Wonder why Britain did not protest?

Many of you would have watched the India UK hockey semi finals in the recently finished Commonwealth Games with elation, only to be devastated in the subsequent final. While the Indian team provided a lot to cheer for, the commentators also kept us in splits. Unfortunately I do not quite know who it was (though I think I have a fair idea), but it would be unfair to write the name unless I am sure. So this anonymous Hindi commentatory mauled all the British players names. Heck, he turned the Gibraltar umpire Nathan Stagno whose Christian name is to be pronounced as nay-thon (rhyming with marathon), into naah-thon. Reminded me of my class fellow Selvanathan, and I was half expecting someone from the great Indian diaspora to be the umpire. If you can have Bhullar from Canada and Selvadorai from Australia, you can have Selvanathan from Gibraltar. I was very disappointed to see a bald headed Caucasian (I think the extra white skin was to dispel any remnant of doubts in my mind) turning out to be 'naah-thon'. Anyways this is still harmless. Now we get to the less harmless zone. 

Iain Mackay (muh-kay) became maah-kay. Not very happy outcome if you thought as a Punjabi. Glenn Kirkham (closer to कर कम) became kir-cum. Not very happy outcome if you thought as a Tamilian. While Glenn got away with a mere insinuation of having a bee in his bonnet. The Mantell brothers were not too lucky. Both of them were pronounced as 'men-tull'. Extremely surprising, since the standard Delhi pronunciation for 'mental' is 'man-tell''. If he had stuck to his normal erroneous ways he would have been fine. He suddenly wanted to be an 'angrez' - have short vowels and schwas. That was his undoing.

I was wondering, should not the British government make a diplomatic incident about it. Heck, man. Sheila Dixit was not even a guest in New Zealand. These guys are guests. And you insinuate (more than that actually) about their mental health. Certainly calls for calling the Indian High Commissioner Mr. Surie to your office and reading him the riot act. Eh, British Foreign Office?

The furore over Dick-shit

It is funny to see the Indian media going all self righteous over the alleged racial slur by the NZ news anchor who said two things

1. that he found it very funny that the name was dick-shit

2. that it was appropriate since it was an Indian

part 2 of the comment was obviously obnoxious and silly, but we live in a world full of silly and stupid people and cannot go around reacting to all of them. The other part is what I will restrict myself to, since this is a pronunciation blog.

Now will someone tell these half-baked Indian television anchors that they should first get the pronunciation right themselves before pointing fingers at others. 90% of the anchors pronounce the name as 'thick-shith' (the 'th' indicates the softer sound). The correct pronunciation of the name is 'theeck-shith'. Both the first and last consonant sounds are soft. If you can read Devanagari script then read it as दीक्षित. 

You cannot blame an English speaking person for approximating the way he hears most Indian anchors pronounce it, as 'dick-shit'. And then wondering what kind of name that is! 

While on this topic, I am appalled at the way, the Indian anchors are mauling the names of all the medal winners in the Commonwealth Games 2010. I think the African continent would be particularly sore with the way we are mauling there names. But many Indian names are being mauled as well. Will try and cover that later.