BBC's Bill Turnbull can't pronounce Milosevic!

Question

Calls him Mi-LOSH rather than Mi-LOSS - peasant - all American newsreaders seem to pronounce it correctly! :-DNick

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Calls him Mi-LOSH rather than Mi-LOSS - peasant - all American newsreaders seem to pronounce it correctly! :-D[/nq]
That's the sort of post that can bring a little excitement into the lives of AUEers!
As I'm not familiar with the native pronunciation of Milosevic I went to the Voice of America Pronunciation Guide. Bill Turnbull is right. http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/SearchAction.cfm

Name
MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN
Origin
Yugoslavia
Pronunciation
slow-BOH-dahn mee-LOW-sheh-vih-ch
Audio File
http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/sounds/846.ra

Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.e.u)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]AUEers[/nq]
Oops. AEUers.

Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.e.u)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Calls him Mi-LOSH rather than Mi-LOSS - peasant - all American newsreaders seem to pronounce it correctly! :-D[/nq]
[nq:1]That's the sort of post that can bring a little excitement into the lives of AUEers! As I'm not familiar ... to the Voice of America Pronunciation Guide. Bill Turnbull is right. http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/SearchAction.cfm Name MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN Origin Yugoslavia Pronunciation slow-BOH-dahn mee-LOW-sheh-vih-ch[/nq]
~
Nah - Americans say "LOW-seh-vih-ch" which is OK - close enough! :-D

Nick

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Calls him Mi-LOSH rather than Mi-LOSS - peasant - all American newsreaders seem to pronounce it correctly! :-D[/nq]
[nq:1]That's the sort of post that can bring a little excitement into the lives of AUEers! As I'm not familiar ... to the Voice of America Pronunciation Guide. Bill Turnbull is right. http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/SearchAction.cfm Name MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN Origin Yugoslavia Pronunciation slow-BOH-dahn mee-LOW-sheh-vih-ch[/nq]
I think in the UK we mostly hear SLOB-o-dan Mill-OSS-o-vitch: wrong in most respects, then. But is "native pronunciation" necessary or even desirable? I was glad to hear the traditional BrE "Don Quick-sot" recently (Melvyn Bragg?) and (also on BBC Radio 4) "Don Jew 'n". There were complaints, of course, about Quixote . . . followed by a counter-attack deploring "ignorant pedantry".
There was also a fuss a few weeks ago about "medd-EE-chee" for "Medici" instead of "MAY-dee-chee" (the latter with luscious Italian vowels). The producer of that arts programme quite rightly stood his ground and defended anglicised pronunciation, though he didn't explain why the speaker hadn't at least got the stress in the right place.
Alan Jones

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]That's the sort of post that can bring a little ... right. http://ibb7.ibb.gov/pronunciations/SearchAction.cfm Name MILOSEVIC, SLOBODAN Origin Yugoslavia Pronunciation slow-BOH-dahn mee-LOW-sheh-vih-ch[/nq]
[nq:1]I think in the UK we mostly hear SLOB-o-dan Mill-OSS-o-vitch: wrong in most respects, then. But is "native pronunciation" necessary or even desirable?[/nq]
Native pronunciation is not necessary. It is certainly not desirable if it is unmanageable by non-native speakers. However, I would not classify a pronunciation which retains an approximation to a native consonant sound as "wrong".
[nq:1]I was glad to hear the traditional BrE "Don Quick-sot" recently (Melvyn Bragg?) and (also on BBC Radio 4) "Don Jew 'n". There were complaints, of course, about Quixote . . . followed by a counter-attack deploring "ignorant pedantry".[/nq]
The OP's objection to Bill Turnbull's pronunciation of Milosevic would be similar to someone objecting to the use, in English, of the Spanish pronunciation of Quixote. It might be undesirable, because confusing to some, but not what I would call "wrong".
A personal example of confusing native pronunciation:

My late mother whose native language was educated Australian English was also a French speaker with a good accent. She studied at the Sorbonne(1) in Paris (where the students are more revolting than usual at the moment). She always evoked puzzled looks, and a visible delay in comprehension, in cafes in Britain when she ordered a piece of gateau. She pronounced gateau the French way. To BrE ears the "gat" sounded like "gut".
[nq:1]There was also a fuss a few weeks ago about "medd-EE-chee" for "Medici" instead of "MAY-dee-chee" (the latter with luscious ... defended anglicised pronunciation, though he didn't explain why the speaker hadn't at least got the stress in the right place.[/nq]
(1) I happily used "the" Sorbonne rather than "la" Sorbonne, as do the English pages on the Sorbonne website.

Peter Duncanson
UK (posting from a.e.u)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There was also a fuss a few weeks ago about "medd-EE-chee" for "Medici" instead of "MAY-dee-chee" (the latter with luscious ... defended anglicised pronunciation, though he didn't explain why the speaker hadn't at least got the stress in the right place.[/nq]
I heard that discussion. I felt that it was another example of neither party in an argument quite understanding the other's point of view.

The original programme (I gather; I didn't hear it) had extracts from many experts in the subject, who all used "MAY-dee-chee". These extracts were linked by an historian (presumably not an expert) who used "medd-EE-chee". It seemed that many of the listeners to the programme were put off by the obvious contrast between the presenter and the experts.
The producer defended the presenter's pronunciation by saying that they'd discussed this during the making of the program, and that "medd- EE-chee" had seemed right to him.

Graeme Thomas

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There was also a fuss a few weeks ago about "medd-EE-chee" for "Medici" instead of "MAY-dee-chee" (the latter with luscious ... defended anglicised pronunciation, though he didn't explain why the speaker hadn't at least got the stress in the right place.[/nq]
Jones EPD (2003) is interesting on this.
For BrE, they give all of (in this order)
'medItSi:
'medItSi
med'i:tSi
m@'di:tSi
mIdi:tSi
But for AmE, only
'med@tSi:
Half a century ago, K&K gave
for AmE
'mEd@,tSi
and for Italian
'mE:di,tSi
Interestingly, there are Italian words beginning with "medi..." for which 'mEdi... is correct and others (more common) for which medi'... is correct (and others where the "i" in "medi" is a glide medj'...).

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]There was also a fuss a few weeks ago about "medd-EE-chee" for "Medici" instead of "MAY-dee-chee" (the latter with luscious ... defended anglicised pronunciation, though he didn't explain why the speaker hadn't at least got the stress in the right place.[/nq]
But, as Graeme points out, it was a real sore-thumb job in this programme: nobody else was doing it. She also said "Piazza della Signora": these things just wreck a presenter's credibility. Look at the murder of a string Indian placenames perpetrated by the otherwise excellent Juliet Stephenson in This Sceptred Isle : there really is no excuse for a professional to give "Punjab" the "put" vowel. And mention of an explorer called "Thesinger" was pure Bluebottle, my capitaine.

Mike.

BBC's Bill Turnbull can't pronounce Milosevic!

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions