Two months ago, I came across an LP video in which the player was playing as the Iroquois. I forget what game it was but it's entirely inconsequential to this post. In the video, the commentator was pronouncing the name Iroquois as "ir-ro-koi" which a lot of people do... but I tend to look at that as the wrong pronunciation. The name Iroquois is French and thus takes the French pronunciation rules; under which it would be pronounced "ir-ro-kwah". It's how it was taught in my school and by the word's origins, the correct way to say it. I left a comment about how it's pronounced the latter way instead of the former and the commentator responded to me with a "I know, I speak French." I did not further comment on it as I wasn't about to get in his face about it. After all, a lot of people DO pronounce Iroquois with "koi" rather than "kwah".
Then recently I got a reply on my comment which made me return to that video and those comments. I won't get into the reply I got as it turned into a mess of stupidity on which I do not care to longer dwell than I already have. In any case, I saw that someone had replied to the commentator's claim to speaking French and asked him, "then why do you pronounce it wrong?" to which he replied, "I'm speaking English so I will say things with English pronunciation." That is the topic of today's post.
His response kind of baffled me. It seemed rather... ignorant. Take some other words in the English language that have derivatives in other languages for examples. One such word is the word "debut". If you were anal in your insistence in pronouncing things purely in English, then that word would have to be pronounced much like the word "rebuttal" is pronounced: "dee-butt". Now doesn't that just sound silly?
What about the word herb? In England people DO pronounce it with the H but in North America it is pronounced "erb". In fact, I've seen plenty of people be very particular in this regard... almost to the point of making themselves look like an ignorant dumb ass. So does that commentator pronounce herb with the H? Seeing as how he's from North America, I kind of doubt it. How about the word milieu? We do not pronounce that "mil-li-u". Genre is not "jen-re". Lingerie is not "ling-ger-ee" or "lin-ger-ee". Chalet is not "cha-let"... and so on and so forth.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not all worked up or anything... nor am I really arguing that everyone should pronounce Iroquois as "kwah" and not "koi". Sure, *I* think "kwah" is the correct way but if thousands of people pronounce it "koi" then whatever. My problem however was his response of "I'm speaking English, therefore I will say things with English pronunciation." That is truly a dumb thing to say when EVERYONE who speaks English goes out of the true English pronunciation for certain words. That is.. everyone who is not an idiot. So if "chalet" is to be pronounced "sha-leh" in English, why not "ir-ro-kwah"?
I don't know where in North America you or the French speaker are from, but I'm from Southern Ontario, and everyone there pronounces "Iroquois" with a "kwah". I wasn't even aware there was a "kwoi" pronunciation until I came across the Wikipedia article on the Iroqoius today.
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