Re: new Klingon spelling
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, January 4, 2004, 13:18 |
|---|
On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 07:00:33PM -0500, John Cowan wrote:
> I was debating a hawk a few months back on this very subject: he claimed
> that the pron. [ajr&k] was a deliberate insult/dehumanization, like
> "Jap" in WWII. This is some evidence against that.
Do you really *need* any evidence against that? It's just how many
pronounce the name in English. Is it also an insult/dehumanization that
we say ['Izrejl=] (and other variants) instead of [jeSrAel] for the name of a
certain other country in that region?
To me, it sounds pretentious/snobbish - and in many cases is
incomprehensible - when, in the middle of normal unaccented idiomatic
English, someone (<koff>Trebek</koff>) breaks into another language's
phonology just to pronounce the name of a country where that language
is spoken. I have the same reaction to [hA'wAj?i], which amounts to
bragging that the speaker has actually visited that island paradise,
unlike the boorish Ugly Mainlander listener who pronounces it without
the glottal stop, tsk.
-Mark
Replies