The funniest part of the whole drawn-out Sotomayor root canal thus far has been hearing newscasters chewing through their teleprompters in their tall-corn Midwestern drones only to pop out a perfect sophomore Spanish 102 "soe-toe-my-YORRR" in mid-twang, before turning to the weather in PEE-roo.
Before anybody twits me with that "Oh, so correct pronunciation is liberal bias, huh, you hick?" schtick, I'll remind you that you probably pronounce Deutschland as "JER-muh-nee".
I am channeling the SNL skit with Jimmy Smits as the reporter covering Central America.
ReplyDelete"What does everyone want for lunch?"
Shootin' Buddy
National newscasters are talking about the weather in my Dad's home town, Peru, Indiana?
ReplyDeleteWhodathunkit.
wv: helms. We hardly knew ye, Jesse.
Oooh, snap!
ReplyDeleteThere was an old standup bit I remember seeing on Comedy Central. He also wondered why proper names of Hispanic/Latin American origin were pronounced with an appropriate accent. But nothing in Asia was...
ReplyDeleteHe then went on to give his impression of what that would be like, starting with the Tokyo stock market.
Getting basic pronunciation right is just appropriate, although trying to accent them can get silly, of course. It's not like people adopt an Irish brogue to say O'Reilly.
ReplyDeleteBut isn't that actually pronounced "Oh, Really?"
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIt's pronounced Doucheland if you listen to the upcoming Vicious Circle podcast... ;)
ReplyDeleteDeah Wiener pronounciert des eh als Dytschlant.
ReplyDeleteGermania Inferior?
ReplyDeleteAlso, would said people complain that someone didn't pronounce "Clatskanie" or "Sequim" right?
("klat-skan-eye", "skwim".)
Peru Indiana? Where Ole Olsen got started? I grew up vid a big bunch Norsi unt Sveeds, and had to listen to da lefsa song a lot.Ya by gar, yu just don't know funny til yu listened at Olsen and Yonson. De vas tu fonny sqvareheds.
ReplyDeleteWait a minute. Jer-muh-knee. Oh, Germany. Like Greg German, the BnB desk clerk in "So I Married An Axe Murderer .." with Mike Myers in a dual role, and Nancy Travis.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think there was a TV show that German was in, Allie McBeal or something. But, really, the memorable performance was the Poet's Hideaway bed and breakfast thing.
German. So, if you had something that Greg had done, it would be Germany, would it not? But not Deutchsland. That would be like the Pennsylvania people with German (but not related to Greg) backgrounds, that we call Pennsylvania Dutch. Which is odd, since we call the people from the Netherlands (gah! what a disheartening name for a glorious nation, "the back end of nowhere" or something) the "Dutch", apparently because we cannot tell people from Deutchsland from people from the Netherlands.
Next thing you know, someone will lump Cubans and Mexicans and Puerto Ricans together and call them "Hispanics" (a white, European nation called "Espana" or Spain in Iowa lingo).
But I like Greg. Greg German is OK as an actor.