Re: BBC does it again

On Jun 5, 2:42 pm, Andrew Woode <andrew_wo...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 5 Jun, 17:32, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Barack Obama" and "Guantanamo Bay" (NB not Baio di Guantanamo or
whatever)

Bahía de Guantánamo, (not hard to check if you didn't know the Spanish
word).

It was not germane to my point. But I knew one of my flock of
nitpickers would provide it.

are American names with standard pronounciations. Why does
the BBC feel it doesn't need to pronounce them as they are pronounced
by the people who use them?

You don't indicate the correct pronunciation. Would you agree with
Merriam-Webster online, whose
\gwän-'tä-nä-?mo\ appears to mean /gwAn'tAnAmou/ (ä as in 'mop',
o as in 'go' according to their pronunciation guide)?

Except that the vowel of the third syllable is reduced.

Assuming that's right, would you recommend /A/ ('father') or /A./
('mop') as the RP equivalent of the /A/? The first option feels very
strange as an option in the first two syllables, while the second is
gratuitously further away from the American (and, as it happens,
Spanish pronunciation).

"Father" and "mop," as you doubtless know, have the same vowel in AmE.
RP "father" is obviously the closest equivalent.

/gw&n't&n@m@U/ is an entirely natural transfer of the Spanish
pronunciation into British English, as well as a fairly plausible
spelling pronunciation (if one knows where the stress falls), and
feels entirely comfortable to a British English ear.

Why would you not render /a/ as /a/?

What if they had to refer to Birmingham, Alabama? or the Thames River
in Connecticut? (New London is on it.)

The pronunciation of 'Birming-ham' is fairly well known in the UK,
though it can feel a little artificial to use it when the
pronunciation of the British city is so ingrained. (Americans
presumably have the reverse problem).

Incidentally, we do normally say /&l@'b&m@/,

That is correct (though you've left out [Brit missed out] the stress
of the first syllable).

which I can never
convince myself is congruent with British spelling rules

Why should it be?

(surely final
<a - single consonant - a>, where the penultimate is stressed, should
be /eI... @/ or /A ..... @/.

You do realize it isn't Latin, don't you?

(I have similar problems with Cincinnati
- while I have heard it enough to know the pronunciation, and have
enough Latin to remember the spelling, I find it hard to reconcile the
two; final /'neItai/, /'nAti/, or some permutation would seem far more
logical.)

Mr. Chips was wrong to defend the English perversion of Latin spelling
in the 1930s, and you're wrong to defend it now.
.

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