Chernobyl and the other pronunciations no one could agree on in 2019

Everyone has been talking about the hit HBO series this year – but few pronounce it correctly. And how do you say Megan Rapinoe, Greta Thunberg or Pete Buttigieg?

Name: Chernobyl.

Appearance: Kind of a mess.

Location: The tip of your tongue.

Really? I thought it was near the city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine. You must be thinking of Chernobyl, the scene of the nuclear disaster in 1986. I’m talking about the word itself.

Ah. And why are you doing that? Because the US Captioning Company says it has caused the biggest pronunciation problems of 2019, thanks to the hit series on HBO.

Don’t tell me. People have been calling it the Chernobyl “nucular” disaster, haven’t they? Mercifully, not that I know of. But there have been some CHAIR-no-bils and CHER-nobbles.

Instead of ... Chair-NOH-bil, of course!

Um, yeah. Of course. Then there is the aspiring Democratic candidate for president, Pete Buttigieg.

Oh God. That guy. I’m praying he won’t win, mainly so I can avoid having to say his surname. At least you know where you stand with “Trump”. Well, just in case, it’s BUHT-ij-ij. Or “BOOT-edge-edge”, as he puts it.

Yeah. I imagine he gets a lot of practice doing that. Any more pronunciations I need to know about? Well, it’s Megan ra-PEE-noh, not Megan RAP-in-oh, as the president of the US Soccer Federation called her.

I see. Although footballers are always difficult. British commentators must have been worried when Spurs signed Tanguy Ndombele. You mean TONG-ghee n-DOM-bell-ay?

Yeah, him. Then we come to Greta Thunberg.

No, wait, I know this! The “h” is a trap. She’s a secret TOON-berg, isn’t she? Nope. It’s TOON-bairyeh.

What the actual … The “g” on the end makes a soft, gurgly sound.

Those Swedes are nothing but trouble! You’ll be telling me that Abba had singers called Björn ol-VEH-os and Agnetha FELT-skoyeh next. Sure. Something like that.

Look. I know we all like to be cleverer than the next person, but is it really fair to expect people to pronounce all foreign languages correctly? Why not?

Well, you would sound a bit of an idiot saying Pa-REE, Musk-VA and Bare-LEEN instead of Paris, Moscow and Berlin, wouldn’t you? Yes – a correct idiot.

That’s the worst kind. And proud of it.

Do say: “Actually, since the power plant is in Ukraine, shouldn’t we use the Ukrainian place name, which is chor-NOH-bil?”

Don’t say: “Actually, Russian was in effect the official language of Ukraine when the power plant was built, which means that it was still called chair-NOH-bil at the time of the disaster.”

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