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Usenet Posted 23 years ago
Usage

BBC English

Redundancy of the week: a reporter spoke of the "official state visit" made by GWB.
Major irritation of the month: a memo must've gone round telling BBC reporters to say "al-kai-eeduh" instead of "al-kai-duh". This despite the fact that the Arabic speakers one hears say something that sounds much more like the latter.
Adrian
  

Top answer

[/nq] OED has 'state visit, a visit by a head of state to a foreign country for ceremonial rather than official purposes' so it seems a 'state visit' isn't always official. [nq:1]Major irritation of the month: a memo must've gone round telling BBC reporters to say "al-kai-eeduh" instead of "al-kai-duh". This despite the fact that the Arabic speakers one hears say something that sounds much more like the latter.

— Usenet

  • [/nq] OED has 'state visit, a visit by a head of state to a foreign country for ceremonial rather than official purposes' so it seems a 'state visit' isn't always official.
  • [nq:1]Major irritation of the month: a memo must've gone round telling BBC reporters to say "al-kai-eeduh" instead of "al-kai-duh".
  • This despite the fact that the Arabic speakers one hears say something that sounds much more like the latter.
  • Adrian[/nq] There's a wide variety of accents in the Arab speaking world so there is no single pronunciation that is 'correct' there; why should there be one here?
  • Do you only hear Arabic speakers with a common accent?
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43 Answers
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[nq:1]Redundancy of the week: a reporter spoke of the "official state visit" made by GWB.[/nq]
OED has 'state visit, a visit by a head of state to a foreign country for ceremonial rather than official purposes' so it seems a 'state visit' isn't always official.
[nq:1]Major irritation of the month: a memo must've gone round telling BBC reporters to say "al-kai-eeduh" instead of "al-kai-duh"
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"John Dean" (Email Removed) wrote on 24 Nov 2003:

And then there are unofficial state visits just like those made by Taiwan's President Chen to the USA.
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[nq:1]No-one at the BBC encourages Par-ee for Paris or Noo Yawk for New York. The capital of Iraq is Bag-dad, not Ba dad.[/nq]
More of a hawking noise than a spitting noise, shirley?

Laura
(emulate St. George for email)
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True, but the anglicised pronunciations have never been "Port Sah-EED" or "King Fah-EE-z'l", have they? So why this sub-Angela-Ripponesque(1) "al-kah-EE-dah" all of a sudden (especially since it's transcribed "Qaeda" as often as "Qaida", anyway)?
(1. Former BBC newsreader famous for her "authentic" pronunciations of "Nkomo", "Giscard d'Estaing", etc. And her legs.)
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[nq:1]True, but the anglicised pronunciations have never been "Port Sah-EED"[/nq]
Oh? That's exactly what the sound file at http://www.m-w.com has. I can't give a direct link, but go to Port Said and click on the red speaker symbol.
[nq:1]or "King Fah-EE-z'l",[/nq]
They agree with you there, or I think they do FY-s@l.
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[nq:2]True, but the anglicised pronunciations have never been "Port Sah-EED"[/nq]
[nq:1]Oh? That's exactly what the sound file at http://www.m-w.com has. I can't give a direct link, but go to Port Said and click on the red speaker symbol.[/nq]
Yes, that's certainly what it sounds like. I only remember hearing "Port Sighed" fr
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[nq:1]In any event, why should the BBC, or anyone else, cherrypick words of foreign origin to attempt to pronounce them ... terms are given an anglicised pronunciation. No-one at the BBC encourages Par-ee for Paris or Noo Yawk for New York.[/nq]
True, but isn't it lucky we don't extend that to Nice, Lyons, Perpignan ... ?
Bob Martin
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[nq:2]In any event, why should the BBC, or anyone else, ... encourages Par-ee for Paris or Noo Yawk for New York.[/nq]
[nq:1]True, but isn't it lucky we don't extend that to Nice, Lyons, Perpignan ... ?[/nq]
Perpignan! Somebody said Perpignan! You woke me up!

Paris, New York, Rome, Moscow - all these have established English language names which are not the same as the local langu
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[nq:2]True, but isn't it lucky we don't extend that to Nice, Lyons, Perpignan ... ?[/nq]
[nq:1]Perpignan! Somebody said Perpignan! You woke me up! Paris, New York, Rome, Moscow - all these have established English language ... names, so we just use the local variant. Although English speakers do tend to spell the name of "Lyon" wrongly.[/nq]
I was talking about both of them !
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[nq:2]No-one at the BBC encourages Par-ee for Paris or Noo Yawk for New York. The capital of Iraq is Bag-dad, not Ba dad.[/nq]
[nq:1]More of a hawking noise than a spitting noise, shirley?[/nq]
No Hawkers. No Billposters. Laverne.

John Dean
Oxford
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