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[Pronunciation and Linguistic Relativity] White People: You Can Stop Saying "Pock-istan"
Hamurabi
MiamiRegistered User regular
MiamiRegistered User regular
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do04ZsC-cdwSo I understand that this isn't a Pressing Urgent Matter of Enormous Gravity... but this's been at the back of my mind for some time now. The specific incidence of it, for me, is when Obama pronounces "Pakistan." He seems to over-enunciate, and winds up saying "Pock-istan." As someone who's from Pakistan, I can assure you that this is not how we say it, and I would wager that no Pakistani says it this way regardless of dialect (though of course I could be wrong); the "P" is much softer, like the P in "stop" as opposed to the hard P in "park."
This is very much just a pet peeve of mine, and is not per se worthy of its own thread. However, the larger issue that it (imho) speaks to about cultural accuracy and linguistic sensitivity is pretty interesting. Obama is clearly going out of his way to say it this way because he thinks it's more accurate. He seems to have a desire to be faithful to the Urdu/Hindi language, for which I commend him. But there are, imho, limits to the desire to be PC/multicultural. The obvious counterargument is that it's a small gesture of goodwill. I can't really argue against gestures of goodwill, but I will say that it seems kinda trivial. I've expressed this view to friends, and they're sometimes surprised; as someone who speaks 3.5 languages, they say they'd expect me to be more anal about pronunciation instead of less. Thing is, language competency is hard. If Arabic classes have taught me anything, it's that Arabic phonemes and White People vocal chords are not a marriage made in heaven. It's okay if you can't pronounce "Pakistan" like a Pakistani -- you're not Pakistani. Just do what feels natural.
The other half of what I'd like to discuss is names. So I met someone last summer who insisted that it was "stupid" that in English we call it "Egypt," even though its original Arabic name is "Masr" (MUSS-URR). When I pressed him on it, he insisted that we should call things by their "real" names. When pressed for his definition of "real," he insisted that it was whatever its original inhabitants called it. When I asked him how far back in history was sufficient to determine the "original" inhabitants, he kinda demurred.
The point being: we may as well call things by the name that's most useful. Saying "Masr" in the U.S. would just get me puzzled looks; saying "Egypt" is obviously much more useful. I also think there's some element of "cultural sovereignty" involved in naming conventions specifically. For instance, as you may or may not be aware, it's Istanbul -- not Constantinople. The old Bombay is now also Mumbai. imho, Turkey and India basically have "the right" to determine what they (and by association the rest of the world) call those cities.
(I see how that could be viewed as a contradiction to what I said about Egypt/Masr, but I think the language equivalency thing makes it a fundamentally different matter.)
So, D&D: should we bother to try and be multicultural in our pronunciation of names for people, places, and things? And who gets to decide what name we use for things anyway?
What's NOT up for discussion: "Eye-ran" and "Eye-rack". Those are punishable by death.
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And it did amaze me when I realized how many cities and countries (everywhere...Europe, Asia, etc) had totally different names in their native tongue. But when talking to native English speakers, I just use the "normal" English names...because they're understood.
And that's not even talking about Angliciaztion, where obviously the pronunciation and spelling will vary. I'm talking totally different names (like Egypt/Masr).
Just read it like any other word people, ain't gotta be all fancy.
It is not the case that one person, group, or book gets to act as a source of authority for the correct meaning of a particular term, and another person, group, or book gets to act as the source of authority for the correct pronunciation of the term. This way we simplify our quest and bind linguistic issues of meaning with issues of pronunciation; the two are bundled together.
If we go with Wittgenstein, and maintain that the meaning of a word is related to the use of the word, then we can also maintain that the "correctness" of pronunciation is related to use, to the practical consequences of a particular pronunciation in a particular linguistic exchange.
If we do this, then we can avoid the issue of your interlocutor who could not give a satisfactory account of his conservative notion of authority through originality. We do not need to muck about in issues of authority, but rather can focus upon the question of what works.
When Obama says "Pock-istan", some persons can guess his intended meaning of "that country". If another person says "PAH-ki-STAHN", it seems that persons would be able to discern that the term also referred to "that country". "Pock-istan" and "PAH-ki-STAHN" do not have two different referents, and persons seem to not think they do.
It's the issue you noted with the Egypt / Masr issue. If you started using "Masr" most of your interlocutors would not be able to guess your intended meaning. Since your primary concern is communication, rather than being a pedantic dick, you use the term that functions for your intended use.
Why can't we apply that realization to the issue of pronunciation? If we abandon a Platonic notion of "true meaning", then it seems we can also abandon a Platonic notion of "true pronunciation".
A "correct pronunciation" of a word is a pronunciation that works. This accounts for different dialects, and seems to mirror how language works in the world.
We have people adding "r" to "wash." We're going to properly pronounce "Pakistan?" Yeah, right.
If we're not white, but we hang out with a lot of white people, how should we pronounce it?
EDIT: I guess since we're here, though, there's no harm in saying this: I'm not really sure where "China" came from, but we call it "Zhong-Guo" (like a lot of people in my generation, I am torn halfway between Pinyin and Wades Gilford). Which is actually great, because it literally means "Land/Nation of the Middle", with Middle becoming the associated adjective for Chinese people. It's also how we refer to other countries ("Mei-Guo" means "Land of America"), But something like two dozen languages use some weird variation of China/Kina/Kino/Chino, so I guess there's no turning that around.
Everyone(reporters) puts on their best fake accent and rolls the shit out of their r's when the name of a spanish city or person comes up.
I've never seen anyone slap on a fake accent to say "Tokyo"
I'm half joking, but really...when it comes down to it, it's a different language. Does it really matter if English speakers call a city Bombay while people in India call it Mumbai? Peking vs. Beijing, etc? Hell, I still call Eastpointe 'East Detroit' - and I was ten when it changed names.
Some changes I sort of get - after the fall of the USSR, dropping the Lenin and Stalin...but I'm in agreement that if you aren't speaking in the native language or even know the native language, most of the time changes in pronunciation or spelling are more about sounding 'cultured' than actually communicating information better.
Take for example, Al Qaeda...back around 9/11, it was ALWAYS spelled Al Qaida - which is just fine, because there is no direct translation. But then people had to be different, and now it's always spelled Al Qaeda.
I dunno, just seems like in a lot of cases sprinkling in proper / native pronunciation unnecessarily is a lazy way people try to make themselves seem smarter than they really are.
I say "Pack-istan."
yolo
That said, we were mostly in the touristy bits around Hurghada rather than the 'every day' parts of Egypt. I'm really surprised no one ever mentioned it.
You know St. Petersburg (Sankt-Peterburg) is located in Leningrad Federal Oblast (Leningradskaya oblast)? It is. There's been some thought to change the name, but what would you change it too? The pre-Soviet geographic divisions are, for lack of a better term, woefully inaccurate or suck. You could change it to "St. Petersburg Federal Oblast", but apparently people don't really care for having the repeating name just for the sake of spiting the older generation, and it got voted down in referendum back in the 1990s,
I'm not a fan of "Taihoku", the old name for the Taipei City/District (though "New Taihoku" looks pretty cool), but the Japanese had the sensibility to call the island itself "Taiwan" when they were calling the shots. Formosa sounds weird, like it should be some pleasant, sunny tropical island in the Mediterranean, not the craggy mountain industrial center that it refers to.
Mind you, she couldn't pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.
I had a language class with a guy who, every time an English word that had sinicized for Chinese, would immediately exclaim "It's pronunced America/Hamburger/Coca Cola."
Everyone wanted to beat that fucker upside the head after a few weeks.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I could be wrong, but I think this is pretty much how any language does it with loanwords. Russian has a lot of technical/scientific language that is copied as closely as possible from German, English and French. Weird, in Chinese we don't don't seem to do it as much with technical language (radio, computer) as much as food. And, of course, names.
Of course, it's different because of Japanese phonemes (?) I imagine.
For instance there's a move of the vowels around near where I live where Milk is pronounced Melk. It apparently angers people.
Sweden: Sverige
Gothenburg: Göteborg
Norway: Norge
Denmark: Danmark
Finland: Suomi
Copenhagen: København
'course, in Sweden we say Finland, and call the capital Helsingfors instead of Helsinki. Finland was conquered by Sweden once.
My linguistic experience is pretty much limited to a couple years of HS German, but the bold seems like a really weird thing, and if anything seems kind of stupidly superficial 'Anti-colonialism' specifically anti-English speaker. I don't think the Germans mind English speakers calling it Germany instead of DeutchLand, or the French France instead of République Française. Same with the Dutch/Netherlanders.
India is a bit different maybebecause English is one of the official languages, but once you are translating out of the mother tongue of the place does it really matter what you call it?
I mean I have no idea what Wisconsin is called in any other language. This is doubly true because Wisconsin isn't an English words to begin with. Would it be incorrect for the French who were the first non natives here to refer to Wisconsin as Meskonsing, the Miami word it was probably derived from? Or one of the intermediary pronunciations it had between the two?
What about names with literal meanings. South Africa, Suda-Afrika(Afrikanns) Afrika Kusini(Swahili-not actually one of the 10 official languages, but the only African one Google Translate has), I have no Idea what the word for South or Africa are in Hindi. But is it more correct to call it "Suda-Afrika/Afrika Kusini" as phonetically as they can manage, or whatever the literal translation for "South" and "Africa" is in Hindi?
And then cut them down because they're too long. Good luck figuring out sekuhara.
They have a whole separate alphabet for rendering foreign words, although they are limited the same character/syllables as they use in their alphabet for native Japanese words.
And as Tenek said, they also like abbreviating things. So, for example, their term for "digital camera" is dijikamu.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I have a friend that has "melk" with his "breffis." I can't explain to you why it makes my skin crawl, but it truly does.
I figured he was pronouncing it in a badly inflected British accent, because that's the accent most Pakistanis learn when they're taught English so that's how it sounds when they say it while speaking English.
Breffis, eh? Nah I still say breakfast but apparently my friends and family hate it when I drop some melk trufs on them.
It's more "anti other speaker".
English speakers are every bit as guilty of doing it.
Because like every other language group of the world English speakers also have assholes.
I meant more along the lines of Mumbai vs Bombay; in that it's not correcting whatever the hell the city is called in Chinese or Korean or Arabic.
Maybe it's because English is the language most likely to be heard worldwide?
You're kind of out of the loop for the French bitching about the Quebecois or Mexicans bitching about El Salvadorians.
About a decade ago the South Korea government demanded that Chinese-speaking outlets stop using the Sinicized translation of Seoul, 漢城, and start using the sound approximation 首爾 (shou-er). That's pretty similar to the Bombay/Mumbai thing.
Yeah, its been called Egypt a lot longer than Masr. If you want to drag it way back, Kemet would be one of the older names.
That is just adorable.
I have literally never heard anyone, white or otherwise, call it anything other than this.
Where are these people saying "pock"?
As mentioned in the OP, Barack Obama does this.
I've heard a lot of news anchors do it lately too.
I always think it's a pretty pointless exercise trying to police pronunciation, when (as others have pointed out) pronunciation can vary even within native speakers of a given language. Also, anyone who gets offended because I say "burrito" without rolling the "r"s or whatever else just needs to loosen up. Bigotry and discrimination operate wholly independently of how a person says a given word. Yes, sometimes an egregious mispronunciation can be an indicator of a broader ignorance surrounding a given culture, but it can just as well be someone with a dialect. Much better to judge individuals as individuals and not based on how they pronounce things (which applies just as much within a given language as it does when moving between languages).
I've always been able to imagine the chew drool dripping out of the 5 toothed mouth of a guy wearing overalls with no shirt, whenever I hear "Missouruh".