A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Tuesday, July 25, 2017
Pronunciation: Charlie Choplin
Recently, I have read several articles—on Colombo Telegraph—related to mispronunciation.
I have something to say about this subject. Here is a small dose of my
opinion, even though I know that you are not eager to have me opine
about this stentorian topic; even though I am not qualified to make
pronouncements about pronunciation, I believe that self-deprecation is
an admirable quality, and I am not embarrassed to share my experience; I
invite you to share your own experience with us.
Every
day, I struggle with my accent and pronunciation: a double whammy. My
son Rocco is the only person who can clearly understand me; with others,
now and then, I have to repeat or paraphrase, especially over the
phone. Probably that is why I prefer writing instead of talking to
people, because if you chose to read what I have written, I do not have
to pronounce, repeat, or paraphrase. There is another side to this
double whammy; once I was a consultant for an American company that did
business with a Chinese company: My job was to paraphrase and translate
Chinese English into American English without making it obvious to our
Chinese partners; this is the only time I ever felt proud of my oral
language skills; I felt like I was the mediator, facilitating a
conversation between a blind and a deaf person.
When
it comes to pronunciation, there are people who do not give the subject
a second thought. Their attitude is: Say it the way you want it; no one
cares about your pronunciation; it is inarticulateness, not
pronunciation that matters. Would you say to your own children, “There
are no mistakes; don’t worry about diction, syntax, grammar, spelling,
and pronunciation because they are useless and boring.” Here is my
question to you: Do you easily swallow this nonsense, an invitation to
disaster?
You
can become a millionaire or President of the United States, even with
your beastly mispronunciation, but still you may be ridiculed.
I
do not know about you, but when I do not know how to pronounce a word, I
usually consult a dictionary; however, here is the problem: Most
of the time, I think—but I am wrong most of the time—my pronunciation
is not that beastly. Then there is another inherent problem: consult
various leading American dictionaries to find out how to pronounce W,
the only letter in the English alphabet that commands more than one
syllable; you will find four variants, but it deserves only one
pronunciation— clear and dignified: DUHB-ul-YOO (like double you). Now,
you know how to pronounce “George W. Bush.”
When
I was a kid—growing up in Sri Lanka—most people in my neighborhood
spoke English. So, I was a listener, not a talker. In my neighborhood,
if you were to mispronounce a word, that mispronunciation would become
your first name, and you would be known by that name for the rest of
your life in that circle. One of my friends inherited the sobriquet Charlie Choplin because
he mispronounced Charlie Chaplin. Afterwards, facetiously, we used the
pronunciation Charlie Choplin so often that when someone said “Charlie
Chaplin,” we would laugh at them. Now, here is the rest of the story: It
has been almost forty years since I initially left Sri Lanka. Those who
ridiculed others were unaware of their own beastly mispronunciations; I
learned some of these beastly mispronunciations from the Sri Lankan
elite, and I am still struggling to unlearn them; here are some simple
examples:
Even
though Sri Lankans do not say “lice” instead of “rice,” yegg instead of
egg, or pee instead of be, they say flim instead of film. Before we
talk about pronunciation, let me ask you a simple question: how do you
pronounce the word “pronunciation?” Is it pro-noun-ciation or pro-nun-ciation? Listen to the people around you: some say pro-noun-ciation instead of pro-nun-ciation. There is no pronoun in pronunciation.
Most
Sri Lankans pronounce zoo in zoology, zoologist, and zoological. There
is no zoo in zoology (Zoh-AHL-uh-jee), zoologist (Zoh-AHL-uh-jist), and
zoological (ZOH-uh-LAHJ-i-kul).
I
can list so many other words where I am still trying to unlearn my Sri
Lankan pronunciations, but I do not think that is apposite.
If you do not care about your diction and pronunciation, read the following two stories about mumpsimus and malapropism.
According
to an apocryphal story, a poorly educated Catholic priest during a
Latin mass wanted to say, “Quod ore sumpsimus, Domine (What we have
received orally, Lord),” instead of sumpsimus (we have received), he
said the non-word mumpsimus. He kept repeating his erroneous usage even
after being made aware of. Now,
both sumpsimus and mumpsimus are real English words: mumpsimus,
adherence to or persistence in an erroneous use of language, out of
habit or obstinacy (opposed to sumpsimus, adherence to or persistence in
using a strictly correct term).