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Wednesday, December 18, 2019

How to pronounce Portugal

I was recently watching a video on YouTube by the famous RJ Sayema who was correcting Hindi speaking audiences' mispronunciations. Specifically in that video, she was correcting country names. I was shocked to see that she herself was getting most names wrong. Have never understood this subservience that Indians (despite having a greater linguistic tradition) show towards the British or American school of pronunciation. While British and American place names must be pronounced exactly as they pronounce it, what would explain trying to pronounce Ukraine and Portugal the way England wants you to?

Boggles the mind. 

This is another such word where the Hindi media anchors get it right more often than the English ones. In fact the English ones never do. 

The English media pronounces this is as 
paurchugal
पौर्चुगल 

The Hindi media pronounces this as 
purtugaal
पुर्तुगाल 
The correct and the authentic pronunciation is
purtuGaal
पुर्तुग़ाल 

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