Sunday, August 05, 2007

Welcome all the dignitaries on the dais……………….

If you attended any high or low profile formal meetings or functions recently you would have heard this from the mouth of the master of ceremony (MC) or the anchor or the compere.
Be it the MC or the president or any other speakers, majority of them pronounce dais as dayaas (da as cu in cup and yaa as ca in car). It is indeed a peculiar pronunciation and difficult to show here, but I am sure the readers would recognize it fairly easily. If someone who hears the word for the first time needs to scribble it down, he may spell it either dayas or at the most dias.
I often wonder how the word dais transformed to dayaas or dias by mispronunciation.
When I pointed out this to a few speakers this is the way they responded.
The pronunciation may not be correct. But if I change, others my feel that I do not know how to pronounce it
This is because, the mispronunciation of dais as dayaas has become so infamous that it would misguide people to believe that the original pronunciation is wrong.
This is how the phonetic symbol of the dais is shown:
da·is - dā'ĭs, dī'-
The pronunciation may most closely be written as dayes.
Dais is raised a platform, as in a lecture hall, for speakers or honored guests
Please hear the correct pronunciation of dais by clicking on the link below: http://www.answers.com/topic/dais

9 comments:

Shirley said...

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Most Common English Errors

The Third Eye said...

Hi Shirly, Thank you very much for the comment. Let me know about you more. I clicked on the blog name. It says it is not available. Please pu the link in you page as www.english-tutor.blogspot.com. You can also send me a mail to nairjula@yahoo.com with the details. I need to exchange ideas with you

Mallick said...

that's a nice one. i really enjoyed reading it and got the link from mylot in your discussion...:)

Unknown said...

Good attempt Mr. Nair, keep it up

Ex Cathedra said...

I was googling around for the correct pronunciation of "dais" and.. unfortunately I'm still confused. I can't read IPA and nothing on my computer supports the .ogg format audio pronunciations all seem to be in... this is turning out to be a suprising hassle!

anyway I'm baffled as to how "da" can equal "cu as in cup." And still confused as to which pronunciation is correct.

Is it "day-is" or "die-is"?

Thanks.

The Third Eye said...

Dear friend, the first one is closer

Anonymous said...

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And according to this article, I totally agree with your opinion, but only this time! :)

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Please forgive the comparison,
but I know that British English often
stumbles over French pronunciations;
therefore, I would submit, to the
reader that DAIS rhymes with
VERSAILLES: or, in other
words, it is pronounced as the simple
word "die".
("Simple is better", in any case.)