Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Let’s start with the big issue this month, which comes in the form of a question from Doug Huffer, who asks: How much do you care about the pronunciation of names and places – ie original vs. typical American vs. your own? Eg., Van Gogh is pronounced differently in Dutch vs. American English, or Arkansas is pronounced differently in Kansas vs. Arkansas.

This is one of the biggest issues I deal with daily when recording the show. This month, it showed up in the episode on New Madrid, which I pronounced as New Madrid.

English is a very weird language. We pronounce words differently in different places, and some place names have unique local pronunciations that make no sense based on the spelling alone.

There is a city in Wisconsin called New Berlin, but it is pronounced New Ber-lin. The change in pronunciation was deliberately done during the First World War.

Some words in English just make no sense. There really is no reason why Arkansas isn’t pronounced Ar-kansas, or why Kansas isn’t pronounced kan-saw. That’s just how it is.

English often has different pronunciations for foreign words, even if the foreign word is perfectly pronounceable. Rome instead of Roma, Paris instead of Par-ee, or Moscow instead of Moscova.

In Van Gogh’s case, the proper Dutch pronunciation uses a sound that isn’t in English, so it is pronounced differently.

When you get to Chinese and other tonal languages, again, English doesn’t even have tones, so words tend to be Anglicized or Latinized.

In many cases, there really is no good solution to the problem. If you use local pronunciations for all proper nouns, people won’t know what you are talking about, or you’ll just come across as pretentious.

Often, there’s no way to know what a local pronunciation might be unless you’ve been to that area, especially if the place is more obscure.

While I try to use correct local pronunciation whenever I can, I often have to make judgment calls. In the episode on Van Gogh, I used the traditional English pronunciation, not the Dutch Van Gogh.

I say, Julius Caesar instead of Iulius Kaiser, which would be the proper Latin pronunciation.

While I recognize that New Madrid is the local pronunciation, I also don’t think New Madrid is the end of the world.