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If the Hyundai I currently own is anything to go by, I'd say the correct pronunciation is actually something along the lines of "Now what is wrong with it?"
I believe this goes back to the relative nationwide predominance and cost of printed media advertising and TV\Radio advertising in the UK and the US. Hyundai and Nissan (Nee-san in Us, Niss -an UK) for example have been around for 40 odd years and in both cases were new entrants in already established markets. In the US radio and TV advertising was cheaper and than the UK and more nationwide than newspapers so a relative start-up could still afford Radio\TV advertising and it would use the correct or close to pronunciation. In the UK TV advertising was much more expensive so print media was used more instead thereby allowing an unofficial pronunciation to form. When Radio\TV adverts were later introduced the advertisers tended to stick to the commonplace pronunciation in the adverts. In some cases firms, like Hyundai currently, try to reintroduce the correct pronunciation as part of a relaunch or repositioning of the brand.
A similar mispronunciation arose with Dacia. For years - fueled no doubt by James May on Top Gear eagerly awaiting the Sandero - it was known in the UK as Day-see-ah. Now that they have an advertising profile, they are able to promote their local pronunciation of Dat-chia.
Similarly, Škoda marketing using Shkoda.
There must be others where the Anglicised version is being gradually superceded - Porsche with the second syllable for example. Could be scope for a new trivia thread here...
I have to say that ever since the advert the OP and the immediate replies refers to came out, everyone round where I am has now been joking referring to them as "High and Dry" cars...
...which suggests that the campaign has backfired somewhat!
A similar mispronunciation arose with Dacia. For years - fueled no doubt by James May on Top Gear eagerly awaiting the Sandero - it was known in the UK as Day-see-ah. Now that they have an advertising profile, they are able to promote their local pronunciation of Dat-chia.
Admitedly I don't watch Top Gear but I have never head anyone use the first pronunciation, closest to it I've heard is Dash-ya (with a short A sound at the end).
Admitedly I don't watch Top Gear but I have never head anyone use the first pronunciation, closest to it I've heard is Dash-ya (with a short A sound at the end).
They've been Day see ah for years back when the only made old generation renaults a lot of the dealers also used to sell Reliants, FSOs, Ladas and pre VW Skodas. It is only more recently they have relaunched and gone more upmarket and you have had the TV adverts voiced by Ralph Inneson.
Admitedly I don't watch Top Gear but I have never head anyone use the first pronunciation, closest to it I've heard is Dash-ya (with a short A sound at the end).
They've been Day see ah for years back when the only made old generation renaults a lot of the dealers also used to sell Reliants, FSOs, Ladas and pre VW Skodas. It is only more recently they have relaunched and gone more upmarket and you have had the TV adverts voiced by Ralph Inneson.
Fair enough, didn't realise they'd been sold in the UK for that long, I remember FSOs, Ladas, Yugos and the old Skodas but 80s Dacias must have somehow completely passed my by.
A similar mispronunciation arose with Dacia. For years - fueled no doubt by James May on Top Gear eagerly awaiting the Sandero - it was known in the UK as Day-see-ah. Now that they have an advertising profile, they are able to promote their local pronunciation of Dat-chia.
Similarly, Škoda marketing using Shkoda.
There must be others where the Anglicised version is being gradually superceded - Porsche with the second syllable for example. Could be scope for a new trivia thread here...
But then again, I still call Marathon bars Marathon bars, Opal fruits, Opal fruits and Jiff, Jiff, so they're on a losing streak if they expect me to change.
The change from Peking to Beijing isn't really a modern invention. It was just changing a longstanding anomaly. Mandarin speakers (most of mainland China, including Beijing itself) have called it Beijing for centuries.
We took the name 'Peking' from the regional dialect speaking traders on the south east coast.
Sort of like if the first Brits another people encountered were Welsh fishermen and thereafter decided to call Liverpool 'Lerpwl', despite the rest of Britain and most of the world calling it Liverpool.
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Having said that, I do sometimes say 'Peking', and 'Amoy' (Xiamen) just to annoy people.
I agree that Saigon's renaming is daft. I have been there and the locals still call it Saigon. They haven't even bothered to update the name of the railway station either, so why should anyone else bother calling it 'Ho Chi Minh City'?
It does annoy me when companies want us to call them one thing and then decide something else instead, as if we have nothing better to do than humour their internal angst.
