Such pronunciations as "Eye-rack"

[Charles C Doyle]

Picking up a topic from a few days ago, the pointedly disrespectful pronunciation of foreign place names:

Near the beginning of Kathy Reichs's newish mystery novel _206 Bones_ (NY: Scribner, 2009) occurs this sentence:  "He said _Quee-beck_ with the disgust one might reserve for 'Eye-rack' or 'Dar-four'" (p. 16).

I must confess, I don't know what the "approved" pronunciation of "Darfur" is.  Is there much colloquial discourse about Darfur??

--Charlie

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org