Recently, Senior Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Balaji Sadasivan sadly passed away. I was listening to the news on the radio, read that day by a seasoned and well known news reader, and she pronounced his surname as SaDAsivan ( stress on DA). That made me wince because that was not the first time I have heard news readers and other Singaporeans mangling local names.
At the recent Teachers’ Conference, the emcee pronounced Manogaran as MaNOgaran. The stress would probably be correct if these were Western names but these aren’t. And it seems to me that there should be no excuse for Singaporeans not to know how to pronounce local names. Is this just ignorance or some weird attempt at showing off? I am sure you must have heard local deejays refer to Jurong as JuRONG.
I think it’s great that we are all out to encourage Singaporeans to speak better English and to improve their pronunciation of English words. But perhaps there should also be a campaign to help Singaporeans learn how to pronounce local names, be these Indian, Malay or the pinyin version of Chinese names. And while I am at this, can I also add that Genting Highlands is pronounced with a hard /g/ and is not pronounced JENting? It means "peak" in Malay.
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