Wonkey Donkeys (BBC etc dodgy pronunciations)

[Gharial]

Not sure if there's a thread for this sort of thing but thought I'd kick one off with a couple of wonky Beeb pronunciations (could be the start of a database of sorts for learners regarding L1 interference and such eh LOL):

 

"Hang Joe" (Hangzhou)

 

"Zoo kiai" ["key eye"] (Zou Kai)

 

Some of these Anglicizations are understandable and sort of excusable, in that they are just following English norms for want of knowledge or experience otherwise, e.g. 'hang' may be read by those unfamiliar with Pinyin as like the hang in hangman rather than more akin to the past participle 'hung' say. That "Zoo kiai" is still pretty weird though (suggests dyslexia almost?).

[Shelley]

I had to laugh when they said P.M. May was going to the G20 to help mend bridges from the dispute about the power station, she said she was going to do her best when talking to President Xi pronounced sort of like Gee. What a good start

 

My toes curled and I thought, don't they have people to educate them in at least how to pronounce the host's name correctly. It can't be that hard.

 

I expect there will be more of these gaffs during the reporting of the G20.

 

 

In this clip its at about 52 seconds in, what do you think she says?

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37265915

[Gharial]

From a quick listen it sounded like she pronounced Xi's name as beginning with a /ʒ/ sound, like in 'pleasure' or 'television'. Close but no cigar I'm afraid, Mrs May (no wonder she always looks close to a nervous breakdown). But hey, politicians are busy professionals with two brains working overtime and no end of advisors that they obviously don't have to bother listening to much, etc.

 

Come round my gaff for more gaffes.

[Demonic_Duck]

It seems like there's some source of misinformation which is telling English speakers to pronounce pinyin "x" as /ʒ/. I've heard it several times before, once in a speech by Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) who kept talking about "Zhiaomi" phones. Even more inexplicably, he referred over and over again to the carrier "Cheena Mobile".

[Gharial]

Jammy Qinna-practising entrepreneur?

[Gharial]

For cloth ears though you can't beat Chipp Cobb, Deaf Stuntman

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/videos/chip-cobb-the-deaf-stuntman/81914224/

[imron]

It seems like there's some source of misinformation which is telling English speakers to pronounce pinyin "x" as /ʒ/

I think it's more just how speakers of English will naturally react to X at the start of a word.  If you've been immersed in pinyin for many years it can be hard sometimes to see things from a normal native English speaker's perspective.

[Demonic_Duck]

Still doesn't make any sense as to why it would be /ʒ/, though. I'd understand if it were /ks/, /gz/, /ɛks/, /ɛgz/, /z/, or /x/.

[Tianjin42]

Yep - I'm sure I'm not the only one who has tried to pronounce a word from a third language or even a new English word that I have encountered and my pronunciation has come out very pinyin.  

[Shelley]

I can understand why people would make this sort of mistake, but what I don't understand is why, in an effort to not upset the G20 host, or indeed not to look ridiculous on the international stage, why someone didn't spend some time teaching Mrs. May to say his name correctly.

 

I suppose I personally i consider this just good manners, but not every one thinks this

 

I don't expect her to have spent any time learning any other chinese apart from maybe Hello, thank you.

[vellocet]

"Hang Joe" is how the Hangzhou people (and Zhejiang people in general) pronounce that city's name.  I'd say it's more like "Hang Dsoe" but it is definitely not the Beijing accent "zhou".  They also call their province "Dse Jiang".  I think sometimes foreign students of Chinese forget that there isn't just one way to pronounce every word.  The mountains are high and the emperor is far away.  

[Lu]

Could be May didn't listen; could be she listened but it was too difficult for her to learn in the time she had for it; could be they never told her. Especially in case of someone like Xi, I can imagine the embassy staff (who would normally be the people who would write 'pronounced 'Shee'' on her paperwork somewhere) are just so used to saying it that they forgot it isn't obvious.

Probably one of the former though.

 

Meanwhile, here in the Netherlands I'm told Huawei, the mobile phone company, is pronounced Hü-ah-why (ü as in 鱼 and 女, not sure how to write that in English, it's a normal sound in Dutch). Three syllables. It grates my ears something bad, but apparently, for reasons I cannot fathom, Hü-ah-why themselves have decided this is the official pronunciation here. (Incidentally, this makes for a fun phone shopping experience. 'And you could also consider this Hü-ah-why model,' says the salesman. 'What's the Huawei cost?' I reply, because for the life of me I can't bring myself to say Hü-ah-why.)

[LiMo]

Its a difficult one, isn't it? After being acerbically tutored by a Spaniard on the correct way to pronounce "paella" I still haven't decided how these things should be handled (I then met another Spanish girl who told me I was pronouncing it with a horrible accent from some such area of Spain, doubtless the province from which my original tutor hailed!); it's simply not reasonable to expect every person to look up and practise how to pronounce every foreign word they use. At some point you come off as being incredibly pedantic and pretentious, and you're likely to end up hindering communication because so few other people know how to say it "properly."

 

As for the BBC, I also found it strange that there's very little effort made to teach people how to say the names right. I wouldn't expect them to go so far as to get it "really" right- shee for Xi, is a fair compromise- but the utter lack of effort surprises me, Hangzhou is fairly easy as Chinese goes.

[Shelley]

Oh interesting, I hear it pronounce wah-way on technical tv shows and their own adverts. This is also how I say it because I have a Huawei and so I tried to get it right.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGAqvpYLiGw

[Mouseneb]

I know this is from a few years ago but my absolute favorite mispronunciation of Xi's name was Eleven Jinping.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-29274792

[Demonic_Duck]

Meanwhile, here in the Netherlands I'm told Huawei, the mobile phone company, is pronounced Hü-ah-why (ü as in 鱼 and 女, not sure how to write that in English, it's a normal sound in Dutch). Three syllables. It grates my ears something bad, but apparently, for reasons I cannot fathom, Hü-ah-why themselves have decided this is the official pronunciation here.

In the English-speaking world the official pronunciation is "waa-wei". Most 老百姓 rebel against this by pronouncing the /h/, though.

[Gharial]

Demonic Duck's mentioning of the possible pronunciations of "x" to an English speaker reminded me of the following, could be a very useful resource for EFL teachers certainly. I think it might even pip the COBUILD English Guides 8: Spelling (as that has rather a scattershot and not explicit-enough treatment of that particular letter): http://www.openbookpublishers.com/reader/325#page/1/mode/2up

 

@vellocet: If you want to discuss what isn't quite Mandarin then there's a Non-Mandarin forum LOL. This current thread is obviously strictly for lambasting politicians and journalists and the like about their weak attempts at approximating purely the (inter)national standard pronunciation, especially if they are visiting or directly addressing China. Let's not overburden the poor souls and make everything even more unintelligible than it already is ROFL.

 

@LiMo: Well that's what happens if you let a non-teacher acerbically drill you in their particular dialect or idio(t)lect rather than the standard too much, and they don't bother making you aware of the possible differences. When it comes to VIPs' names however I don't think there's any excuse for not knowing how to pronounce them reasonably well, unless of course one doesn't care about appearing rude or slow.

 

Damn, and I have a (cheapo) Huawei. Oo-arr-eh, I be a pirate hey! etc.

[Publius]

Yes, let's cut Ms May some slack. At least she's not calling him Eleven Jinping hehe.

 

That Huawei in Netherlands example reminds me of IKEA, who put out an ad featureing an eye, a key, and a person saying "ah" when they entered the US market. These companies know their names are going to be mispronounced, and they are okay with it I think.

 

And the Spanish example reminds me of another episode. During one World Cup season some Chinese viewers were frustrated as to why CCTV kept calling the Spanish goalkeeper Casillas 卡西利亚斯 and the German striker Klose 克洛泽. Surely it should be 卡西拉斯 and 克洛斯 right? Yup, you can see mandatory English classes have borne fruit. Oh and there are also people wondering why John is 约翰 and David 大卫.

[lips]

卡西利亚斯

 

Where does the 利 sound come from?

[Publius]

In continental Spanish, 'll' represents a palatialized l sound /ʎ/ similar to Italian 'gli' and how Americans pronounce 'million'. But we don't have that sound in Chinese. The best approximation is 'lia' for 'lla'.