TSUNAMI Is it a tidal wave? No. Is it caused by the tide? No. That's why scientists chose the Japanese word in 1963 and why it is used in many languages around the world. A massive wave that swamps and overwhelms a harbour seemed an appropriate term to the Japanese. Should the ‘t’ be pronounced in English? Certainly. Is it too hard for some? Yes. Awwwwwwwwwwww. The poor widdle things don't think they could ever manage ts- at the start of a word. Right. It's VERY foreign to English. Unless we remember how most English speakers leave the vowel out of tisk-tisk, and actually say tsk-tsk. Initial ts appears in many languages like German and Canadian French, and it's a common sound in Yiddish. The Hebrew and Yiddish word for trouble or mess-up is tsuris. Many thousands of North American Jews, New Yorkers, Torontonians, Miami Beachniks, all say ts with ease daily. Tsuris — A word referring to all problems, trouble, grief, aggravation and heartache. Examples: daughter pregnant with child of an unemployed Catholic bartender.
Major Tsuris: Later daughter and baby "Bridget" move back home after ex-Catholic bartender joins Hamas and moves to undetermined Middle Eastern locality.
Daughter begins to plan blotter-acid bat mitzvah for Bridget ; daughter shows penchant for neo-neo-Reform; wants officiating rabbi to be a hermaphrodite high on ecstasy for occasion. Then there is a variant of the word czar used for years in English, tsar, and pronounced with a strong initial ts. Nevertheless you will hear the robotic dullards who read most TV newscasts sibilating their way through sooonami. So let them. Yes, it's illiterate. But so are they. After all, the TV suckababies have treble-cleft palates and forty pound tongues, and they only make 100,000 dollars per annum. So don't be mean and suggest they ought to learn how to pronounce English. What are you, a linguistic fascist? In English, just to repeat, it's tsu-NAHM-i. Stress the second syllable. And laugh when CTV newsreaders won't take the trouble to enunciate it correctly—“because it's too hard for me, Mommy.”
© 2005 William Gordon Casselman
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