YOU SAY TOMAHTO

posted by James Reel

    The latest announcer mini-challenge at KUAT-FM: how to differentiate, through careful pronunciation, the Aradia Ensemble from the Oradea Philharmonic. The first group is pronounced “ah-RAH-dee-ah.” The second is “oh-RAH-deh-ah” (not “day-ah”; there shouldn’t be a diphthong in that penultimate syllable). When spoken at a natural clip, the last two syllables of each name compress into “dyah.” So that leaves us with only the unstressed first syllable to get the difference across.
    Of course, this fretting ignores the fact that the Aradia group, based in Toronto, calls itself an “ensemble,” while the Oradea group, from Romania, is a “philharmonic.” End of problem.
    Which reminds me of the joke about two neighbors who couldn’t tell their dogs apart. So one of them bobbed his dog’s tail, and said, “OK, mine is the white dog with the short tail, and yours is the black dog with the long tail.” Such is life in public radio.