The problem with our media is that it is heavily dominated by mediocre people. There is no attention to detail that defines all high quality industries. Most reporters or anchors just take a guess when a name first appears in a news story and then just ossify the belief that their pronunciation is correct. I have heard such people correct other reporters and anchors - when they themselves mispronounce the name. Many sportspersons have borne the burden of the mediocrity of our mediapersons. The list of mispronounced names starts from the first and only sportsperson who is a Bharat Ratna
Tendulkar, Prakash Padukone, Deepa Karmakar, Mariappan Thangavelu, Jwala Gutta, Mithali Raj and even the subject of this post - are all commonly and completely mispronounced.
I was also influenced by this super confident sounding anchors and thought that she was a North Indian girl. It's only when I delved slightly deeper, I realised she is a Maharashtrian girl born and brought up in Mumbai. She speaks Marathi fluently and Hindi in the Bambaiyya lehjaa.
Well you would have heard her name pronounced as
smriti ma.ndhaanaa or smriti ma.nDhaanaa
स्मृति मंधाना or स्मृति मंढाणा
Both are completely wrong!
Both are completely wrong!
The correct pronunciation is
smruti maandhanaa
स्म्रुति मानधना
Although the 'r' sound in smriti is the same, I have slightly amended it to reflect the way it's pronounced in Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Even if you are the top sports correspondent, I am sure you were mispronouncing this name. The question now is do you have the courage to make the change and speak the truth now and correct yourself.
That is what distinguishes a high quality industry from a mediocre one.
I plan to correct myself.
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