NBC insists on saying 'Pyeongchang' incorrectly because 'it's cleaner'
NBC doesn’t seem to be budging from its mispronunciation of “Pyeongchang.”
Though several guides, including one from the Asian American Journalists Association, have been released, confirming that the Olympic host city is pronounced “Pyeong-ch-ah-ng” rather than “Pyeong-ch-ay-ng,” NBC is sticking to the incorrect method.
The outlet reportedly discussed the pronunciation internally, settling on the mispronunciation because “it’s cleaner,” Mark Lazarus, chairman of NBC Broadcasting and Sports, told Sports Business Journal in November. A network spokesperson did not immediately respond to a HuffPost request for comment.
NBC’s deliberate mispronunciation isn’t sitting right with the Asian community and journalists on social media, who have criticized the network for disrespecting the host city.
NBC has taught me that “PyeongChang” has three and a half syllables…
…when you don’t really care to spend the three and a half seconds it takes to learn the correct pronunciation and stop sounding like an obnoxious foreigner.— Aijaz Ansari #BlackLivesMatter (@_aijaz_) February 14, 2018
The AAJA’s MediaWatch has also encouraged journalists to “use the accurate pronunciation of the host city for the 2018 Winter Olympic games,” and the group’s co-chair, CeFaan Kim, told The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple that “unless you’re pronouncing it the way our guidance shows, it’s incorrect.”
However a spokesperson for NBC Sports told Wemple that the network made its decision.
“We heard a variety of ways to say PyeongChang during our preparation for the Games, and ultimately decided on the version in which the second syllable sounds like ‘twang,’” the spokesperson said. “Although we have informed all of our commentators of this, with 2,400 hours of coverage and more than 80 on-air personalities, you may occasionally hear a slightly different pronunciation.”
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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
