'Gutter' Politics: Playing the name game - English pronunciation of foreign words

National Review, Nov 11, 2002 by Jay Nordlinger

I'm not going to say "gutter." That's what they want us to say now, instead of Qatar (and you know who I mean by "they"). From time immemorial-defined as the duration of my life-we've said "Qa-TAHR." Every red- blooded American says "Qa-TAHR." But the other day, I even heard Condi Rice-the otherwise unimpeachable Condi Rice-say "gutter." I nearly busted a gut.

I'm not going to say "cobble" either. That's the new Kabul, as you know-the new "Ka-BUHL." In the highest administration councils, there was a contretemps-a reported contretemps, I should say-on this very subject. Donald Rumsfeld complained, "I think the top diplomat of this country ought to know how to pronounce the name of the Afghan capital." He was talking about Colin Powell. Rumsfeld, apparently, is a "cobble" man, and Powell is a "Ka-BUHL" man. Powell responded-again, reportedly- "Well, where I come from, it's Ka-BUHL."

I'm a shameless Rummy booster, but I'm strongly with Powell on this one.

If you start to go native on the pronunciation of foreign capitals and other places, there's no end to it. None. I called up the Qatari embassy in Washington. The receptionist answered, "Good morning, Embassy of Qa-TAHR." I smiled. I then asked-this was a native-how Qataris ("gutterees"?) pronounced it. She said "gutter," or something close. But one gets the feeling that she wouldn't say "gutter" when speaking in English. Neither would an American say "United States" instead of "Etats-Unis" when speaking French.

And then there's the matter of the sheer ugliness-aural ugliness-of both "gutter" and "cobble." (Is that ethnocentric-sound-o-centric?) When I discussed this issue on the web, a reader wrote in, "Afghanistan's capital city certainly appears to be a hellhole, but at least the name Kabul-Ka-BUHL-lent it a certain Eastern allure. 'Cobble,' on the other hand, fails entirely to inspire the right vision. Where's the romance in 'cobble'? And 'gutter'! Ugh!"

Yes, ugh. For a while-when the bombs started falling over there-some news dorks were saying "Afghanis" instead of the proper "Afghans," in an effort, it seems, to sound in-the-know. Fortunately, they have stopped now, for the most part.

But the general problem persists. Last winter, I was thinking of starting a "Torino Watch." Why? Katie Couric was broadcasting from the Salt Lake City Olympics, and she was looking forward to the next Winter Olympics, to be held in . . . "Torino," she said. Why she said "Torino," instead of good ol' Turin, is shrouded in mystery. Would-be sophisticates are always saying "Torino" instead of Turin and "Milano" instead of Milan. But, oddly, they don't say Roma-except "when in Rome," presumably-and they don't say "Venezia" (Venice), "Firenze" (Florence), or "Napoli" (Naples).

Even I, though, draw the line at "Leghorn": I say Livorno. But this puts me at odds with Winston Churchill, who wrote to his foreign secretary in 1941, "If you approve I should like Livorno to be called in the English-Leghorn." Though "if at any time you are conversing agreeably with Mussolini in Italian, Livorno would be correct." This is the same Churchill who would write, four years later, "I do not consider that names that have been familiar for generations in England should be altered to study the whims of foreigners living in those parts." Without a firm stand, "the B.B.C. will be pronouncing Paris 'Paree.' Foreign names were made for Englishmen, not Englishmen for foreign names."

Harrumph. But there is a point-or several-and one of them is consistency. Katie Couric may swing with "Torino," but she'd never say "Koln" instead of Cologne, and she probably wouldn't refer back to the (horrendous) "Munchen" Olympics. Nor would she pretend that the 2004 Summer Games will be held in "Athena."

In some cases, you just can't take the politics out of the pronunciation. You recall the great controversy over "Nicaragua," in the 1980s: When Peter Jennings rolled that "r," you just knew he hated the Contras. Same with the broadcasters of NPR (nicknamed by right- wingers and other realists "Radio Managua"). Charles Krauthammer wrote a semi-famous column on this topic, admonishing, "Give foreign words their most mundane English rendering": no umlauts or other curlicues.

And yet the sandal-friendly Left just can't give up their Spanish (or faux-Spanish) pronunciations, thinking it makes them extra-cool and sympathetic. One Hispanic gentleman wrote me, "I've even heard 'Cooba' when a liberal really wants to feel my pain." Another man wrote of a college friend whose parents are Spanish, though she herself grew up in Virginia. "Freshman year, she always said 'Barcelona,' normally. Over the summer, she must have discovered her 'roots,' because by sophomore year she was dressing in all black and saying 'Bar-thay-lona.'" Sure.

And I especially liked this: "I am a student in southern California, and am constantly angered by the insistence of so many that one use a Spanish accent when pronouncing Spanish names. I have on occasion asked professors who do this to pronounce my last name with a southern drawl (as I'm from the South). And I once asked a fellow student to pronounce my last name without an American accent, 'as it was intended to be pronounced back in England.'" This sort of cheek is good for the soul.