Qatar World Cup and How to Mispronounce Foreign Place Names

I know where this year’s World Cup is being held, but can I pronounce it? Qatar. It’s an odd spelling from an unfamiliar language, and when we hear the name on the news, reporters pronounce it differently. Qatar is one of several foreign place names that get, well, lost in pronunciation.

It’s a problem that springs up periodically, say, when the Olympics are held in Beijzzzing, a mispronunciation perpetuated by English-speaking TV news anchors that must be perplexing to residents of the Chinese Capital.

There are others: “Bahhhrain,” news announcers say, clearing their throats.

“Pakiston,” they insist, not Pakistan. The last syllable’s spelled with an A but pronounced with a short O, apparently. President Obama said it that way in interviews, leading the charge.

But … If it’s a short O (as in gone) for Pakistan, is it a short O for Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and all the other -stan countries? We’re left to wonder whether we’re mispronouncing them all. (Note: Said with a short A, -stan rhymes with its English counterpart, -land, as in Newfoundland and Disneyland.) Merriam-Webster: ˈpa-ki-ˌstan, audio of a short A. Collins has both.

A big one nowadays is the South American country Chile. Pronounce it “Chill-lee,” like the pepper, and a chilly breeze suddenly fills the room. Be prepared to see people flinch, shake their heads, and counter, “Cheeee-laaay. Dummy.” Merriam-Webster offers both: ˈchi-lē, ˈchē-(ˌ)lā.

It’s not a bad thing, trying to pronounce foreign place names in English as they’re pronounced in those places, and for Chile we should. But it’s a jump in inconsistency worth considering.

For instance in English we rarely hear the name Tokyo pronounced with two syllables as it is in Japanese (To-kyo). In English it’s three syllables: To-kee-oo. And we rarely hear the French pronunciation of Paris in English, even though it’s widely known: pah-ree! For Tokyo, Merriam-Webster offers both pronunciations, as it does for Paris, and in both cases, the preferred and audio are for the common English versions.

The forced pronunciation has a hint of show-off to it. Whether it’s coming from an anchor on the BBC or CNN or a tourist on the return leg of an ocean cruise, the localized pronunciation claims a greater degree of authority.

This is not just the case with names but with other words, too. Picture SpongeBob SquarePants shouting “Kah-rah-tay,” aka Karate (car-rah-tee), to show he knows how to say the word in Japanese. Incidentally, the kara in karate means “empty,” as in “empty or open hand,” a feature of the martial art.

Tangent: We see the same syllable in the word karaoke, another import from Japanese, though in Japanese the often-sour singing sensation is pronounced not care-ee-oh-kee as it is in English but kah-rah-oh-kay. Interestingly, the latter half of this Japanese import was imported into Japanese from English; the oke was taken from the English word orchestra, creating “empty orchestra,” or karaoke — music void of words. In Taiwan, an additional English element is added, often on neon signs that read “卡拉OK,” a Chinese transliteration from Japanese pronounced ka-la with O-K. The OK stands out on signs just as it does above the gate of the O.K. Corral. (More confusing: The English word OK originally stood for an off pronunciation of All Correct.)

Forced pronunciation of place names seems even less consistent considering we use completely different, English names for numerous places: Germany, Spain, and China, for instance, instead of Deutschland, España, and Zhongguo, which spelled in Chinese is 中國.

And in the worst cases, efforts to use foreign pronunciations go too far and lead to outright mistakes that proliferate from the BBC to NBC to Australia’s ABC. One very common example is the popular mispronunciation of Beijing, China’s Capital. On both British and American news broadcasts you often hear a mysterious Z sound in the middle of the name, so it comes out something like Bei-jzzzzing.

In fact the J in Mandarin pinyin is very close to the J in English, but the sound is made with the tongue curled downward slightly at the base of the front teeth, similar to how the Z sound is made.

If you pronounce Beijing as it’s spelled, with a regular J sound — or the soft G in gin — you come much closer to the Chinese pronunciation than by trying to force a Z into the middle. Other Chinese words with this J include mahjongg (majiang), the game, and jiangyou, the Chinese word for “soy sauce.”

Apparently there is a word for these mistaken pronunciations: hyperforeignism, which is a nonstandard form caused by trying to impose a foreign pronunciation on English. (And if there is a hint of show-off in my throwing around a word like hyperforeignism, I admit I stumbled across it on Wikipedia.)

Merriam-Webster has Beijing pronounced without the G on the end: ˈbā-ˈjiŋ, along with audio. Cambridge Dictionary meanwhile offers audio of both an American and a British pronunciation of beɪˈdʒɪŋ, the American with a Z and the British without. (Further confusion: Bejing used to be spelled Peking and pronounced in English with a P and a K.)

As for Qatar, I remember news announcers in the past accenting the second syllable, like cut-ˈtar. More recently, I hear a first-syllable version, something like ˈcut-ter, as in paper cutter. (Disclaimer: I have bad hearing.) Merriam-Webster lists three pronunciations, the preferred (with audio) being something like Kotter, as in the TV show Welcome Back Kotter, and the third being what I heard years ago. That’s the pronunciation used in Qatar’s national adjective/noun, Qatari.

Merriam-Webster: • Qa·​tar ˈkä-tər ˈgä-, ˈgə-; kə-ˈtär. • Qatari kə-ˈtär-ē.

The dictionary, of course, is not the final arbiter of pronunciation. The final judge is common usage, and for foreign place names that means Hollywood movies and TV news broadcasts— however chilly that makes things in Beijzzzing.

© 2022, by John Sailors.