Lost in translation

Last night I was brave and went all by myself to a French-conversation meetup. It ended up being a lot of fun, and it had me thinking about how knowing another language can help you appreciate and understand your own even more--in the obvious ways, such as when English words come from that foreign language (you'd be surprised how many times I had to tell my ready buddy, "Yes, you pronounced that right for English, but it comes from French so you don't pronounce the last letter."), but also just in realizing how cool and nuanced language is. (Again, why didn't I take linguistics?)

The evening also reminded me of all the foreign words that we butcher in English. Now, I come from Texas, where Spanish place-names are commonplace and yet people can't be bothered to add the last syllable when saying "Rio Grande"--either out of ignorance, pride, or both--and where they pronounce the town named "Palacios" as "Pal-ay-shus." So I should be used to all this by now. But it still really bugs me when people pronounce "bouquet" as "bow-kay." I mean, sure, there's a level of pretentiousness when someone goes too far out of their way to pronounce a foreign word accurately, but at least getting the vowels correct is all I ask for.

When I moved to New York, I noticed that the words people mangled there were mostly Italian--this in a place with a huge percentage of Italians. So "pasta" became "pass-ta" and "Mario" was "Mare-ee-o." The other day I was watching "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" (I'm not proud of this, but it's true), and I heard perhaps the worst mispronunciation ever: Teresa pronounces her last name of "Giudice" as "Jew-dice." Now, I don't pretend to speak Italian, and I'm sure I don't know how to say that name perfectly, but I'm pretty sure it has four syllables rather than those two, which sound quite unfortunate together.

It reminds me of when poor Terri Schiavo was in the news. Everyone kept pronouncing her last name as "Shivo" for some strange reason. Maybe it was because they saw the sad appropriateness of her actual name--"schiavo" (three syllables, starting with "sch-" as in "school") means "slave" in Italian.

Now don't even get me started on the weird ways people pronounce town names in the Boston area. . . .

Do any of you have any mispronunciation pet peeves?

- L'Editrice