It’s a challenging time in Barra World. I’m being tested on a daily basis and my powers of concentration are being called into question. Don’t panic though: this is not about what you might term a serious life problem but about a difficult, demanding, exacting, taxing need to be correct.
It happens every year at this time — I call it “splutter season”. And this year it started with the French Open women’s champion. Journalism for the curious Australian across politics, business, culture and opinion.
Her name is Iga Swiatek. I’m sure you’ve heard of her but I’m equally sure you’ve been mispronouncing her name for years. As a sports presenter it’s my job to get it right and help spread the correct pronunciation.
(Don’t worry, it was news to me too). The first name Iga is actually EE-ga like eager and the surname is shvee-YONE-tek. (Bet you can’t get it right first time).
As my friend with a Polish wife keeps telling me, stress is almost always on the penultimate (next-to-last) syllable in Poland and there are actually three sounds in Polish that do not exist in the English language. Imagine my surprise when I googled “Polish for Dummies” and a book popped up. If ever a book title suited a reader, this was the one.
And while I’ve got you, when he was in Perth, Novak Djokovic confirmed that his name is in fact pronounced: “NO-vak” “JOKE-oh-vich”. Similarly Alex de Minaur helped us out with this phonetic spelling: “AL-eks” “duh-min-O.