It’s a pet peeve of mine when NPR’s Hispanic on-air reporters conclude their pieces by pronouncing their names in a strong Spanish accent. It’s a gesture that calls attention to itself. I’m not sure why, but sometimes you hear American reporters — and not just Hispanic ones — pronounce the name of Latin American cities with a distinct Spanish accent...
The identity politics of liberals spoil everything.Throughout his post, you will find hundreds of words about how Dreher is really just talking about proper communication, and hey, he softens his accent when he goes on the radio so what's the big deal, and "who gets to define what is an authentically black sound, anyway? And why are the broadcast-neutral voices of most NPR personalities considered 'white'?" etc. He seems to be afraid the big bad multiculturalists want to make his beloved NPR sound like a ghetto barbershop.
But it's the quoted bit that really lives for me. Imagine Dreher bristling as some insolent Dominican pronounces his own name too Spanishy! I suppose he gets it from this:
The rest of his posts are about political correctness, natch.
Obviously these libtards are spoiling everything by insisting that there is a proper way to pronounce "Nicaragua". Next thing they'll tell me that when I speak French, I shouldn't be pronouncing "bonjour" like "bone-joor".
ReplyDeleteWhenever I go on TV, I’m more careful about enunciation, especially pronouncing the ‘g’ at the end of a word; Southerners typically drop the g. I used to catch hell about this from my sister, who thought I was being fake. The whole question of accent and identity was huge with her, as it clearly is with Prof. Kumanyika. But why should it be?
ReplyDeleteDreher didn't get along with his sister, did he? He keeps referring to times when his sister said he was fake, stuck-up, perhaps thought he was better than everyone else. Then she dies and he rushes home to be authentic.
It's always childhood trauma, even when the trauma was relatively trivial like little Miss Two Gay Moms.
I suppose it would ruin the product, but I wonder if his columns would be more optimistic and less drehery (pronounced 'dreary') if he'd commit to getting a good night's sleep every night, working out for an hour and getting a good breakfast before he sat down at his computer. Or maybe it's projection and if I could do those things I wouldn't be bothered so much by professional god bothering killjoys.
ReplyDeleteI always wonder how all the Death-of-Civilization people reconciled their gloom with their belief in God's plan and God's goodness.
ReplyDeleteAnother example: Grover Norquist
ReplyDeletehttp://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/grover-norquist-soul-new-machine
It’s the same message that first gestated in his mind when his parents would take him and his younger siblings for ice cream after church on Sundays and his dad would confiscate large bites out of each of their cones, explaining, “This is income tax” or “This is property tax.”
--------
Daddy and/or Mommy was mean to me, so I'm going to inflict my problems on the rest of humanity.
~
What's he doing listening to NPR in the first place? Looking for column material?
ReplyDeleteIf we were able to end child abuse we'd be able to solve many many problems.
ReplyDeleteFaust would still be a whiner though.
He's probably referring to Claudio Sanchez, NPR's education reporter, who does indeed--outrageously, hatefully--pronounce his name with a Spanish accent.
ReplyDeletesanchez is from mexico. it's like saying someone from minnesota has an "english accent."
ReplyDeleteor the capital of South Dakota as 'peer'. Just because it's named after a French guy does not mean we don't get to pronounce it in middle Western American
ReplyDeleteChrist, what an asshole. Instead he should be complaining about:
ReplyDelete* Nedda Ulaby's hoity-toity toffee-nosed diction
* Audie Cornish's nasality
* Linda Wertheimer's brave-depressive-on-Paxil affect
* Guy Raz's Gabby Hayes creaky voice
* Allison Aubrey's cute-teen creaky voice
I'm sure I'll think of others. Add your own!
We should start pronouncing Dreher's name wrong, and when he corrects us, remind him that he's in America, and he needs to stop insisting on the "German" pronunciation of his last name and assimilate already.
ReplyDeleteBack when I lived in LA I just loved the fact I could instantly identify tourists by how they pronounced surrounding cities and streets. Endlessly amusing and creative.
ReplyDeleteWhile I'm not familiar with the full roster of latino/hispanic NPR reporters, I'm pretty sure very few of them actually have "Spanish" accents.
ReplyDelete"drear" or GTFO.
ReplyDeleteHow does he pronounce it anyway? Dryer?
ReplyDeleteDURRRRHURRRRR
ReplyDeletefrom the comments:
ReplyDelete"So the fact that Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, or Mandelit del Barco (or myself) correctly pronounce their (our) names and roll the Rs bother y’all that much?
Like Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, I have three rolling Rs is my name. And I’m sorry but I will continue to roll them when I introduce myself.
Now, if people like Nick, above, and others don’t want to meet me, so your delicate ears don’t bleed, being exposed to such uncouth and foreign sounds, I understand. You are, after all, a special snowflake that needs protection from people that speak a language with different sounds in it."
[NFR: Oh, come off it. If I met you, and knowing that you are an American, you insisted on pronouncing your name like you were in the capital city of whatever country your people come from, I would think, "Oh boy, watch out for this one. He (she) is thin-skinned, and prone to throw down over identity politics at the drop of a hat."
He really is such a delicate flower himself.
Sweet christ he's such a doddering church lady.
ReplyDeleteRod, if you're down to the point where you're pissed about people pronouncing their names as they are intended to be pronounced in their mother tongue, congratulations. You are progressing nicely to conservative nirvana - that place where everything that is and ever has been is an irritant created solely to pique your ire. With any luck, the sound of your own breathing will soon cause you such distress that you'll either put a sock in it or strangle yourself.
Yah, sure, you betcha, what-what, old bean!
ReplyDelete"I'm French. Why do you think I have this outrageous accent, you silly pundit?"
ReplyDeleteAs an individual with a perfectly phonetic last name which dumbasses inexplicably mispronounce, I say that Rod can mang' un piatto di cazzi. Spellcheck can do this as well.
ReplyDeleteSo wait, his dad gave him free ice cream and what Grover learned was the little bit removed by the one who made eating ice cream possible was unfair to the one who got the majority of the benefit for nothing?
ReplyDeletemy sister, who thought I was being fake
ReplyDeleteWhy cant we have an exchange program for the living and the dead?
I have a Piedmont North Carolina mill village accent when I'm not paying attention. It's the sound of overfull ashtrays, 1950's greasemonkeys and a deep moonshine drunk. My wife is from Florida. She can turn her Georgia cracker accent on and off at will. When it's off she has this beautiful unplaceable American accent.
I suspect Rod is talking about Maria Hinojosa, and he's a goddamn dick.
His mother was a hamster, and his father smelt of elderberries.
ReplyDeleteRegarding that bug up Rod's ass about NPR, I think he was freaked out when he learned that Soterios Johnson Is a white guy.
ReplyDeleteAs multiple commenters over there pointed out, intentionally mispronouncing their own names in order to not hurt the ears of all the definitely-not-racist delicate flowers would be more of an affection than simply pronouncing their own name how they learned it and how they always have.
ReplyDeleteWhile we're at it, why can't those Jews pronounce "chootz-pah" properly, like Michelle Bachmann?
ReplyDeleteDear Lord, Rude thinks people should mispronounce their own names for the delicate sensibilities of him and other right-leaning white people fearful of losing the unquestioned privileges of majority but liberals are the ones pushing identity politics?
ReplyDeleteI ordered piatto di cazzi at an osteria in Fiorenza once. Too salty for my taste.
ReplyDeleteI want to sit under a magnolia tree with this comment, drinking mint juleps.
ReplyDelete"It's a pet peeve of mine..."
ReplyDelete"...and, as I do with all my pets, I love and cherish and nurture it with all my heart. I let it jump up on the bed and sleep with me. I feed it daily and take it out for exercise at least once a day. Of course it's not my ONLY peeve..."
The thing about "Nicaragua" is, everyone on radio and tv, regardless of whether or not they speak Spanish and whether or not they're trying to be fancy, pronounces it with a Spanish accent ("nee-kah-RAH-gwah"). It's weird. People who think nothing of pronouncing Puerto Rico as "porta-REE-kow" do it, too.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I travel in France, I adjust my English to make it easier to communicate with French people who may understand some English, but who are unaccustomed to hearing it...I even, at times, will pronounce American place names and proper names in a Pepe Le Pew accent, because as ridiculous as it makes me feel to speak that way, it helps the French people who don’t speak my language, or who don’t speak it well, understand what I’m trying to tell them.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure that really endears them to you, Rod. Why, I know that all the Chinese people I've worked with got really irritated when I pronounced their names and hometowns correctly. That's just the kind of grievance-monger that I am. Next time it comes up, I'll mispronounce all those words like they do on American television, and throw on a nice chop-socky accent. That'll make them feel respected.
Years ago, Mara Laiasson used to end her reports with "...I'm Mara Laiasson." Then that changed. I think NPR decided that all signoffs should be uniform (name, city or country), but allowed/encouraged people to pronounce their own names as they wish. Like an audio signature, you see.
ReplyDeleteRight. Like Seh-pool-VEE-duh.
ReplyDeletehis pet peeve urinated on the rug again. This is why we can't have nice things around Rod.
ReplyDeleteWhy did they even bother with Church if this was the most important lesson they were going to get? The early Christian church literally slew people who wouldn't kick into the common pot.
ReplyDeleteI recently heard a piece about a female on-air personality being criticized for sounding like a teenager, can't remember who it was or which show.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the kind of events that are commonly described as 'acts of god', are you sure he doesn't speak Klingon or the black speech of Mordor?
ReplyDeleteNumerous and belligerant.
ReplyDeleteBecause they don't have the nerve.
ReplyDeleteHe's a pearl clutcher, not a pearl maker. (And never a pearl diver. What a nasty thing to think of, you liberal monster.)
ReplyDeleteExactly. Jeez. People should pronounce their names however the hell they want to. However, I would probably start to cringe if, say, Andrea Mitchell started signing off with, "Andrea Mitchell, reporting from PaREE (or bearLEEN, or yerooshaLYeem)". Some conventions are, well, conventional, but your name is your name.
ReplyDeleteNackotish
ReplyDeletealso Chapatoulas for Tchoupitolas
chumley for cholmondeley
And all this time I've been saying bee-ZHOH. How embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteThat's beyond my pay grade. You'll have to take that up with Isaac Bashevis Singer or Sholem Asch.
ReplyDeleteI'm fortunate enough to have non-regional diction naturally, so accent doesn't really hurt me. The only affectation I've ever had to put on is British English - it's what everyone learns first because all the English learner materials are produced in the UK.
ReplyDeleteI think they are both based on there being great centers of learning in
ReplyDeletethose cities. You know, Oxford University and University of Nebraska
Omaha Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
However, the penetration of English into Indian idiomatic language is understandable after centuries of British colonialism. I don't think the same can be said of France (which was Dreher's example, after all), and I doubt very much that ol' Rod's impersonation of a Disney skunk had the salutory effect on the French locals that Dreher imagines.
ReplyDeleteI used to catch hell about this from my sister
ReplyDeleteHis sister lives in a Louisiana small town, IIRC, right? Does Rod have a problem with the way Cajuns pronounce all those French words, too? Is he unable to travel around New Orleans, so irritated is he how the natives pronounced Calliope Street and Melpomene?
I'm always reminded of the Irish lass who was asked whether she rolled her R's. "Only when I'm wearing me high heels," she said.
ReplyDeleteI am sure the French go home and ROTFL after he has condescended to them that way. Since most French speak English except in the countryside. (However, I won't discuss the arrogance of those French who think proper Muricans can't speak French, and have discussed me and my family in front of me with typical Parisian disdain, and thereby lost their tips).
ReplyDeleteNo better example of a first-world problem.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine gets red with rage at Zoe Chace's voice. Me, I like to imitate it. I don't know Rooney. I live in L.A., so I'm in the car a lot, which means listening to a lot of NPR.
ReplyDeleteA while ago, I used to hear Diane Rehm on NPR while driving to work. The show was pretty awful back in the Iraq war heyday, but I kept listening because I each time thought this would be the day Diane drops dead on the radio. She had a voice like death warmed over, then put back out in the snow.
ReplyDeleteLater I learned she just has some throat condition, and I felt bad. I mean, from the show I thought she was a tool, but not an asshole. I more wanted to be there for radio history, in a morbid way.
Yes, but they drive Jag-yoo-ahs, which is very sheek.
ReplyDeleteFirst time I pronounced Caheunga all Spanish-y I got laughed at.
ReplyDeleteWhy the hell can't those irritants ever produce anything beautiful, like a pearl? Righties are less competent than molluscs.
ReplyDeleteBigot, or "BIG-uht"
ReplyDeleteI think the proper pronunciation is something like in "br'er rabbit," but that's hard for me to pronounce so I've decided it rhymes with "basshole."
ReplyDeletePolitical incorrectness is the real political correctness.
ReplyDeleteOh sweet Jesus that was like nails on a blackboard. I would throw her down a well for that alone.
ReplyDeleteYeah and let's get all het up about whether it's ISIS or ISIL, because that really makes a difference when you are being beheaded
ReplyDeleteCah-WANG-uh!
ReplyDeleteDreher lives, or lived, in the other LA, which has place names like Natchitoches. (What he's really trying to say is that Spanish sounds less "American" than unreconstructed Cajun.)
ReplyDeleteRod's father smelt of dingleberries.
ReplyDeleteAnd, boy, are they gonna be pissed when they discover that Gawd speaks Yiddish.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny that in England, the "neutral" accent is the Oxford accent. In America, it is the Omaha accent. I think they are both based on there being great centers of learning in those cities. You know, Oxford University and University of Nebraska Omaha.
ReplyDeleteThe British English pronunciation of Nicaragua is enough to send you crawling to an ALM disc.
ReplyDeleteNick-a-rag-yoo-ah. I don't know if they eat Nay-choes there, but they almost certainly do in Mitchagin and Utaha.
Just like how that uppity Barack Obama pronounces "Pakistan" the way them Pakistanians do.
ReplyDeleteI get the feeling that Dreher ran out of substantive complaints about the state of the world around 1975, and ever since, he's just been whining and fussbudgeting over an ever-expanding list of imagined slights and hyperbolically drawn cracks in civilization's facade.
ReplyDeleteI'm recommending that Roy begin each missive about Dreher with the query: "who pissed in Dreher's grits today? Answer: it really doesn't matter."
That's "Big-OH."
ReplyDeleteIt's proof he sympathizes with them instead of America.
ReplyDeleteMust have been summer... How were the polpetti?
ReplyDeleteThis.
ReplyDeleteActually, to be fair to Rod (gag) when travelling in India or Nepal its a good idea to pronounce English words either with a full on English accent or with an Anglo-Indian accent that makes you sound like you wanted to be an extra for Bride and Prejudice because people can have a hard time understanding a specifically American dialect version of English. Because we do not pronounce things in the way that they expect us to, we stress the wrong parts of the words and we drop or elide different parts of the word.
ReplyDeleteZoe Chace. She's really good and very interesting, but I physically can't listen to her. Also Emily Rooney, but she's pretty awful so no loss there.
ReplyDeleteRod's head is going to explode, in his State of the City speech, Bill De Blasio was just speaking Spanish, talking about high rents. Dios mio!
ReplyDeleteAnd why doesn't the mayor just call himself Bill Dobbs, like a decent American?
"Bee-ZHO"
ReplyDeleteI think we need to do this with all names, German-Americans should never be "Muller" but always "Mew-luh," for example. I wonder, though, if regular white folks pronouncing their names thusly would irritate Dreher as much.
ReplyDeleteUmm, not so much since Jaguar was sold to Ford, and then to Tata.
ReplyDeleteNowadays they all sound like that
ReplyDeleteNo need to since the house landed on her.
ReplyDeleteJeepers. I need to get this right. Is it TAHtah or tahTAH? Please don't tell me it's TAYtuh.
ReplyDeleteI teach speech to college students, and when we get to delivery, articulation and pronunciation, I instruct them in the Rule of Proper Names and Places: "People who have a name or live in a place get to decide how to pronounce that name or place. If you don't think it's correct, tough."
ReplyDeleteAn example is Hamilton Jordan Jr., Jimmy Carter's chief of staff. He pronounced his last name "Jer-dan", as was the custom in his family (and in other families named Jordan around the south). Why? That's the way they'd always pronounced it, therefore that was the "correct" pronunciation.
One of the difficulties with proper names or place names that come from other languages (along with words from other languages that are incorporated into English) is the question of whether to use the original languages' pronunciation rules or the English pronunciation rules (to the extent that English pronunciation "rules" even exist, which is another issue altogether). The general consensus among linguists is that when a word is adopted by a new language, it becomes a new word, often with a modified meaning, and therefore its adopted language's pronunciation rules apply. Classic example: the town in the Texas panhandle--is it "Ah mah ree yo" (Spanish rules) or "A mah rill uh" (English/Texas dialect rules)? Try going to Amarillo and pronouncing it the Spanish way, and see how far you get.
(1) That's not what she said.
ReplyDelete(2) Elllis, baby, Magatha's earlier comment is right there.
Maybe if Grover had given his dad a little more of his ice cream, Mummy and Daddy wouldn't have kept him chained up in the back yard with the dog.
ReplyDeleteHmm, Dreher... Dreher... sounds a bit Deutchlandische to me...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37UwQ2T4Rf0
ReplyDeleteSo I moved to Iowa. Nearby are towns called Madrid and Nevada. I tried to pronounce them Spanish-like, and was corrected: the (overwhelmingly non-Hispanic) locals say "MAD-rid" and "Nuh-VAY-duh." Mulling over which pronunciations to use next time has only made me more uncertain.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I am certain of -- Taco John's could not flourish in the Southwest.
I know. I tried to delete my post but Disqus wouldn't let me.
ReplyDeleteOh, and another thing--I'm not a doctor, but I'm sure that a good laxative would do Dreher more good than anything else.
ReplyDeleteMais bien sur, but he was probably misled by all the furries he encountered on his last trip to Disney Paris.
ReplyDeleteThanks, I will follow the aforementioned rule when saying Madrid and Nevada re: Iowa. Unless maybe I'm talking to a Hispanic.
ReplyDeleteI prounounce it Bazoongas.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me started on Canadian French, of which Cajun is just the bastard child.
ReplyDeleteThat's the way North Versailles is pronounced in the Western PA town as well. I guess 40 million Frenchmen CAN be wrong.
ReplyDeleteit helps the French people who don’t speak my language, or who don’t speak it well, understand what I’m trying to tell them.
ReplyDeleteIt's even better if you shout.
I wonder if lumping together all the different accents/dialects within every foreign language is a uniquely American, or English-speaking, phenomenon. Does a typical educated German, e.g., care care about distinguishing between Mexican Spanish and Chilean Spanish?
ReplyDeleteHey, be nice to the Canooks.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, try going to "Tay-has" and see how far you get.
ReplyDeleteNu?
ReplyDeleteI was thinking probably Mandalit del Barco.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's spelled "Tata", but it's pronounced "Throatwarbler Mangrove".
ReplyDeleteI try not to talk with my mouth full.
ReplyDelete"I always wondered how all the Death-of-Civilization people reconciled
ReplyDeletetheir gloom with their belief in God's plan and God's goodness."
The same way Noah would have if he'd had a blog.
Speaking of Nevada, people who are actually from the state say "Neh va duh" with a flat "a" as in "hat". People who aren't from there often say "Neh vah duh" with the "a" pronounced as in "father". There are numerous cultural markers like these around the country that allow natives to spot the newcomers.
ReplyDeleteTo quote (gasp) REO Speedwagon: "Keep on rollin'."
ReplyDeleteAre we living in Celestial North Korea? (Hitchens!)
ReplyDeleteNowadays they all sound like they've been taught by Ira Glass--lots of hesitations, and blurts, and ruminative meanderish tones. Which I kind of like, actually. But it's become a sort of generational style.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't get them started on how those people disrespect America by changing the spelling of traditional names.
ReplyDeleteI think the California accent is neutral, since CA is such a melting pot. And the Yorkshire accent is the West Virginia accent of Britain.
ReplyDeleteHebrew, but with a Yiddish inflection. :-)
ReplyDeleteI always liked Walhalla, South Carolina, pronounced wall holler.
ReplyDeleteHeh. That just reminded me of my 6th grade teacher who was not Brittish, and had a severe Boston accent when speaking but insisted to us one day that the above pronunciations of both words was the only correct way to say them. Contrary to newscasters and Spanish-speakers. I always assumed he thought he was showing off his knowledge of Spanish, which made it all the more funny when I started hearing actual Spanish years later. I had no idea that was a Brittish-English thing. Either way, it was a strange hill for him to choose to be so adamant about.
ReplyDeleteThat's the thing--Rod is just trying to say that there's nothing wrong with hearing nothing but a "neutral" accent in the media but Louisiana is rich with closely held cultures such as Creole and Cajun. French is routinely pronounced with a "wrong" accent.
ReplyDeleteDisney? Zut alors! Les frères Warner.
ReplyDeleteOh, I think it's the same in Tejas as the rest of the country--it's who you know... and if they own oil wells and petrochemical plants.
ReplyDeletePulling mussels from a shell?
ReplyDeleteMore like tawtaw. Very little accent on the first syllable.
ReplyDeleteOkay, but to me, Don Juan should be "Dahn Wahn" and not, as I've heard Brits say, "Dahn JEW-an." (And not, Spanishly, "Dawn cchWAHN," except in Spanish-speaking countries.)
ReplyDeleteIt occurs even in the Southwest. In New Mexico, Madrid is pronounced the same way. (Well, they're equal opportunity--Thoreau, NM is pronounced "THROW.") Sometimes, it's just stubborn refusal to admit Spanish influence--Texans pronounce the Colorado in Colorado City as "Ko-lo-RAY-dough" (Colorado City also has a number of very profitable speed traps and perhaps the most corrupt court system in west Texas, so you can see how a little linguistic bigotry would fit right in.)
ReplyDeleteI would like to invite Rodney to Kentucky, particularly the cities of Versailles and Athens. (vur-SAYLZ, AY-thins)
ReplyDeleteApropos of nothing, consider the majesty of Table Mesa.
ReplyDelete"Whenever I travel in France..."
ReplyDeleteWhere ever I go in the world, I find if I speak The Queen's English slowly and loudly enough, the Wogs and Fuzzy-wuzzies catch on plenty quick.
Dreher: The identity politics of liberals spoil everything
ReplyDeleteAnd that is why, my friends, that Connecticut-born son of privilege George W. Bush never lowered himself to using a folksy southern accent to pretend that he was just a good old boy in order to get votes and send the message that urbanites are not real Americans. Because he didn't want to spoil anything, like national unity or comity.
We have too much phlegm.
ReplyDelete"Whenever I travel in France, I adjust my English to make it easier to communicate with French people who may understand some English, but who are unaccustomed to hearing it. The point is not to assert my identity as an American and as a Southerner, but to communicate. I even, at times, will pronounce American place names and proper names in a Pepe Le Pew accent, because as ridiculous as it makes me feel to speak that way, it helps the French people who don’t speak my language, or who don’t speak it well, understand what I’m trying to tell them."
ReplyDeleteHey, asshole --- here's an idea: LEARN FRENCH!!!
How was De Blasio's accent? Too Spanishy?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, what I've taken from all this that Rod is missing the days when we heard Spanish as spoken by Mayor Bloomberg. And to be fair, Harblah Eh Spaniel has never sounded better.
So that's where "Starve the beasts" came from. Sick fucks..
ReplyDeleteRod is currently on a tear of suffering a slew of White (Male) People Problems.
ReplyDeleteAt the moment he's obsessive about and paranoid of campus social Leftism and PC. It's probably motivated by thinking/obsessing about his quite sheltered, nerdy, social Right-indoctrinated oldest son with Aspergers who is going to college in the foreseeable future and the smartest one of the brood. First contact with the enemy and all that.
Which is a mildly amusing anecdote, coming as it does from someone whose family paid to send him to Harvard for four years....
ReplyDeleteis there some other conservative we can talk to?
ReplyDeleteDid it mention his baby brother drowned in a bathtub while his mother was watching a Nationwide commercial?
ReplyDeleteI dunno, it doesn't seem like difficulty in producing a large volume of shit is his problem...
ReplyDelete... or Greek or Egyptian or Hindu.
ReplyDeleteOops, pardon. Ze mees-take, she is re-pair-ed.
ReplyDeleteIt's such a wonderful example of Rule #1 Of Conservatism: Everything is always about them. Everything. Always. The only thing on Rod's mind this morning is how the reporters on NPR sometimes pronounce their own names using an accent, and he's convinced this is being done specifically to upset him and people like him. No other explanation is possible, it must be part of the all-encompassing War Against Whitey.
ReplyDeleteI remember back in the 70s my grandparents from Maine scolded me for saying 'git' instead of 'get'. "You sound like a cowgirl" grandma told me. Well, gee, I was raised in the West, in the country- in fact, surrounded by dairy cows. What was so terrible about that?
ReplyDeleteSo now everybody, even Peter Sagal, has to sign off with "I'm Sylvia Pujoli, in Rome".
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the rest of the story.
Too bad daddy didn't point to the streets, street-lights, sewers, public libraries, airports, elderly people NOT starving ... and so much more... and say: "This is where your 6% tax is going!"
ReplyDeleteI'm curious how Dreher feels about the Los Angeles branch of NPR murdering the pronunciation of their sponsor, the private school Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles. Does he feel like, This is America, you damn well BETTER murder it! Or is he torn, because the words are actually French and saying "La Lee-Say Fronn-Say dee Laws Anjeliss" has no dignity whatsoever?
ReplyDeleteI bet he pitched a fit when newscasters started calling 'Peking' "Beijing".
ReplyDelete--whereas we'd prefer "Olfebia Quist-Arcton, Dahkaahh."
ReplyDeleteI used to grit my teeth every time I heard some English anarcho punk band berating skinheads for their "matcho stonce."
ReplyDeleteNo, they've been here a while.
ReplyDeleteI do find it startling when she pronounces her name at the end. I have wondered why she has chosen to do that; personally, were I to move to (say) France, I'd be tempted to inflect my name with a French take. Of course, changing my Irish surname to a French "style" has a whiff of the ridiculous, but I like the way French sounds, so I'm torn. Either way, it doesn't feel very political... The one thing I do know is that Mandelit del Barco is probably not destroying America every time she rolls an R.
ReplyDeleteI am tempted to go read Dreher to find out how Yes She IS.
True story.
ReplyDeleteDreher is German for Turner, so what is he waiting for?
ReplyDeleteDuuuuuuuuude.
ReplyDeleteA (hispanic/Latino-appearing yet) person once asked me where "Kuh-HOONG-uh Blvd." was.
ReplyDeleteIn place names, this is a big deal. Chile does not have very many Mayan or Nahuatl place names. I would imagine Mexican Spanish is also much more inflected with the native amercian languages. I understand Chile took the North American approach (war and cultural apartheid)
ReplyDeleteShit, boy, julep's fer them Raleigh people. And a magnolia's where the kids git to, thowin' them cones as hand grenades.
ReplyDeleteYou wanna drink your Busch Light onna porch.
Because I grew up with black kids, I usually don’t have any trouble understanding black English, even heavily accented black English.
ReplyDeleteSee? He didn't even need the "intelligent well-socialized blacks" described by John Derbyshire.
When Andy Rooney died, he thought he saw an opening.
ReplyDeleteMy first reaction wasn't thinking ofMiranda Veracruz DeLaHoya Cardinal but this old SNL skit.
ReplyDeleteFormer (and quite late) President Franklin "Purse"
ReplyDeleteNo, they're too busy making fun of the Swiss Germans and their funny accents.
ReplyDeleteAnd yetis. Don't forget the yetis.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually a complaint by several morons in the comments over there.
ReplyDeleteAlso too, just because I love this scene:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/_WYVUNY6z6E
"The identity politics of liberals spoil everything." IKR--Havana used to be such a great place before they put it in Cuba.
ReplyDeleteAlso a Nuh-vay-duh, Mizzurah (near Vair-Sales).
ReplyDeleteI can't believe R.D.'s 14 yrs. younger than I yet has the intellect & attitude best represented by 1970s National Lampoon jokes about old people in retirement homes.
ReplyDeleteI think southern South American Spanish is still affected, but more by Quechua. Chile is just under half mestizo + Amerindian, so as a group they still have a pretty big influence.
ReplyDeleteI looked it up. It's from Dreier, German for Turner or maybe Councilman.
ReplyDeleteack, I was too late!
ReplyDeleteShows my ignorance. Did not realize the Chilean population was so heavily meztizo.
ReplyDeleteheavily accented black English
ReplyDeleteThis is a pose frequently affected by white southerners who are shocked to hear their own dialect from people in a different skin.
When I moved to Paris I came from Seattle. Many of the French didn't recognize it unless pronounced See-tle, not See-at-ul.
ReplyDeleteSaid Noel to Jean (who apparently insisted on calling him NOE-WELL): "My dear, the 'e' in Noel is as silent as the 't' in 'harlot'."
ReplyDeleteDep't. of Redundancy Dep't. adds: The La Brea Tar Pits.
ReplyDeleteIt's never too late to tell Dreher to put up or shut up!
ReplyDeleteDreier is also German for a three way ... wonder if Rod knows that.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, as a new arrival, I took one look at it on the map - Thomas Guide represent! - and blithely pronounced Los Feliz in the Castillian manner and from the reaction you'd've thought a Goldbergian faaaaahrt had emitted from my mouth parts. But pronouncing it like Loss Felix - 'da fuck?
ReplyDelete[Rod Dreher]: You are ze corned beef to me, and I am ze cabbage to you.
ReplyDelete[[French woman] attacks Pepe and leaves]
[Rod Dreher]: I like it! Come back! Ze corned beef does not run away from ze cabbage!
There's more gold to be mined here: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0030549/quotes
Seáttle? Seättle? English really needs to get on the diacritical train.
ReplyDeleteAnd we need to fix the spelling, goddamnit. UMLAUTS MATTER!
ReplyDeleteThe good thing in doing so is that it would send Dreher into a state of apoplexy.
ReplyDeleteThe bad thing is that it would make most English speakers even more inept in their mother tongue.
When Andy Rooney died, he probably bitched about that, too. And said it was Rooney's fault for not living past 92.
ReplyDeletePulling muscles from Michelle?
ReplyDeleteI bet an asshole like Dreher pronounces "coupon" like kewpon.
ReplyDeleteI was also thinking "what could be more identity politicky than getting upset about something innocuous and non-political and then blaming liberals" but damn it, now I know better.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet, "Rod Dreher" still means "condescending prick" no matter how it's pronounced.
ReplyDeleteAnd, after centuries of remonstrations on the futility of slower and louder English, it still persists (I'm thinking, particularly, of the video of the hapless U.S. soldier screaming at protesting Iraqis, "WE'RE HERE FOR YOUR FREEDOM, SO GET THE FUCK BACK!").
ReplyDeleteIn Dreher's case, though, I imagine his English sounded a lot more like Inspector Clouseau's.
I think that may have been Ivisibilia, the latest spin-off from This American Life. They did a piece on "vocal fry", which drives a lot of listeners crazy...after they've been told how to identify it. (It is apparently a sort of scratchy artifact common in young women's voices.) Ira Glass observed that his voice does exactly the same thing, and nobody writes in to demand that he be taken off the air.
ReplyDeleteI think the sister he's quoting/misrepresenting is the same, deceased one he wrote his book about: "The Little Way of Ruthie Leaming: A Southern Girl, A Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life."
ReplyDeleteHere in North Georgia we have a small town, name of Buchanan.
ReplyDeleteIt's pronounced "Buck-Annan."
For starters. But it's much worse than that. (You can hear Melissa Block smile-while-she's-talking and it's not so bad.) Chace is more like "my otolaryngiologist told me to vigorously exaggerate the movement of my mouth and tongue and throat when I speak, so I sound like a field hockey coach exhorting my team."
ReplyDeleteI've heard that.
ReplyDeleteNo, seriously.
In Missouri, the town of Nevada is pronounced NevVAYduh. And Pomme De Terre Lake is known as Pom Dee Tar. I love my Ozarks.
ReplyDeleteWhereas the Liberal Intelligentsia knows it's pronounced like that fancy-pants grey mustard...
ReplyDeleteZoe Chase's I'm-smiling-while-I'm-talking voice.
ReplyDelete"WE'RE HERE FOR YOUR FREEDOM, SO GET THE FUCK BACK!"
ReplyDeleteParlez-vous M-16, motherfuckers?
I used to watch Jeopardy a lot, and Alex Trebek's pronunciation of foreign names and places always impressed me. It didn't matter if the word was from Italy, China, or anywhere else. He always seemed to be able to just roll it off his tongue in an effortless way.
ReplyDeleteIt never occurred to me to be peeved about it.
Your friend and I have that in common - Chace's voice drives me batshit. It's radio - someone with a voice that grating shouldn't be allowed to continue without some remediation.
ReplyDeleteSo he goes to great effort to assume a Standard Received identity and pronunciation but it's always other people who are hung up about "the whole question of accent and identity".
ReplyDeleteOK.
Feel free to update:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Log_of_the_Ark
The commenters on his blog are not criticizing any white correspondents for foreign accentuations in the way they speak their names. Andre Codrescu and Sylvia Poggioli come to mind. It's a strange coincidence.
ReplyDelete