An obsession with correcting other people’s pronunciation, especially words of foreign origin, is a favourite hunting game of a certain kind of Indian. The usual vibrations that this produces became a loud buzz recently when renowned academic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and a student at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University engaged in a stand-off over the name of American sociologist W.E.B. Check …
A few days ago, I saw a video of Austrian-American actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about hiring an accent removal coach at the start of his career to eliminate his thick Austrian accent. During The Graham Norton Show, when the host praised Schwarzenegger for his accent, Schwarzenegger quipped, “Yeah, after 5,000 years.” When I shared the video in a …
The surest way to signal that you aren’t from around these parts is to pronounce this L.A. neighborhood’s name the proper Spanish way. You say “San Pay-dro,” I say “San Pee-dro” — let’s call the whole thing L.A. It’s supposed to be a “tell” — that in Los Angeles, you can sort the locals from the pretenders and parachutists by …
