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.
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”.
(bolding mine) Fine, but from now on I shall call you ixnay. 
Feel free.
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.
That’s not really relevant for my point.
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.
“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.”
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.
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.
But does everyone do this consistantly. In order to justify pronouncing it as the French do they would also have to pronounce every former French colony that way. Or at least the former French colonies with French as their official language
How do they say French Guiana? Central African Republic? Gabon? Sengal? etc etc etc
When you’re in a French-speaking place, it helps to pronounce the names of local people and places as they are pronounced by locals, even when speaking English. That way your are more likely to be understood by locals. Same goes for any other language. So English-speakers in Gabon, Senegal, etc would be well advised to use the locally-familiar pronounciation, and presumably they do.
In the case of Niger, the local pronunciation has probably achieved wider currency because of its value, already noted, in avoiding confusion with Nigeria.
What’s that obsession with writing in caps ? In French, we have no stressed syllable.
What does the bible say about necromancy?
It still has the tonic accent, but that would be better indicated as VOO nah vay PAH. I’m not exactly sure the vous is accented, but I do always hear it that way.
Okay, okay, okay!
Everybody’s making the argument for using the French pronunciation of “Niger”, because Niger was once a French colony/protectorate. However, for years, even though it was still a French former colony, the English pronunciation “NIGH-jur” was used and no one thought anything of it. And we get some sort of lame explanation of why the first two syllables of the nation “Nigeria” is still pronounced as it always has been: “NIGH-GEER-ee-ah” – because it was a British colony. However, the French have always pronounced Nigeria as “Nee-zhair-ee-ah”, despite the British connection.
I have another explanation: one of my sister’s 4th Grade students, a little immigrant girl from India, came to her desk, pointed to Niger on the globe, and innocently, but deductively, asked (paraphrased) if Niger was the country where “N-word” people came from. My sister explained about the inappropriateness of the “n-word”, and also explained that most African nations are populated with “black” Africans. The young student was satisfied.
I suspect strongly that the recent switch in pronunciation from the British style to the French style (NI-jer to Nee-zhair) came about because of an inaccurate perception as to a connection between skin color and the name of the country.
For others in this forum to ignore the obvious “elephant in the room” is disingenuous and discourages open and frank discussion of sensitive situations.
Let me give a good example of why a reversion from the British pronunciation (Ni-jer) to the French pronunciation of Niger (Nee-zhair) is unlikely to be what others in this forum say the reason is:
If it were true that we were just following French pronunciation for place names, then the city of Montreal would be pronounced “Moh-ray-AWL”, Paris would be pronounced “Pair-EE”, and the country of France would be now pronounced as “Frawnse”. The American city of New Orleans would be known as “New Ohr-lee-AWNS”, et cetera.
So, please – don’t sweep unpleasantness under the politically-correct carpet, but come right out and say, "Niger is pronounced nowadays as “Nee-zhair”, because it sounds too much like an intolerable racial slur name, the “N-word”.
Let us be honest in the education of our children and the re-education of ourselves, for pity’s sake!
/ˈnaɪdʒəɹ/ sounds about as much like /ˈnɪgəɹ/ as /niːˈʒɛəɹ/ does. If the name was changed to sound less like “nigger”, then the action can be deemed a resounding failure.
Double zombie.
I know you posted that more than six years ago (ah, back when we were young ;)) but if “niger” is a regular French verb of the first group (a valid assumption for any made-up verb), the conjugation is the following:
je nige
tu niges
il nige
nous nigeons
vous nigez
ils nigent.
And the verb is pronounced [niʒ] at all three singular persons, as well as the third person plural. First person plural is [niʒ~ɔ] and second person plural is [niʒe], so unless you have to write, you only have three verb forms to remember. Well, for regular first-group verbs anyway.
And yes, the ‘r’ is present in the French pronunciation of “Niger”. It’s true that French words ending with -er tend to be pronounced with [e], but this isn’t a word of French origin.
And people used to pronounce coupe “coo-PAY”… I think that’s pretty much died out, though.
Ah well, enough of this… I’m off to Caff Society.