PRONOUNCING NAMES

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 February 1937, Page 5

PRONOUNCING NAMES

HOW DO YOU SAY “PARIS”? I referred to the Alcazar in conversation the other day, when a friend asked me: “Is that how you pronounce it?” (I had pronounced the “z” like an English “z” and put the accent on the last syllable), says Robert Lynd. “It’s probably wrong,” I said, “but that’s how I pronounpe it.” “But oughtn’t you to pronounce the ‘z’ like ‘th’?” he objected. “I shouldn’t dreamof doing such a thing,” I told him. If I were talking to a Spaniard, of course, I should do my best to pronounce words in a Spanish way in order to promote understanding, but, talking to an Englishman, I should feel a pedant if my pronunciation of Spanish names were obtrusively perfect. t . ./. I hold, for instance, that it is better, while talking English, to pronounce the name of Don Quixote in the old-fashioned English iway and that it is an offence against the language to speak of him as Don Kee-ho-tay (or whatever the correct Spanish pronunciation is). I do not object to pronouncing the “ch” in Sancho Panza like the “ch” in touch, but nothing will persuade me to speak of Sancho Pantha.

After all, great nations have never been little-minded in their pronounciation of foreign names. The Romans took liberties with the names .of Greeks, and the French took liberties with the names of the Greeks and the Romans. The English, I imagine, have mispronounced the name of every great foreigner and great foreign city that it was possible to mispronounce. They mispronounce the name of Socrates, of Julius Caesar, of Napoleon. They mispronounce the name of Paris, of Madrid, of Rome. Tn this I hold the English are right. Foreign names may suit the genius of a foreign language, but every nation has the right to alter, twist and mispronounce foreign names in accordance with the genius of its. own language. Englishmen had too much sense to try to pronounce “Madrid” something like “Madhreedh” in the Spanish fashion, so they invented a pronunciation that sounded more English. Similarly, the French gave up the attempt to pronounce “Edinburgh” in the Scottish or English fashion as hopeless and coined a new French name for the city.

Not that I object to the correct pronunciation of foreign names in all cases. There are some foreign names which it\ is as easy to pronounce correctly, for example, to pronounce “Granada” with the accent on the second syllable as with the accent on the first, and it is as easy to pronounce “Malaga” with the accent oh the first syllable as with the accent on the second. In cases such as these thbre is no great virtue in mispronunciation.

On the other hand, I maintain that an Englishman who pronounces the nambs of Seville and Cadiz as the Spanish pronounce them, except when he is speaking to a Spaniard, is talking bad English.

TOO PEDANTIC Even in regard to English names, it seems to ine, many English people are too pedantic in their passion for correct pronunciation. And I sometimes suspect that half these correct pronunciations' not correct at all. The first time I arrived by train at Cirencester (which I had been carefully taught to call “Sisseter”), I was both astonished and aggrieved to hear a railway porter on the station platform shouting: “Sigh-ren-cest-er! Sigh-ren-cest-er!” A few days later I wished to drive into Cirencester from a neighbouring town, and went into a garage to hire a car. “Can you let me have a car to take me to Sisseter to-morrow afternoon?” I asked the proprietor. “Oh, you want to go to Siren?” he said. “Certainly, sir.” After that I lost some of my faith in fancy pronunciations. On the Saturday before last, again, I was passing through Banbury and wished to know which was the road to Daventry. We pulled up at the kerb and my friend who was driving me asked an inhabitant: “Could you tell me the way to Daintry?” “Oh, you want to go to Da-vent-ry?” said the inhabitant. “Well, you turn to the right,” etc. After that, I made up my mind that, if ever I go to Pontefract, I am going to call it Pontefract. I do not believe the people who used to tell me that it is pronounced “Pumfry.” ' The fact is, I have seldom pronounced one of these peculiar placenames in what I had been told was the correct fashion without being corrected in turn by a native of the place.

Last year, when I was leaving Glasgow for the south by car, a Scottish friend instructed me as to the best route to follow. He advised me tc make for a village the name of which was spelt one way and pronounced another. “If you’re asking your way to it,” he said, “it’s no use pronouncing 'it as it’s spelt. If you do nobody’ll understand you. You have to pronounce it like this.” And he made a noise like clearing his throat—-a queer jumble of letters that were neither consonants nor vowels and all contained in a single syllable. Searching for the village, I pulled up the car every now and then and made the queer noise at some passing Scotsman or Scotswoman. Nobody seemed even to have heard of the place. At last my coinpanion, in desperation, having stopped an old man and made the queer gutteral noise as instructed, but in vain, pronounced the name as it is spelt. The old man’s face lit up with understanding. “Oh, you want to go to .” And he, too, pronounced the name as it is spelt, and we had no further trouble. All this convinces me that it is no use worrying excessively about the correct pronunciation of names. If you do, you will only puzzle the inhabitants and never be able to get to places like Kirkcudbright or Llanfairfechan. Trust to instinct (and spelling), and mispronounce as you will, and all will be well. The right to mispronounce names is one of the oldest and one of the inalienable rights of man.