The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #171962   Message #4161184
Posted By: Helen
03-Jan-23 - 03:15 PM
Thread Name: A quick Christmas story!
Subject: RE: A quick Christmas story!
I just read through all of the postcode locations in NSW, and although I thought the suburb which was mispronounced by the TV presenter, and which caused me to almost ROTFL might have been Eleebana, pronounced ELLeeBARNa but mispronounced as EllEEbarnA, I think it was Kotara, pronounced KotTARa, but she mispronounced it as KOTTarA.

I have two thoughts after reading the full list of place names.

The first is how lovely it is that so many of our place names are from First Nations languages, and the second thought is that we are sometimes unfortunate victims of the various English language speakers who tried to use English spelling for some of those words. Part of the problem is that different English language speakers had different ideas of how to spell the sounds, and part of it is the complexity of English spelling, e.g. how was Wee Waa pronounced by the original First Nations language speaker and how was it interpreted by the English language speaker, and have we been mispronouncing it for decades?

Sorry, this is off topic, I guess, but I find it interesting.