Day 126: Niger

[Cubby]

A few years ago it had the highest fertility rate in the World. The average woman gave birth to 7 babies in her lifetime. That number has probably dropped to 5 or 6 by now, since there is no population explosion problem anymore, just a birth shortage and rapidly expanding elderly one.

I remember in my Middle School social studies class, a kid saying "Hey Mike, there's a country called N-----!". But its really pronounced with a long "i" syllable. It grated on me when journalists called it "Nee-jer" during the Joe Wilson story, they were wrong. Same with calling Qatar "cutter". I couldn't believe how stupid they were.

[Cubby]

It grated on me when journalists called it "Nee-jer" during the Joe Wilson story, they were wrong. Same with calling Qatar "cutter". I couldn't believe how stupid they were.

That's because that is the proper pronunciation:  /niːˈʒɛə(ɹ)/, altho /ˈnaɪdʒə(ɹ)/ is also acceptable.  The former is what you get when you apply French phonetics to the spelling, the latter is what you get when you apply English phonetics.  Since French is the offical language there, applying the French pronuciation makes sense. Qatar sufferes from the fact that English and Arabic use different phonemes and of the phonemes in the Arabic pronunciation, /ˈqɑ̱.tˁɑ̱r/, only the r is in use in English.  So depending on which way you shade the phonemes to an English equivalent, you end up with a lot of different pronunciations.

I guess thats why the city of Benghazi has like 6 different ways of being spelled. Arabic is a tricky language.