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    Gower and his quirks

    By Will last year, at the start of August Leave a comment on this post

    I’m watching a video which I’ll mention in another post, and in it I keep hearing David Gower mispronounce players’ names. Well, it’s not as though they’re technically incorrect inunciations - they’re just different. Gower has his own, very Hampshire style, and is more and more a legend of the comm box. For instance, he doesn’t say WAZim AKram. He pronounces it waZEEM aKRUM. And as for Murali, well it comes out as Muttiah Murali-durham.

    Anyway. As you were.

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    9 Responses to “Gower and his quirks”

  • sharon wrote:
    August 2nd, 2007 at 9.50 pm

    Worse than Graham Gooch pronouncing Anil Kumble’s name as Coomberlee?

  • Marcus wrote:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 6.23 am

    I think the worst pronunciation of a anme I ever heard was Tony Greig calling Alan Mullaly “Alan Mulhully.” I also seem to remember him calling Muralitharan “Murali-thuralin,” although it’s always possible I’m misremembering that.

  • King Cricket wrote:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 8.59 am

    I remember when I was in India, my friend’s (Indian) aunt asked her husband what language I was speaking, on account of my apparently thick North-West English accent.

    I continued to have problems being understood for the next few months. However, I was astounded to find that local cricket coverage featured none other than David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd - a man with a less Indian-friendly accent you couldn’t hope to hear.

    Even I was struggling to know who he was on about when he referred to ‘ArrrberJern Singh’

  • stikinmud wrote:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 10.14 am

    I suspect Gower’s versions are closer to to the “real” thing.

  • shariq wrote:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 11.17 am

    stikinmud is right.

    the correct pronunciation of wasim akram is wa-seem uk-rum.

    as for murali, it is murali-dhur-un

    i suspect gower being right has more to do with his taking the effort to try and get the proper pronunciations as opposed to his hampshire accent.

  • Sean wrote:
    August 3rd, 2007 at 9.45 pm

    What’s all this about a Hampshire accent - he went to Kings in Canterbury, don’t y’know.

  • Shahid Afridi Fan wrote:
    August 12th, 2007 at 6.54 am

    the wasim akram pronunciation from gower is spot on..
    that’s how it is pronounced in urdu…
    don’t know about the murali pronunciation.. maybe a SL reader of this blog can verify..

  • maurice jamall wrote:
    July 31st, 2008 at 8.09 am

    Yes, it’s an Asian name and Gower’s pronunciation is correct. How do I know? I’m Asian. The other commentators who put their own pron. onto others’ names should take a leaf out of DG’s book and find out how to say people’s names properly. It is, after all, only common courtesy, (for which Gower is famous). And to those who think it’s not so important, how would you react to a foreign commentator saying daVID goWER? While we’re on the subject, it’s CALcutta, not calCUTta.

  • maurice jamall wrote:
    July 31st, 2008 at 8.14 am

    GOWER’S ACCENT:
    Writing here as a linguist, DG speaks pretty much standard RP, (received pronunciation), also known as BBC pronunciation. It’s called RP since boys receive this pronunciation at (public) school from their masters. All public school boys have a similar accent whether they attend (public) school in England, Scotland, Wales or N. Ireland. It’s a sign of membership of an elite club.

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