The Yiddish word for “beautiful” sounds like shay-na (that is the feminine form). The first syllable rhymes with “say”. It was once natural, if you saw the spelling “shana”, to pronounce it “shay-na” and so people gave their daughters the name “Shana”. Younger, educated people now expect that a word that looks foreign should be pronounced (more or less) with European vowels (essentially those of Spanish), so that they would say “shah-na”. The first syllable rhymes with “pa”. So some people started naming their daughters “Shaina” to avoid this, and others named their daughters “Shana” and pronounced it “shah-na”.
In many European languages (not French) “Shaina” would be pronounce “shy-na”. So how do you spell the name so that it is pronounced “shay-na” by every native English speaker? Probably Shayna is the best choice, and there are people named Shayna. There are also people named Shawna because their parents heard the name “Shana” pronounced that way and thought it was spelled “Shawna”. (You can check these claims on Google.)
Once upon a time almost every American would say “shay-na” when seeing the spelling “Shana”. For Bernstein they would say “burn-steen” not “bairn-shtine” (the conductor said “burn-steen”). Churchill said “nazzi” for Nazi instead of “nah-tsee”. People rhymed “Lagrange” with “range” and accented “Berlin” and “Madrid” on the first syllable.
People without college education still do these things. But the educated classes have come to believe that they must pronounced foreign words as if they were speaking that language. They are inconsistent about it, they still say “Paris” to rhyme with “Harris”, but they pronounce less common foreign words in the way they think they are pronounced in the original language.
This comes out of snobbery (I am educated and you are not) but also out of genuine enjoyment at saying things in foreign languages. It is not all snobbery.
But whatever the motive, it is causing a disaster. English has always had irregular spelling, but in fact people could make a stab at saying a word they say in print and often get it right. The situation is much worse now. We have gotten to the point where we simply have to know how lots of words are pronounced. The spelling gives no clue.
This is a catastrophe for English spelling.
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I strongly disagree with your conclusion in this piece. I have a college education and so does my entire family. I pronounce many foreign words with Italic open vowel sounds. However, I don’t do this out of “snobbery” or out of some kind of “enjoyment at saying things in foreign languages”. I do pronounce words this way, because everyone I know speaks this way. In fact, until I read these paragraphs I wasn’t aware that other Americans did not talk this way. I don’t think you should be so quick to chalk up to malice what can be easily explained by ignorance. Nevertheless, I will continue to accent foreign words in this way. Not because I like sounding pretentious (which I do not), but because it is easy and natural for me to do so.
And I would remind anyone who dislikes this pronunciation that just as they would not like it if I thought my pronunciation was better than theirs, I do not like it when they consider their pronunciation superior to mine.
You are right, there is a third reason for using European vowels in foreign words, and that is because everyone around you does. That is a legitimate reason and I am sorry I didn’t mention it.
I also stand by my comment that some people are snobbish about it. I have had personal and painful experiences in that respect. The comment about loving foreign languages is also correct about some people, including me.
The main point of the article is that this shift, which has taken place not under anyone’s control, has resulted in a disastrous worsening of the usefulness of using English spelling to know how to pronounce a word.
Charles Wells
You’re neglecting the worst of all: English place names. Consider: Gloucester? Chiswick? Cholmondeley? For an American, these are at least as foreign as Paris, yet we are expected to be able to pronounce them correctly.
In Iowa, there’s a small town named Delhi. The locals pronounce it “Dell-hie.”