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This is the Life: Refusal to pronounce names correctly shows disrespect

There was controversy after criticism of CBC Olympic commentators for trying to correctly pronounce the names of French Canadian athletes...
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Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.

There was a storm of controversy last week after an anti-CBC talking head spouted off on a supposed news program, criticizing CBC Olympic commentators and newscasters for trying to correctly pronounce the names of French Canadian athletes. I use the word “correctly” because I take particular offense at the laziness many English Canadians show when speaking their own language.

Recently, I did a telephone interview with a chef in Kelowna. After a half-hour conversation I thanked him for his time, and complimented him on his speech.

“It’s a pleasure to speak to someone who speaks in full sentences and even paragraphs,” I said.

“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” he responded.

It is, but it is certainly not the norm. We tend to rush through our thoughts, letting our mouths get ahead of our brains. The result is a peppering of “likes” and “you knows” substituting for thoughtful pauses.

The English language has a long history of refusing to acknowledge pronunciation and spelling from other languages. How else to explain our pronunciation of Paris, which in French is Par-ee, or Rome, which in Italian is Roma, or Munich, which in German is München? I usually put it down to an arrogant vestige of the British Empire, that vast global influence where the sun never set. Firenze became Florence, España became Spain, Sverige became Sweden, and so on. In 1995, Bombay was renamed Mumbai at the insistence of an Indian nationalist party, which argued that Bombay was an unwanted relic of British colonialism (the name was actually a Portuguese invention 500 years ago). Why use local pronunciation when you can assert your own smug sense of superiority simply by assigning different names?

That arrogance extends to our own history, where North American indigenous tribes were lumped together as Indians, such a confusing practice that we still often refer to residents of India as “East Indians”, making it sound like they are foreigners in their own country. It wasn’t much different for non-English people who arrived on North American shores and assigned more common (or more easily pronounced) names on their immigration paperwork. Welcome to Canada, Frank.

I take particular offense to the anglicizing of names because I grew up with a father who deliberately, almost religiously, refused to pronounce French names correctly. For him, the despised Montreal Canadiens included Gene Beliveau, Jacks Laperriere and Patrick Roy (appropriately rhyming with “boy”). For some reason, Don Cherry remains on the airwaves despite the same disrespectful approach.

People use all kinds of strategies to gain a sense of superiority and control over others, but few are as blatant as refusing to make the effort to pronounce words and, especially, names correctly. And maybe, just maybe, our general refusal to speak clearly, enunciating our words, is simply another strategy, one intended to cover up our intentional disrespect of other languages. A post on Facebook the other day brought that notion to mind: “I think the whoever put the R in February is the same guy who put the N in Wednesday.”

Break the words down into their syllables — Feb-ru-ar-y and Wed-nes-day — and they are quite easy to pronounce. But try to use them with speed and it’s a whole different matter. Feb-u-ar-y and Wens-day are the result.

Not that mispronunciations are necessarily a bad thing. When our telephone rings and the caller asks for Lorn-ee or An-JELL-a, I know immediately that it’s a telemarketer or scam artist and respond accordingly. Occasionally, I tell the caller that the person he or she is requesting died recently, then start sobbing at the thought of the loss. It’s enough to end the call quickly.

But I digress. I’ll admit that not all names and words, even those in our native language, are easily pronounceable. To make no effort whatsoever is the height of rudeness or disrespect, though.

Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.