or When the Japanese are really Finnish
I don't know if it's just me, or a misconception held by the general populace, but Nokia is not a Japanese company. Nope, it's not, Nokia is Finnish, as in from Finland.
So if Nokia is not Japanese but Finnish, how do we pronounce Nokia? Is it still No-KEY-Uh? Nope. Uh uh. That's a Japanese pronunciation, but Nokia are not a Japanese company, they're Finnish. The best pronunciation I could find, from a Fin himself, put the emphasis on the NO, not on the KEY. But the Fin didn't elaborate as to whether it's NO-Key-Uh or KNOCK-Ee-Uh. Although he did state that the first syllable is short, like the rest of the word, which makes me think he actually means KNOCK-Ee-Uh. Because the O in Knock is short, whereas the O in No is long.
But when push comes to shove Nokia actually cannot be correctly pronounced in English, or in any language for that matter, but Finnish. You can come close, but unless you know how to speak Finnish or make the correct Finnish sounds, you cannot pronounce Nokia correctly. Until then, the best we have to go with is KNOCK-Ee-Uh.
All this is a moot point, really, because I no longer have a Nokia but a Razor, or MotoRazr as it's correctly known...aah crap, I just have a cell phone. Then again, in Australia or the U.K. I'd actually have a Mobile.
Can't we all just get along???
But all of this brings up an interesting point. What is the "correct" pronunciation of a word? Can you say that the correct pronunciation in the U.S. is No-KEY-Uh if that's how almost every Nokia user pronounces it? And what if that's how it's pronounced in commercials? What if that's how the CEO of Nokia USA pronounces it?
What if, like in the US of A (and many other countries in the world), people from different parts of Finland have slightly different accents, and so the Fins themselves have several different ways of pronouncing Nokia? Does it come down to how the CEO of Nokia Finland says it? Or is it how it's pronounced in commercials in Finland...Finland, Finland. The country where I want to be Pony Trekking or camping.
Aah, let's forget Nokia, Finland, and even obscure Monty Python references, and just listen to some singing horses from Sweden the country that gave us ABBA.
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4 comments:
More mobi trivia.
Mobiles are called Handphones in some parts of Asia.
How would you pronounce SonyEricsson :-)
Moikka! :) ("Hello" in Finnish.)
"Nokia" is pronounced "NO-key-uh."
(By the way, in Finnish the first syllable is ALWAYS emphasized.)
You can listen to it via this Finnish speech synthesizer:
http://www.mikropuhe.com/demo.asp?f=8220327682329
Moi moi!
when i visit that website and played it, it seems like it's pronounced Knock-ee-ah. Noooo-kee-aa seems to be the American pronounciation.
no offence, but Americans seem to butcher a lot of terms..
Good lord! A polite Anon! That's a refreshing change.
I take no offense at the statement "Americans butcher a lot of terms."
1. I'm a naturalized (Aussie-born) American, and
2. You're absolutely right!
Case in point, the racing term "Grand Prix". Almost all Americans that I hear pronouncing that term do so incorrectly, and that includes sports announcers; They almost all say Grand Pree. They give the second word it's correct French pronunciation, but not the first. Sure, that first word looks like the English word 'grand', but both words are French, so the correct pronunciation is Gron Pree.
I'm really curious about NO-key-uh though. A friend of mine is originally from New South Wales, I'm originally from Victoria. When I say the word Castle I use the short 'A' sound (Ca-stle) but when my friend says Castle he uses an Aah sound, as in Car-stle, which sounds a little more refined, kind of like the difference between Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. If two English speakers can pronounce the same word differently (Tom-ahh-toe, Tom-A-toe, etc) then couldn't Finns from different regions have different pronunciations for the same word, as well? Anything is possible.
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