Thousands of American towns and organizations are named after people and places abroad, or local tribes. ‘Le Roy’, ‘Riga’ and ‘Genesee’ are towns in the state of New York, and ‘Gonzaga’ is a university in the state of Washington. Yet many Americans adopt pronunciations of these names which do not reflect the names' heritages. 'LEE' instead of the French ‘Leh’. ‘RYE-guh’ like rye bread, instead of the Latvian ‘REE-guh’, and ‘Jeh-neh-SEE’ instead of the native, tribal ‘Jeh-neh-SHAW’. ‘Gon-ZAG-uh’, with a flat, nasal ‘a’ instead of the Italian ‘Gon-ZOG-uh’, like the vowels in ‘papa’.
As soon as I learn the relevant origins and applicable sounds, I often try to pronounce such names in a fashion closer to that of the linguistic heritage. I try to do this in a way which does not disturb the conversation, so I may not roll an ‘r’. Yet in my efforts to pay respect to the original culture, I quickly irritate modern town or university residents.
We say Gon–ZAG-ah, I’m corrected. But because I’ve lived in Italy for several years, where the Italian lingo dances through the air all around me, my ears scream bloody murder! Poison! Tar and feathers!
I’m experiencing a violent clash of dissonant phonemes. That is, a cacophony of two cultural sets of speech sound units (Phoneme, 2013). I suppose that by the virtues of naming the entire American city or university after a unique heritage and pronouncing the name according to the national English-American phoneme patterns, artful cultural compromises have already been achieved throughout our melting-pot, salad-bowl country.
Yet nary a snooty intent, I beg a mutual tolerance for my pronunciation preferences, if only as a music lover of foreign languages. Shall we dance with Fred and Ginger?
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Berman, P. S. (Producer) & Sandrich, M. (Director). (1937). Shall We Dance? [Motion picture]. United States of America: RKO. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ3fjQa5Hls
Phoneme. (2013) In Dictionary.com, LLC. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phoneme?s=ts
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