Ringgit

Months ago I commented on how BBC reporters refer to the Chinese currency, the yuan /juɛn/ 元, as the /juan/ 'you-ahn', rhyming with 'one'. And this is despite the fact that they employ people trained in phonetics to research these things. The trend might be due to the fact that other people have started calling it the 'you-ahn', but it's not like a historic standard like saying 'Paris' with the final 's'. So what's the point then of hiring people to check these things anymore?

Today, I just saw another report on the BBC about inflation in Malaysia. The reporter pronounced the name of the national currency, the ringgit, as the /rɪŋɪt/ 'ring-it', without the voiced velar stop /g/. For people who are familiar with Malay and Indonesian, if the word was meant to be pronounced that way, it would be written 'ringit'. The velar nasal is written using the digraph 'ng', while the following velar stop is written with an additional 'g'. So, the currency really is the /rɪŋgɪt/ 'ring-git'.

I don't mind if news programmes completely anglicise the pronunciation of foreign names and currencies, but the BBC hires people to verify how to pronounce these names as close as possible to the source language.