You say Pinochet, I say Pinoshay
If you’re at all interested in Spanish dialect phonology — or just in the matter of the pronunciation of the now-dead Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet’s last name — check out my latest post on Language Log.
December 11, 2006
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Speaking of names of world leaders, I’d like to register my annoyance with the NPR pronunciation of “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” with the fricative [ʒ] as in “rouge.” According to a linguist who is a native speaker of Farsi, the name has an affricate ([ʤ] as in “Joe”) in the Farsi pronunciation. The whole name is pronounced like this: [æhmædineʤɑ:t].
Once again NPR gets it wrong in a misguided attempt to sound authentic.
Comment by Maria — December 14, 2006 @ 8:31 am
There is a brief linguablog literature on the use of fricatives by English speakers in loan words that have affricates: twice on Language Log, and a brief remark on Language Hat. NPR is not alone in this usage; it may be quite pervasive among English speakers.
Comment by Bob Kennedy — December 14, 2006 @ 12:15 pm
Maria — Corey Flintoff seems to say it pretty much as you transcribe, though perhaps with different vowels and a final voiced stop: [ahmədi:nəʤɑ:d]. I definitely don’t hear a fricative.
NPR’s pronunciation of “Muqtada al-Sadr”, on the other hand, seems to me to be all over the map …
Comment by Eric Bakovic — December 14, 2006 @ 12:34 pm