A linguistic discussion. Yay!!
crollsurf wrote:Here is what I believe is the correct pronunciation of Kosciuszko, "Kos-choos-ko"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlhqYEAGkSQI've always thought it disrespectful to mispronounce countries, places etc but fact is, some names are impossible for us to pronounce. The most recent for me was Qatar. Native speakers will tell you it's pronounced like Guitar with a K "Kr-tar". But they're only being polite, the correct way to pronounce Qatar is impossible for us English speakers without a lot of practice.
Re Qatar: While a bit of googling hasn't helped, I assume it starts with a voiceless uvular plosive rather than our velar one. That is effectively a 'k' as in 'sky', but made further back at the uvula, which we trill when we gargle. Fun to practise, easy once you get it. The rest probably wouldn't be difficult for Aussies, but I couldn't find the name written in IPA to check.
Taking words from one language to another is fraught with challenges. How far do we go in adjusting it to our sound system, and our sociolinguistic framework?
I would argue that 'Kozzie' is a time-saving and affectionate term, much like the commonly used 'Ulvy' for 'Ulverstone' in Tassie. There I go again, saving a syllable, and a long one at that! (That's one way to usually tell if someone grew up here. Tasmania has 3 syllables, not 4, with a longer, more nasalised vowel in the 2nd syllable. And the 'i' functions as a 'y'. But I digress.) Is 'Tassie' disrespectful? Or is it different because it's ours, and we're not imposing our habits on other countries? Possibly.
Re 'Kos-choos-ko: If I remember rightly, the 'ci' and 'sz' in 'Kosciuszko' are Polish sounds I never mastered, even teaching phonetics. Few languages use them. Is it reasonable for us to approximate to 'ch' and 's'? I reckon!! Those approximations are much closer to the original than the traditional Aussie ko
s-i-os-ko.
The 'o' on the end is more controversial. We do have the sound, as nnw pointed out, as in 'cot' without the 't'. But we never (iirc) have that sound on the end of words. Therefore it has a sound we have in Australian English, but it doesn't fit with our sound system in terms of where the sound can occur. It's like 'Ng' in Vietnamese, or Maori, as in Ngauruhoe. We have that sound, as in the sound after the vowel in 'sing', or between vowels, as in 'singer'. But we never have it at the beginning of a syllable. And most English speakers struggle to produce it there, rather than substituting the more comfortable 'n'. Or adding things, like 'Mr Nig, or Mr En Gee'. We even use syllabic nasals in English (where we don't need a vowel), but not on their own.
Mmm. Actually, we do, but that's not considered a word by most.
So, should we use the vowel we know, in a place we never use it (as in 'cot' without the 't')? I think that's pushing it, forcing us outside our sound system. Hence I find it acceptable to use the vowel sound as in 'toe' on the end.
Yep, I really need to get out walking.