Dolly Lama?

The current Dalai LamaWith the Dalai Lama so much in the news lately, I am struck by how many commentators mangle the pronunciation of his title. I mean, he’s a Nobel Peace Prize winner (1989), for crying out loud. Can we get this right?

It seems that many of them pronounce it “DOLL-lee LAH-muh.” The more approved western pronunciation, however, seems to be something along the lines of “DOLL-eye LAH-mah” (see the resources below). The man himself, heard in recent interviews, seems to say something like “dah-LA-la-ma,” almost as if it were one word with the accent on the second syllable.

One particularly frustrating instance of this confusing pronunciation phenomenon occurred in an interview (3/26/08) on NPR‘s Fresh Air. In her discussion with Pico Iyer, author of The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Terry Gross continued to call the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide the “Dolly Lama” despite the fact that the interviewee, a man acquainted with the Dalai Lama for over 30 years, kept pronouncing it in the approved western fashion.

The natural question is, “What’s going on here?”

Now, I’m not one of these people who thinks that words should be pronounced slavishly according to the rules of standard English as it was spoken in 1959 in Buffalo, NY. I understand that the word came first, that it is a living, organic sound to which we have attached meaning, and that the sound and even the meaning can change over time. We merely represent the sound with letters, but after that has occurred, the letters can have a way of deceiving us into thinking that they are the word. It just isn’t so, and I get that.

I also understand that words from other languages have a particularly tough time moving through our mouths and appearing on our pages. This process of the living word becoming rigid, dead text affects these non-English words even more dramatically than the words in our own lexicon.

The fact remains, however, that people play conscious games with words and their pronunciations. It is a common practice for people, especially from the right, to purposely mispronounce words and especially names as a sign of contempt. It is as if to say, “I don’t care enough about you to learn to say your name correctly.”

And then there is the “group-think” aspect of pronunciation. We signify our status as part of a group by pronouncing (or mispronouncing) words just as everyone else in our group does. How else to explain that the entire military pronounces Iraq (ih-ROCK) as eye-RACK?

And I am not bringing this up because I am constantly fretting over trifles. I really do try to go through life without undue stress…I do. Lots of people describe me as “low-key” and “laid back.” But sometimes I just can’t seem to ignore the odd little things that happen around me.

Maybe that explains the pronunciation thing, though. Lots of people are way luckier than I am. They just don’t really pay that much attention, y’know? Lots of things just go floating right by them. I mean, what else explains a nationally known radio personality rather doggedly pronouncing the title of this international figure her way even when confronted by a different (better?) pronunciation from someone who certainly should know better than she how to say it. I’m thinking she might not even have noticed.

Oddly enough, that’s a pretty Zen way to go through life, isn’t it? OK, Terry, you win this round, but I’m watching you!

Some resources for your reference: