The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #132089   Message #2985374
Posted By: Jack Campin
12-Sep-10 - 07:07 PM
Thread Name: BS: Foreign pronunciations: inconsistencies
Subject: RE: BS: Foreign pronunciations: inconsistencies
Manuka honey.

New Zealand pronunciation (which I presume is direct from the Maaori, but I haven't checked): MAAnooka (the first syllable is double length).

British pronunciation: mahNOOka. Which I find rather irritating.

The BBC closed its pronunciation unit under Thatcher, so there hasn't been a public source of authoritative pronunciations of foreign names in Britain for 20 years.

I suspect that the part of the world that consistently gets its names pronounced least accurately by the First World media is Africa.

I tried the standard white New Zealand English pronunciation of "Paraparaumu" into Google Voice via an iPhone last week. It's wildly wrong in Maaori terms. Google knew where I meant regardless. It would probably figure out the usual British tourist pronunciations of the Turkish beach resorts "Altinkum" and "Kusadasi" too.