Q; pronouncing "Fukushima"

[Lynne Murphy]

Joel asked:
> If the Brits can, why can't we?  Would we have to think too much?

The Brits can't. The pronunciation is all over the place--or at least was
at the beginning of the crisis. The BBC pronunciation unit may have got its
act together since then.

Incidentally, there's a blog:
<http://pronouncefukushima.wordpress.com/>

Which doesn't exactly present it as it's been presented here.

Lynne



--On 28 March 2011 15:26 -0400 "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:

> At 3/28/2011 03:19 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> At 3:08 PM -0400 3/28/11, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>> Is it FOO-koo-SHEE-mah (large accent on SHEE) or foo-Koo-shih-MAH
>>> (small or no accent on Koo, larger but still slight on MAH)?  I had
>>> heard only the former until once hearing a Brit (perhaps from BBC,
>>> perhaps only CNN international) use the latter.
>>>
>>> (My presumption is that the latter is correct, given what I think I
>>> was told once about hi-Roh-shih-MAH.)
>>>
>>> Joel
>>
>> The latter may be "correct", but the former is inevitable.  I suppose
>> we Americans could manage
>> fu-KU-shi-ma if we were asked to, maybe even with secondary stress at
>> the end, but fu-ku-shi-MA?  Doubtful.


Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
Director of English Language and Linguistics
School of English
Arts B348
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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