone the final nasalized vowel. Faute de mieux, I imagine its pronunciation would be adapted to be American Anglophones' phonemic capabilities, while still being able to be told apart from "Nigerian." Nee-zhair-i@n as opposed to Nai-jeer-i@n. N'est-ce pas?

The saving grace is that apart from the odd famine or misadventure involving uranium, no one ever need talk about the place. And for those rare occasions when you do need to, you can always go straight for circulocution: "People from Niger," instead of "Nigeriens."

[m311]

James Strongs Concordance on the King James Bible pronounces this word as
Nee ger it is not ni jer or any other false doctrine


if you want to know any words of the Bible purchase Strong's concordance for the Bible
and get a old dictionary say in the 1882-1950

you will also find the word nigger as meaning any member of a dark skin race
case closed

[amanset]

Originally Posted by Ezstrete

I assume you mean mispronunciation as in the UK "Jay kweeze" for Jaques

Well as a Brit that's a new one for me. I honestly don't think I have ever heard it.

Jaguar I'll give you though.

Let's face it, all languages pronounce words from other languages right. For every "jaguar" in the US there's a "smörgåsbord". For every "Niger" in the UK there's a "jaguar". There's no real rhyme or reason for it. It just happens. We're all crap. Together.

[DrFidelius]

Originally Posted by m311

James Strongs Concordance on the King James Bible pronounces this word as
Nee ger it is not ni jer or any other false doctrine


if you want to know any words of the Bible purchase Strong's concordance for the Bible
and get a old dictionary say in the 1882-1950

you will also find the word nigger as meaning any member of a dark skin race
case closed

Which is irrelevant to the question of how to pronounce the name of a former French colony which became an independent country in 1960.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by m311

James Strongs Concordance on the King James Bible pronounces this word as
Nee ger it is not ni jer or any other false doctrine

I'm very confused. You bumped a five-year-old thread to make this post but you left out a lot of information. What makes James Strong a reliable source on this? Why do you prefer a dictionary from the late 19th or early 20th century? Dictionaries are guides to current use. You also seem to be under the impression that one person can declare what a word means. That's not how it works. Words acquire their meaning based on how people used them.

[DrFidelius]

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Regardless, a definitive statement of how the word is to be pronounced when encountered in Acts 13:1 of the KJV is, as I said, irrelevant to the pronounciation of the country's name.

[Colophon]

Originally Posted by amanset

Well as a Brit that's a new one for me. I honestly don't think I have ever heard it.

Me neither. The surname "Jaques" or "Jacques" is pronounced "Jakes". On Googling it, I find that the character from As You Like It is apparently sometimes pronounced "Jakeys" or even "Jay-quease".

[Peremensoe]

Originally Posted by acsenray

The same reason we say "Belarus" instead of "White Ruthenia," "Moldova" instead of "Moldavia" (or "Bessarabia"), "Thailand" instead of "Siam," "Iran" instead of "Persia," and "Myanmar" instead of "Burma." The media seem to believe that it's incorrect to have an English name or pronunciation of a place name that's different from one that is used by natives.

Persia/Iran and Burma/Myanmar represent actual official changes in the countries' names, not different terminologies in different places.

[Marley23]

Burma vs. Myanmar is a little more complicated than some of the others, which are just straightforward name changes made after the countries gained independence. That country's name was changed when the military dictatorship took over in 1989 and some people and organizations won't call the country Myanmar because they don't want to acknowledge that government. According to Wikipedia there is also this issue:

The name "Burma" has been in use in English since the time of British colonial rule.
[...]
Various non-Burman ethnic groups choose to not recognise the name because the term Myanmar has historically been used as a label for the majority ethnic group, the Bamar, rather than for the country.

[Peremensoe]

Originally Posted by Marley23

That country's name was changed when the military dictatorship took over in 1989 and some people and organizations won't call the country Myanmar because they don't want to acknowledge that government.

Sure. You can say "Burma" for the physical country and "Myanmar" for the regime, if you want to make a point of it. But it's not a matter of language or location of the speaker; there was a change.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by acsenray

How should we choose amongst Suisse, die Schweiz, and Svizzera?

Confederatio Helvetica, of course. With an ablative absolute.

[Cagey Drifter]

guys, can't you see that these di-viss-ive posts are tearing us apart?

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

Originally Posted by Johanna

I read somewhere that the name of the river Niger. . . is really derived from a phrase in the Berber language Tamashek of the Touareg, native to the upper Niger River. Something about flowing water, IIRC.

This is so plausible that it should be true. Any luck in confirming this in the five years since this thread was active?

[The Controvert]

When I need to say it, I pronounce that country's name as "Enword", just to be safe.

This also solves the adjectival form; a person from Enword is an Enwordian.

[Acsenray]

Originally Posted by spark240

Persia/Iran and Burma/Myanmar represent actual official changes in the countries' names, not different terminologies in different places.

I don't accept that a government's designation of an "official" name should be taken as some kind of imperative for everyone in the world to follow. It's merely a data point equal to any other data point on usage. Inter-governmental uses must follow such conventions for diplomatic purposes and of course a government gets to instruct its own employees on usage. But the independent news media shouldn't consider official name changes to necessarily be definitive, and if the difference is merely between a historically English language form and a historically native language form, then English language media should prefer the former.

[Hampshire]

I loved Bill Mahr's joke from some time ago when he said the original name for Joseph Wilson's Op-Ed piece "What I didn't find in Africa" (enriched uranium bought by Iraq) was "Ny-ger please".

[orcenio]

Originally Posted by acsenray

I don't accept that a government's designation of an "official" name should be taken as some kind of imperative for everyone in the world to follow. It's merely a data point equal to any other data point on usage. Inter-governmental uses must follow such conventions for diplomatic purposes and of course a government gets to instruct its own employees on usage. But the independent news media shouldn't consider official name changes to necessarily be definitive, and if the difference is merely between a historically English language form and a historically native language form, then English language media should prefer the former.

(bolding mine) Fine, but from now on I shall call you ixnay.

[Acsenray]

Feel free.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by acsenray

The same reason we say "Belarus" instead of "White Ruthenia," "Moldova" instead of "Moldavia" (or "Bessarabia"), "Thailand" instead of "Siam," "Iran" instead of "Persia," and "Myanmar" instead of "Burma." The media seem to believe that it's incorrect to have an English name or pronunciation of a place name that's different from one that is used by natives.

I keep having to say this. No Thai calls it Siam. The name was changed officially from Siam to Prathet Thai (Thailand) in June 1939, then changed back to Siam at the end of WWII, then back to Thailand again in 1949. If any Westerner were to come here and keep referring to the place as Siam, the locals would think he's a loon.

[Acsenray]

That's not really relevant for my point.

[BigT]

I don't mind people using the native pronunciation, but it gets pretentious when you try to affect an accent. Use English phonemes. If I hear the rolled or back R at the end, that's too far.

I just wouldn't prounounce it NIGH-jer, because it sounds too much like Nigh-JEER-ree-uh.

[Polycarp]

Originally Posted by Sal Ammoniac

Well, I used to live in Niger, and we always pronounced it... nee-ZHAIR. As everybody here has pointed out, that's because Niger is a French-speaking country, and that's how the name is pronounced there. NYE-jer is also correct for anglophone countries, and that's typically how the name of the river is pronounced. My own experience here is that if you say NYE-jer, people think you're talking about Nigeria. With nee-ZHAIR, you avoid that problem (and run against the opposite problem, namely that people have never heard of it).

"Oh, I used to live in Niger,"
he said as he sat on the chair.
"If I lived in Nigeria,
I might catch diphtheria,
So I just stayed the hell out of there."

[even sven]

Anglophone Africans generally use the French pronunciation of place names, which are often Frenchified versions of the the original place name. People in Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, etc. probably say "Ni-ZHAIR." Certainly any English speaker actually working closely with Niger (aid workers, embassy staff, etc.) is going to be moving back and forth between French and English and will default to the French version because it gets silly calling a single place two different names.

So "Ni-ZHAIR" has probably been used in English for quite some time, just not with people you'd hear from. A few decades ago, few people in the West would ever have any contact with Niger or anyone involved with Niger, so they probably just used the English phonetic pronunciation and next-to-nobody knew the difference.

Now we live in a more connected world and we can actually here from people living in and working with Niger on a regular basis if we choose. We are starting to hear the "Ni-ZHAIR" version from Africans and people working in and with Niger, so it is starting to stick.

Randomly using English pronunciation for French place names often doesn't make any sense. For example, my Cameroonian village was called Guider, pronounced "GHEE-dhair." In reality, "GHEE-dhair" was a French attempt at the local name "Ghee-DAR." Anyway, I'm sure some hardcore English-speakers would argue it should be pronouced "GUY-der." I think you can see why that'd be pretty silly- the French version is relatively close to the local name and it makes reasonable sense to use it.

[Precambrianmollusc]

Originally Posted by Polycarp

Confederatio Helvetica, of course. With an ablative absolute.

Well finally the CH on the back of swiss cars makes sense!
It's been one of those slightly puzzling , but coundn't be arsed to find out things that has been, well, puzzling me slightly for a while.
Yayyyy for zombie threads.