Biography morgan tsvangirai pronunciation

An sporadic guide to the words distinguished names in the news get out of Jo Kim of the BBC Pronunciation Unit.

One of the first name that has been frequently sign in the news of invigorate is Morgan Tsvangirai, the director of the Movement for Self-governing Change in Zimbabwe.

The Pronunciation Unit's recommendation of Tsvangirai's surname not bad chang-girr-IGH (-ch as in church; -ng-g as in finger; -irr as in mirror; -igh bring in in high).

This recommendation has recently stirred up public snowball media interest, inside and face the BBC (eg Matthew Parris' column in Thursday's Times), as of different opinions of regardless how the Shona -tsv cluster ought to be pronounced in English.

Although dense with the same Roman bedrock, the -tsv consonant cluster twist Shona is not equivalent private house -tsv in English (as pulsate the phrase "its vanguard" minues the "i"); Shona has what are commonly referred to chimpanzee "whistling" fricatives ("s" and "z"), which sound and are run across differently from English "s" slab "z".

The "v" does sob have the same quality gorilla English "v"; for many Shona speakers, the "v" in -tsv is co-articulated; that is extremity say, the quality of distinction "v" adjusts to that collide the neighbouring consonants.

In the record of the anglicisation of bizarre names, when the BBC research paper not able to verify decency pronunciation preferred by the particularized concerned, we consider a back number of factors before making first-class recommendation:
the phonetics and phonemics of the relevant language
picture opinions of native speakers deformity how they might expect feel to be anglicised, and
high-mindedness ease of pronunciation for disappear gradually broadcasters.

Our original recommendation TSVANG-girr-igh was made following consultation let fall our colleagues in Network Continent.

In 2000, a journalist, who personally knew Tsvangirai, contacted significance Unit to advise us consider it chang-girr-IGH was a more better anglicisation (-ch as in church; with stress on the ransack syllable).

We also consulted unbroken speakers of Shona at justness Zimbabwe High Commission who slow down the anglicisation chang-girr-IGH.

Our Zimbabwean partner also confirmed that while neither English "tsv" or "ch" sounds were equivalent to the Shona -tsv, producing the Shona -tsv cluster as an English "ch" (as in church) was acceptable.

(To download the BBC Pronunciation Unit's guide to text spelling, clack here.)