Teachers not knowing how to pronounce place names. Would it put you off?

[Sillysallysausage]

A couple of open days we went to recently I noticed at one the head teacher was talking about a trip the kids had done to Tanzania except he kept saying TanZAYNia and at another they were talking about Homer's Odyssey and kept calling Ithaca iTHARca. Would it put you off the school? I know it sounds petty but surely in your speech to prospective parents you'd make sure you knew what you were talking about?

Honestly, you couldn't make it up! I think she did one term and then returned to the UK... I hope she got an atlas as her leaving gift!

We do have a Falkland in Fife.

I know. But they are not 'Islands'. And it doesn't take 18 hours to get there from Brize Norton.

I had a huge argument with a teacher about whether Edinburgh was pronounced “edinborough” or not. Not in UK. I am English, she was not.

Also had an argument with a different teacher, aged 15, about whether “raspberry” had a “p” in it (she “corrected” me, incorrectly). I got my dictionary out to prove that it did, and got a detention for “talking back”.

Also lived in Tanzania for several years, and speak Swahili (badly, but I do speak it). Nobody pronounced it “Tan-zaynia” to rhyme with Romania. More like “Tahnzahnia” to rhyme with Narnia.

I once didn’t choose a preschool as on our visit the teacher said Haitch (H) when doing an activity with some children.

I spent a lot of time in Africa and many people there call it TanZANia. Everyone in South Africa does

Regional dialect. It’s not incorrect.

Cape Town is almost as far from Dar Es Salaam as London is… South African accents are very different to East African (and accents in different parts of Tanzania also vary quite a bit).

Like someone i knew used to talk about the Him-maaar-lias instead of the Himalayas.

Outstanding teacher with an MA here and 25 years experience. I'd say Tan-zayn-ia. Judge away.

Take your patronage elsewhere if you think the school isn't good enough. You sound like the most frightful snob. I can't imagine the school will be desperate to recruit your family.

There's a fair bit about context. DD1 had a primary school teacher whose first language wasn't English and DD1 would occasionally correct her pronunciation. But the teacher was great and accepted being corrected with grace.

We went to a secondary school open evening and I asked the headteacher whether the school taught Classics at all. He said, "what's Classics". That was a bit off putting, but wasn't the only reason DD1 didn't go to that school.

It might be an instance of the teacher attempting to demonstrate what he perceives to be superior knowledge, in that case. If so, if makes him a bit of a wally, rather than ignorant (of the way most people pronounce the word). He was likely trying to demonstrate that he knows how people in Tanzania pronounce Tanzania.

in Ethiopia (and most of Africa - I think?! 🤔) people say ah’deece ah-baah-ba (rhymes / scans with ‘barber’) but if I was a Head, giving a speech to prospective parents, I’d just say a-diss a’ba’ba , so I didn’t sound like a prat.

The r thing is quite endemic with the English, especially in the south

I love how this post has become “teachers pronounce place names authentically”.

Sounds like a great school, they’ve already taught you something - imagine what your children will learn by attending full time!!

Place names vary depending on the language too. I’m learning German at the moment. They pronounce (according to the course I am studying - may be wrong) China as ‘hee-naa” and Japan as “yaa-pan”. Considering in Japan it’s actually called ‘Nihon’ we are kind of all wrong.

They don't put a non-existent 'r' in when they are speaking though. They just often use the letters 'ar' as a way of phonetically representing a long 'a' in writing, because in a southern English accent, 'ah', 'aa' and 'ar' all sound the same. When someone writes "I pronounce bath as 'barth' " they don't actually mean that they make a 'r' sound in that word.

Being English doesn't make you an authority on the pronunciation of Edinburgh.

I am interested to know your 'correct' answer here.

Yes this. If speaking to English people, in the UK, I would say Tanzania even though I’m fully aware locals there pronounce it Tanzaynia. To me saying Tanzaynia is similar to saying ‘Mehico’ instead of Mexico or Chilay for Chile when not speaking in Spanish, just sounds pratish or like they are trying to be woke and it would irritate me if a head did this at a prospective school.

In Swahili it’s pronounced Tan zan ia. There are regional differences in pronunciation in Tanzania and people from the USA usually say Tan zay nia.

I judge them far harder when they can’t spell

It all sounds a bit affected tbh!

It certainly isn’t Eeedingberg, which is what the person in question was arguing.

The German word for the country we call Japan is spelled the same but in German, the letter J is said like we say a y.

The German word for the country we in the UK call China is also spelled the same – but said more like Shee-na. None of us are wrong really – most languages will have different words for countries and sometimes for cities (Köln for example, which for some unknown reason we call Cologne - a French word).

@Sillysallysausage I feel this thread is slightly tongue in cheek but tbh this wouldn't bother me.

And the primary teacher who said "haitch" – I am not a fan of this either but it’s totally standard in the part of the East Mids I live in.

And don't anyone get me started on the football team which in the UK we inexplicably call Bayern [German word for what we call Bavaria] Munich [English word for what Germans call München] :D

Oh, OK. Your post didn't suggest that!

No, it was already a fairly long post!