March 20, 2009

Linguistic puzzler: Chevrolet

I've wondered this for a long time. Chevrolet in Thailand is เชฟโรเลต, pronounced [เช็ฟ-โร-เหล็ด] chef-ro-let. Why?

The company name comes from the surname of its Swiss-French founder, Louis Chevrolet. I can't speak for the French, but in English it's pronounced shev-rol-lay (the emphasis varies between first and last syllable depending on the speaker, in my experience).

It's a classic spelling pronunciation, as with many, many foreign words borrowed into Thai, and which results in Thai pronunciations like "Robert" as โรเบิร์ต row-bert (should be รอเบิร์ต), "magic" as เมจิค may-jik (should be แมจิก), and "Amazon", as in the website, as อเมซอน a-may-zon (should be แอมาซอน). I could list a hundred more.

But there is clear precedent in Thai of French-derived loanwords inheriting the silent t. Off the top of my head I can think of three: "buffet" บุฟเฟต์ [บุฟ-เฟ่], "ballet" บัลเลต์ [บัน-เล่], and "parquet" ปาร์เกต์ [ปา-เก้]. I'm sure there are others.

Looking at the company history on the website (Thai|English), I see it only entered Thailand in 2000. Why on earth would Chevrolet Thailand choose to pronounce the "t"?

I can't imagine that is good for overall brand recognition. English has prestige in Thailand, and if Thais pronounce it the Thai way to their English-speaking counterparts, they're going to sound ignorant.

This even makes it onto the Thai Wikipedia article for คำภาษาอังกฤษที่มักอ่านผิด ("English words that tend to be mispronounced"). A big marketing FAIL, if you ask me.

6 comments:

  1. It's probably unrelated, but it's pronounced chev-ro-leT in Hungary as well (hungarian has lots of strong consonants). I could imagine that the English just simply couldn't put up with the strong consonant at the end of the word, and their version became dominant.

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  2. Another French company seen in Thailand, is Carrefour คาร์ฟูร์. This spelling baffled me for a while. In England Carrefour is pronounced car-four, so why is the Thai transliteration car-foor?

    Well, that's how the French pronounce it. Four is foor.

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  3. The alternatives for writing the last syllable could be:
    เล
    เหละ
    เหล็ด์
    The first syllable is probably close to how Americans would pronounce this word. If Mr. Chevrolet was Swiss-French I am sure he would have used เหละ (our maybe he just gave up correcting everyone after a while and accepted his new name). Anyway, Americans pronounce his name wrong.
    เหละ can, taking into account this is a loanword, be pronounced wrong: เห-ละ
    The third way of writing is rather strange because of the combination of เ-็- followed by -์.
    So, I think that's why they ended up writing it this way. It looks like a logical choice.

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  4. I think the most obvious and sensible choice would be to simply put a การันต์ over the ต: เชฟโรลเต์. Problem solved. :)

    But they've already been open for business for 9 years, with 100,000+ Chevrolets on Thailand's roads (says their website). Probably not gonna change.

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  5. Yes, but this solution leads to the American pronunciation of the word, which is also not correct, taking into account Chevrolet is a French word and the French would pronounce the second syllable with a short vowel.

    Words like บุฟเฟต์, บัลเลต์, ปาร์เกต์ are also not written correctly. The French pronounce these words with a short vowel (in the second syllable). Thai people pronounce the second syllable with a falling tone, which will shorten the vowel and make the pronunciation sound closer to French.

    If you would write เชฟโรเลต์ you would make the same mistake. However, I agree with you that this is probably the least "bad" way to write the word.

    In my country there are many American and English brands that use a different brand names inside my country only. Some brands choose a similar sounding name that sound more expensive or classic than the original name (often with a French accent).

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  6. It's unfortunate. Ironically, Chevrolet entered the Thai market as a replacement for GM's Opel brand. Opel had a few bad models that did poorly here. So GM slapped the Chevy logo on the Astra and the Zafira and problem solved. Except for the pronunciation of the name.

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