The right way to pronounce salmon is sa-mon. Period.
That was the advice by a senior language instructor at the British Council (BC), who cleared the air over a recent video that went viral, claiming the correct way to pronounce salmon was “semen”.
Penang BC senior instructor Tom Grainger said salmon, among many other words, were commonly mispronounced by most Malaysians.
“It is sa-mon, the ‘L’ is silent. I have never heard it being pronounced as ‘semen’ before,” he told FMT.
Grainger said “th” sounds, and long and short vowel sounds, were some of the other weak points in English spoken by most Malaysians.
“An example of the ‘th’ sound that many folk find difficult to pronounce is when uttering a word such as ‘thigh’, they actually pronounce ‘Tai’. ‘Three’ may be uttered as ‘tree’.
“As for long and short vowel sounds, many Malaysians are unable to differentiate between long and short vowels.
“Examples such as ‘ship’ and ‘sheep’ may sound the same. ‘Full’ and ‘fool’, ’Dark’ and ‘duck’, ’port’ and ‘pot’ — these words are often pronounced the same by Malaysians, however in standard English they sound different from one another,” he told FMT.
On Jan 12, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) posted a video on its social media site teaching students how to correctly pronounce the word “salmon”. The video was part of its #EnglishOnTheGo programme.
In the video, a woman introduces herself as Rina Ahmad and explains that the right way to pronounce ‘salmon’ was ‘say-men’.
“One of my favourite meals is a grilled ‘say-men’.” she is heard saying, before explaining that the letter “L” in the word was silent.
The video, uploaded on UiTM’s official Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages has since been pulled down following a flood of adverse comments.
However, music-entertainment magazine Juice Malaysia saved the video in time and re-posted it on their Facebook page with the caption: “‘It’s semen.’ Thanks for clearing that up UiTM. Malaysian education is the best.”
As of today, the re-posted video has garnered 197,000 views and been shared over 2,000 times.
A source at Juice Malaysia claimed that UiTM officials had contacted them, saying the host had pronounced the word correctly.
“They claimed people misheard it as semen due to a caption we put above our video.
“They also told us they took it (the video) down because we made it sound like they were wrong.
“It also seems like they are implying to others, that we have edited the video. We have not,” said the source.
In an immediate response, UiTM told FMT: “Selamat tengah hari. Video tersebut telah ditarik semula. Apa yang dituduh oleh Juice Malaysia adalah tidak tepat kerana perkataan yg disebut adalah tidak seperti yg didakwa oleh pihak Juice. Benar, terdpt sedikit kesilapan dlm sebutan (slip up), tetapi bukanlah disebut sbg ‘semen’.”
(Good afternoon. The video has been taken down. Juice Malaysia’s claims are inaccurate because the pronunciation of the word is unlike what those in Juice are saying. While it is true that the word was slightly mispronounced (a slip up), it was never pronounced as “semen”).
Original article from http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2017/02/20/sa-mon-not-semen-english-expert-says-of-uitm-video/
