Wednesday, October 03, 2007

 

What's in a Name?

When English-language football commentators encounter foreign names, you can often count on some interesting interpretations.

It's a little unfair to make an example of SBS, whose commentators generally do far better than most in this regard, but this morning's Champions' League telecast showed up some common errors. Interestingly enough, many of these seem to stem from a desire to make everyone's name sound just that little bit Brazilian.

Dan O'Hagan, in the course of the Manchester United v. Roma game, repeatedly referred to one of the away team's midfielders as "Aquiliani" rather than "Aquilani"; perhaps a result of encountering those Portuguese names with "-lh-" in them (Carvalho, for instance), which do demand a palatalization of the "l". Or the Slavic names with "lj" prominent (Ljubljana).

This palatalization (that is, moving the tongue towards the hard roof of the mouth from the front) is quite a feature of Brazilian Portuguese. It often sounds, one might say, quite sexy; Antonio Carlos Jobim's famous song "Dindi" sounds so much more intimate with the titular girl's name pronounced in that elongated way: "Oh...Djeen-djee..."

(It follows from this, incidentally, that Ronaldinho's name is actually pronounced with the "d" virtually becoming a "j". But I digress.)

One instance of such palatalization is the transformation of a final -s or -z sound into -sh or -zh. David Basheer did this with the name of Stuttgart's striker Mario Gomez throughout, even though Gomez, of course, is not Brazilian. In the past, Craig Foster has attempted to do the same with names such as Reyes and Pires.

The same thing can be observed with names ending in "-ino" or "-eno" instead of the ubiquitous Portuguese "-inho": Marcelino, a Spanish central defender who played for Newcastle United for a few years, must have felt like a Brazilian by the time he returned to Spain, so often had his name been mispronounced by English commentators.

Then there's initial "r": of course, in Rio (though not in some other parts of Brazil, I'm told), this sound is made at the back of the mouth, so that it resembles an "h". Plenty of commentators have picked up on this, but, once again, it occasionally gets applied to Spanish names as well.

It's not a big issue, of course, but it deserves a mention. Les Murray, whose pronunciation of foreign names is always scrupulously correct (if a little unctuous at times), made the point in his autobiography that correct rendering of foreign names implies respect, for both the player and the culture. I'd agree.

The above are all pretty minor indiscretions, incidentally, compared to the mangling of Chinese midfielder Li Tie's name when he arrived at Everton. He became, in turn, Lee Tie, Lie Tea (courtesy Alan Parry), Leeya Teeya, and even something that sounded vaguely like Leotard. For the record, the correct pronunciation is roughly "Lee tyair".

The commentators must have breathed a sigh of relief when he fell out of favour at Goodison Park.

Comments:
not only the comms, the fans too - he was injury prone & crap!
 
I always enjoyed David Pleat Brazilianizing the Milan player "Gilardinho" and yet often Italiafying "Ronaldino". As the support actor of the film Fever Pitch put it (as Liverpool looked like they would hang on for a 1-0 loss)

"oh shut up Pleat!!"
 
Thanks for this. I also agree with Murray that this is important, and you've provided us all with a bit of an education. I'll be trying to get these right myself, as I'm sure I haven't always.

I didn't know you were such a cunning linguist.
 
It really gets to me when they pronounce the Italian "ino" as a Portuguese "inho"!

And what about that ESPN commentator who pronounces Zidane as it would be read in English, i.e. with a long the "a" as in "mate"? grrrr.

David Basheer was pronouncing Oleguer with a soft 'j' sound, something at was a first for me.
 
...I didn't know you were such a cunning linguist....

I'm a Lollaphilologist, Hamish... ;-)

...David Basheer was pronouncing Oleguer with a soft 'j' sound, something at was a first for me....

He constantly made "Puyol" into "Pyew-ol" as well. Poor old David wasn't having a good morning.

I actually quite like him as a commentator otherwise. Not half as pretentious as most.
 
My South American in-laws and I always chuckle whenever we watch Melbourne Victory's Adrian Caceres, because we're still in disagreement over whether it should be "Ka-serez" or "Car-serez". Of course Fozzie has provided a 3rd option by often saying "Ka-chair-ez".

I also recall watching coverage of a Socceroos game where in the space of a few minutes Les, Foz and Graham Arnold all managed to come up with a different variation of Michael Beauchamp.
 
I actually quite like him as a commentator otherwise. Not half as pretentious as most...

I agree.

I also recall watching coverage of a Socceroos game where in the space of a few minutes Les, Foz and Graham Arnold all managed to come up with a different variation of Michael Beauchamp.

You would think that English speaking people would have got to grips with French pronounciation by now but it seems it's still too much to ask for. "Beach 'em"??? My God , that is terrible. How hard is it to say: "boo shaaa" plus a nasal twang to end the second syllable?
 
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