Dumbing it down for Americans

The Tennis Channel has several of the expected "I'm Big-Name Player, and you're watching The Tennis Channel" spots. Yesterday, I saw one in which Justine Henin painfully mispronounces her name--the entire thing--so that it will sound "American." We already have several highly paid commentators who are too lazy and ignorant to learn to pronounce players' names; now we have a sports venue that obviously requests mispronunciations. Because we wouldn't want Americans to have to learn anything. I'm disappointed that Henin complied with this ridiculous request.

Jim Courier just joined the list of lazy, stupid commentators

No surprise, I know. He just suggested that all players either change the suffixes of their last names, or--if there are more than eight letters in a last name--use their first names only on the tour. Of course, it was kind of a "joke," but he emphasized that pronouncing names needs to be "easier for us." Once again, the names are not that hard to pronounce, if you bother to learn how to pronounce them correctly. And again, Courier, McEnroe, Fernandez, and their ilk are being paid extremely good money to talk about the players--that would include pronouncing their names correctly. And finally, it is just plain rude to not bother to correctly pronounce someone's name.

Thank you, Mary Carillo

Yesterday on NBC, during the Djokovic-Hewitt match, the commentators were discussing the pronunciation of the Serbian player's name. One of them said: "It's 'JOKE-a-vich'--I asked him." Which prompted Mary Carillo to say something to the effect of "Asking the player--what a novel idea."

Amen. It's easy to look pronunciations up on the tours' official sites (at least I know they are right there on the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour), and it's just as easy to ask the players. I have written many times that I wish players were more assertive about this issue, but commentators resist being corrected. After being told how to pronounce Djokovic's name, John McEnroe explained that it might "take him a while" to learn this. Hello! He is paid--a lot of money, I might add--to talk about tennis players. How hard is it to learn how to pronounce their names?

A couple of years ago, ESPN did an entire feature on the pronunciation of Sesil Karatantcheva's name, which she kindly pronounced for them (and it isn't hard to say), and after the feature was over, they proceeded to--you guessed it--mispronounce her name.

And then there was the time that poor Claudine Schaul had the audacity to ask the commentators to pronounce her name correctly. Cliff Drysdale was just beside himself with anxiety, and Pam Shriver--no surprise--was sarcastic, and blamed Schaul for the fact that she and Drysdale were saying her name wrong.

How to say it

Since I began publishing this blog, just days ago, I have noticed that many people have landed here via a search for the correct pronunciation of tennis players' names. The people who need to do such a search are the television commentators, who don't seem to care how they mangle players' names, and who can even get nasty about attempts to correct them.

Since so many people are asking:

Jelena Jankovic--YELL e na YAN ko vitch

Ana Ivanovic--AH na Ee VAN oh vitch

Maria Sharapova--Muh REE a Sha RAH po vuh
(but she gave in early on and settled for Sha rah POH vuh, the Americanized pronuciation)

Patty Schnyder--SNHNEE der

Anna Chakvetadze--AH na Chuk veh TAHD zeh

Svetlana Kuznetsova--Kooz NET so vuh

Justine Henin--ZhoosTEEN EN ah