{"id":860,"date":"2009-01-19T09:43:27","date_gmt":"2009-01-19T08:43:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=860"},"modified":"2009-01-19T09:43:27","modified_gmt":"2009-01-19T08:43:27","slug":"pronouncing-foreign-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=860","title":{"rendered":"Pronouncing foreign words"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his essay, <a href=\"http:\/\/orwell.ru\/library\/essays\/lion\/english\/e_eye\"><em>England your England<\/em><\/a>, George Orwell wrote of the English working class:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Even when they are obliged to live abroad for years they refuse either to accustom themselves to foreign food or to learn foreign languages. Nearly every Englishman of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I\u2019ve encountered attitudes like this among many English tourists who rate foreign places partly by the ability of the locals to speak English, and even if they know a few words of the local languages, they usually pronounce them with an English accent.<\/p>\n<p>An article I found on this subject &#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.4hoteliers.com\/4hots_nshw.php?mwi=4676\"><em>Brits don\u2019t border with local lingo<\/em><\/a> &#8211; says that more than half of the British tourists surveyed cannot recognise even basic phrases in the language of their destination, that more than 80% of monolingual British tourists refuse to take a phrase book or dictionary abroad with them, and that a third rely on the locals speaking English. If the locals don\u2019t speak English, then the Brits speak more loudly and slowly in English, use mime, and\/or speak English with a foreign accent. Even those who know phrases in foreign languages often get them mixed up and pronounce them incorrectly.<\/p>\n<p>Amusing examples of mispronunciation and misuse of foreign phrases can be found in the British television comedy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/comedy\/onlyfools\/\"><em>Only Fools and Horses<\/em><\/a>, in which the character of Del Boy uses \u201cau revoir\u201d to mean \u201chello\u201d, \u201cbonjour\u201d for \u201cgoodbye\u201d, and \u201cbon appetit\u201d for \u201cI hope you choke on the potatoes\u201d &#8211; there are more examples <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/comedy\/onlyfools\/lingo\/euro.shtml\"><em>here<\/em><\/a>. He pronounces all with a strong Cockney accent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his essay, England your England, George Orwell wrote of the English working class: Even when they are obliged to live abroad for years they refuse either to accustom themselves to foreign food or to learn foreign languages. Nearly every Englishman of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign word correctly. I\u2019ve encountered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,111,10,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-french","category-language","category-pronunciation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}