The most common method of learning pronunciation of different words in our country seems to be by hearing elders pronounce those words, or imagining the pronunciations based on those of similarly spelt words. Elders include elders in family, friends, neighbors, and teachers.
Dengue is a febrile illness found quite often in the monsoon season in our city. Our doctors are very good at detecting it and treating it. Unfortunately the opinion seems to be divided on its pronunciation. This becomes quite obvious in medical meetings. There was one such meeting which was attended by faculty and residents from departments of medicine, intensive care unit, pathology and obstetrics-gynecology. One patient died of some unknown cause. She had preterm labor, and died a few hours after initiation of treatment to control it. Even autopsy did not reveal any cause for sudden death. During the discussion of that case, one professor said,
“But what about her blood report? The autopsy report says she was positive for dengue.” She pronounced dengue as ‘deng’. Probably it was based on the logic that if ‘tongue’ is pronounced ending with ‘g’, then dengue should also be pronounced ending with ‘g’.
“Was the blood sample really sent? She did not have fever.”
“It was sent when she arrested” someone said.
“Perhaps it was dengue” said another professor, pronouncing dengue as ‘dengu’. That was the most common pronunciation of the word around here.
“Which test came positive for dengue” asked another professor, pronouncing dengue as ‘dengi’. It takes guts to pronounce it as ‘dengi’ when everyone else seems to call it ‘dengu’.
“A blood test might have been positive for dengue, but that was not the cause of her death” said another professor, carefully pronouncing the word as something between ‘dengu’ and ‘dengi’, more towards ‘dengu’ than ‘dengi’. That was quite an achievement, I must say.
There are sites on the internet which actually read words out loud so that you know the right pronunciation. One such site very succinctly pronounces it as ‘dengi’, and actually raises its volume if you click on the hear button a second time. :-)
