At 9:29 AM 03/14/03, Darcy James Argue wrote: >On a related note, when did this concern with accurate place name >pronunciation become an issue? I mean, to my knowledge, no one is >seriously trying to reform the English pronunciation of "Paris," or get >the French to stop referring to that city on the Themes as "Londres."
Accurate place name pronunciation is not an issue. I have no problem with people saying "Sowdy Arabia". My original point, which brought me into this argument, was that putting an upside-down apostrophe in "shi'ite" is pretentious. My line of reasoning was that it makes no sense to inside on "correct" marks for some words while ignoring them in others (like "Saudi"), and that it's pointless to put them in those others as well, since no one expected to pronounce them that way anyway. It's exactly the same issue as putting the accent mark on "Montréal". If you're writing for a bilingual audience with some awareness of the native pronunciation, then it's fine. But if you're an American baseball fan talking about the Mon-tree-all Expos, then adding the accent mark is just pretentious. Incidentally, I don't want this to become a slam on Americans. Our reputation for cultural arrogance notwithstanding, I have found that Americans are MORE willing than almost any others to try to pronounce foreign names with their native pronunciation. We may be an aggressive culture, but part of the culture that we promote is our habit of assimilating foreign ways. mdl resistance is futile _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
