Readers’ comments: Why do Hindi speakers ‘mispronounce’ South Indian names?

The article (“Kannad, Keral, Karnatak: Why do Hindi speakers ‘mispronounce’ South Indian names?”) about mispronouncing South Indian names makes a very good point about the idiosyncrasies of languages. I agree that some of the anger about people saying “Kannad” or “Keral” is probably misplaced. But the same can’t be said about people’s names. Have you ever noticed that even North Indians make it a point to correctly pronounce Eastern European, Chinese, or African names, which can’t even be written correctly in Hindi? And then they butcher South Indian names like Siddaramaiah or Devegowda. Why not make the effort to pronounce these correctly? That’s what irks me more. – Ravi Krishnamurthy

***

It’s a well-articulated article about Hindi’s “schwa” issues, and there’s no doubt that it raises a good point. This debate has been discussed at length on many social media platforms and on Quora, in my personal experience. However, one clear exception to this rule by Hindi speakers is their correct pronunciation of foreign and international names. Canada, America, and a host of other names are pronounced exactly as they are, without any “schwa” deletion. Canada and Kannada sound pretty much similar too, while Karnataka can follow “Amerika”! It’s not like they can’t pronounce these names....

Read more