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