One and a Half Nonplussed
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
American reporters are probably the smartest reporters. Every time something happens overseas and there is not a phonetical English spelling that can be looked up immediately when the story breaks; reporters wing it and hope for the best. After all being first is better than being right.
The straggling reporters then race to be second to report the story, also forgetting to learn a proper pronunciation. Like lazy college students, they go to the Cliff's Notes version of the pronunciation, forgoing their own research, and unintentionally stroking the ego of the first on the scene! reporter.
But wait! It is not over. Two weeks later a reporter will interview a "credible source" with a foreign accent and curiously different skin color who has a different way of saying a certain word or name. The cycle continues until there are 50 different ways to say each word.
First off these words don't even look alike, but for the longest time reporters were calling India's largest city, "Bombay", when it is spelled M-U-M-B-A-I. I thought it was still pronounced Bombay, but I found out with the rest of America how to say this when some kid was eaten by a shark or something over there.
It sounds like a genuine Arab on wiki solved this conundrum - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Although I have heard someone swear it was, Ama-Dina-JIHAD, this one seems to be finally on track.
The word Hezbollah (Hizbollah, Hizballah, Hezbillies?) however, has been tossed around, chewed up, consumed by frat boys at a tailgate party, and then regurgitated in a nearby stream where it is spread to the farm and is picked up by ears of corn that will eventually fuel your ethanol-mobile. Not one person has ever made the decision as to how they are going to pronounce this word until they have already said it. Hezbollah is a modern day tower of Babel and pretty soon no one will be able to understand anyone else. That is why I have started stocking up on cans of soup - the non-insane way to prepare for Armageddon.
If a reporter really wants to sensationalize and sexify the news, from now on they need only to turn to ESPN's Stuart Scott for help with all of their pronunciations.
"Hez-BOO-Yah!"
posted by Ghengis @ 10:52 PM,
