First is it Chechnya, now it is Chech-ni’yAAAAH’. This happened about 4 weeks ago.
First it was (phonetically) Slobodan Milo’sovitch. Now it is Slovodan Milooshaveesh’.
Once the “right” pronounciation starts, all the other commentators follow like wildfire.
Where is the dictionary on the first round? Do you find this sudden switch to a supposedly “correct” pronounciation annoying?
In contrast, previously we had to listen to Saddam Hussein called “Sodom” (as in Gomorrah) or “Sa-DAMN’” (rhymes with SHAZAM), I assume because calling him Hussein might confuse Americans, re: King Hussein, or any other number of Middle Eastern leaders with this common Arabic name.
I don’t know which is worse - the total ignorance or the picky PC pronounciation?
IIRC, Georgie Bush called him SAD-um because the different inflection changed the meaning of Saddam. I have no idea now what Saddam means, but the way George said it was an insult - making it “goat-herder” or “camel-breath,” something along those lines.
This has been going on for some time in the media. I remember when Dan Rather started using “HAIR-us” for harrass when we had been perfectly happy with hu-RASS. Then there was the great “allies” confusion. Someone started saying uh-LIES while the rest of us were making do with AL-eyes.
I solved the problem for myself - I quit watching the news.
What bugs me is the PC lefty artsy fartsy craphead types who insist on pronouncing Nicaragua as if they are coughing up phlegm:
Neeekkkhaaarrrrgggaaaagggghhhhwa.
Yet they pronounce “France” as “France”, “Polska” as “Poland”, “Bharat” as “India”, and “Suomi” as “Finland”.
Dee da dee da dee dee do do / Dee ba ditty doh / Deedle dooby doo ba dee um bee ooby / Be doodle oodle doodle dee dohhttp://members.xoom.com/labradorian/
aseymayo: I think Saddam can be literally translated as “a goatherd with camel-breath and a Patriot missile stuck up his ass.”
labradorian: Dan Rather’s likeness has to be one of the most useless, yet overused, pictures in history! I’m flipping through my “Modern Dictionary of English According to T,” and I’m catching glimpses of his pasty face under “asshole,” “wimpazoid,” “loser,” “liar,” (he has to share this one with Billary), “fool,” “talking-head-up-his-ass,” and “prune,” as in, “I’ve downed WAY too much prune juice today!”
Youse guys are killin’ me…
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some and lets the rest go free…
I know you didn’t ask, but here’s a quick grammar lesson:
The people who live there are called Chechens. And like all good Russians ( ), they just add a letter to their ethnic name and come up with the name of their homeland. They live in Chechnya.
The Russian pronunciation is Chetch-nya, with the stress on the first syllable. Americans are pretty close when they say Chetch-ni-ya.
The difference is that in Cyrillic, the last syllable is made of only two characters (the letter n and the backwards ‘R’), whereas in English adding the y makes English speakers want to pronounce it separately instead in combination with the ‘a’ as it should be.
Now, I listen to the BBC every morning, and in their quest to sound smart, they’ve screwed it up worse. I guess someone told them how to pronounce the last vowel sound, because they’ve lately started calling it Che-chen-YA.
But, whoever told them about the YA must have forgotten to tell them that the rules of Russian grammar require that the second ‘e’ in "chechen’ is dropped when the suffix ‘ya’ is added. It sounds really bad to me, and I’m sure it kills native Russian speakers. (Then again, how “Moskva” became “Moscow” is still a big mystery) So really, in their ignorance, the Americans are closer than they think!
It’s nitpicky, but it always bugs me every morning when I hear about the “rebel leadah of the mili-try in Chechen-ya!”
Reminds me of an SNL sketch with Jimmy Smits playing a TV newsman and his colleagues would take on horribly stereotyped Hispanic accents when pronouncing Spanish words.
I still get a kick out of how they pronounce the car “jag-yoo-wahr” The only two people I personally know who say it that way are my father who is not british and my ex-boss who is an expatriate from London.
Actually spanish pronuciation rules are the simplest and most consistent that I can think of. Correct pronunciation of Nicaragua doesn’t have any gutteral sounds or accented syllables.
), they just add a letter to their ethnic name and come up with the name of their homeland. They live in Chechnya.