Oh, well I’ll grant that is different! I won’t tell your family members how to pronounce their own names, in much the same way that I “insist” people pronounce the company and related family name correctly, or at least accept the GQ factual answer for it 
Going by what they themselves use is just the polite thing to do!
As a mildly related aside, the other day I was ordering something online on behalf of my dad, and when I asked him what the cardholder name was on the credit card he wanted to use he said his first and last names and then proceeded to spell the last name. Granted, our name is often mispronounced and misspelled, but I assured him that I knew how to spell my own last name thankyouverymuch. He spent the next several minutes laughing hysterically. “I just told my own daughter how to spell my name!” 
We pronounced it bomba-deeyer when I was growing up.
I remember years ago while working for a dealer in exotic automobiles, there was this person who insisted on pronouncing “Lamborghini” with a soft “g,” (Lambor-gee-ni) claiming there was no “hard g” in Italian. My retort was that proper nouns, particularly family names, don’t necessarily follow the exact language rules of the land.
To resolve the Bombardier question, I called the company’s US office in Dallas and the phone was answered, "Bom-bar-dee-yay. I asked if it was pronounced differently at the Canadian office and was told that that version had a slightly different enunciation. She spoke both versions and I couldn’t really tell the difference.
I heard a BBC news reporter pronouncing it as “Bombahdeeyay” The BBC has a department for proper pronunciation of words… still sounds wrong though.
zombie or no
the BBC that i listen to has pronunciation gone all to hell. younger people with no strong British accent but annunciation and diction is poor. things like names of shows or people’s names said way too fast for those unfamiliar with them. vowels are non-distinct and words slurred.
And let’s not forget the affrication whereby it’s actually pronounced Bon-bahr-dzy’eh (notice the Z) by everybody except PR people and journalists.
(And Pelletier is usually pronounced “Pell-tsy-ay”, even in Trois-Rivières.)
Whenever I see or hear the word (or come across the name of the company) I think of the searing absurdity/horror that opens the film Catch-22. Clip here. The movies first dialogue begins at 6:20.
I remember it well. The movie keeps returning to that scene, playing a little more of it each time until the final reveal. Made a big impression on me when I saw it. I’ve never associated it with the SkiDoo company, though, maybe because I pronounce the company name with the French pronunciation.
You’re right. I forgot it was the leitmotif of the movie. I telescoped the horror.
Okay, how do you pronounce leitmotif?
(Once Upon A Time In The West uses the same technique to great effect as well.) [/derail]
There are hard (back) and soft (central and front) vowel sounds (back, central and front relates to the position of the tongue). Some consonants are pronounced hard or soft depending on what vowel it precedes. In Italian the letter “h” has no value in itself, but it is used to indicate that “c” and “g” are to be pronounced hard even if it is followed by a soft vowel. Thus “Lamborghini” has a hard “g”. Had it had a soft “g” it would have been spelled “Lamborgini”.
The nitwit probably mispronounces Ghirardelli too, Tell them that “gh” represents a hard g in Italian.
What’s the received pronounciation, in English, for the file type GIF? I used to say hard “g,” I recently heard soft “G,”–which sounds silly, like Jiffy Pop–and now I don’t say it anymore.
Apparently booth, but as it’s derived from "graphics’ I suppose a hard ‘g’ would be recommended.