You say potato, I say dictater

NPR's been pronouncing Pinochet as "Pin-o-chett" all week. I always thought it was "Pin-o-shay." Where did I get this idea from? Am I the only one who pronounced it this way? Is this some kind of Frenchie-ism?

srah - Sunday, 10 December 2006 - 9:32 PM
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Comments (10)

gravatar Tony - December 10, 2006 - 9:56 PM -

I too thought the latter...but apparently we were both wrong. According to wikipedia, via the International Phonetic Alphabet...

"Pih-noh-CHET" is correct rather than the common mispronunciation "Pih-noh-SHAY"

Who knew. They should have referred to him as Auggie. Would have solved the entire problem.

gravatar Noor - December 11, 2006 - 1:03 AM -

I'm in the PinoSHAY camp, too. I prefer it to PinoCHET. I like my dictators to have some Euro-class.

gravatar Denzylle - December 11, 2006 - 7:48 AM -

He was a descendant of Breton immigrants to Chile, so his name should be pronounced the French way.

gravatar Andrew - December 11, 2006 - 10:08 AM -

"Should be" != is/was.

The unexplained change in pronunciation on NPR was driving me nuts too though, particulary over the backdrop of Chilean natives calling out what sounded like SHAY or CHEY not CHET.

Maybe I just can't hear the T when the Chileans say it though:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2006/12/how_to_say_pinochet.shtml
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DD1031F936A35753C1A96E948260

gravatar srah - December 11, 2006 - 10:13 AM -

I don't think it's necessarily prudent to go around announcing that you're in the Pinochet camp, no matter how you pronounce it! :D

gravatar Tony - December 11, 2006 - 5:13 PM -

You're such a square.

gravatar Allison - December 12, 2006 - 9:10 PM -

Actually I heard on NPR (Monday) that they were both right. This weeks only been 2 days long. Let's wait and see who wins....

gravatar srah - December 12, 2006 - 9:17 PM -

They've been talking about him for a while, now, though - ever since he had that heart attack and went into the hospital.

This morning, my local NPR newscaster person called him "Pin-o-shay" and seemed to really emphasize the "shay" part, like he was being all rebellious about it.

gravatar Amanda - December 14, 2006 - 9:32 PM -

Here's a Slate article about this very controversy
http://www.slate.com/id/2155292/

gravatar Erica - December 17, 2006 - 2:14 AM -

I'd always heard it pronounced the "Pin-o-shay" way. I guess I'll just have to avoid saying his name out loud. *shrug*

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