Just been watching some BBC three-part doc about Vienna and the Hapsburgs, presented by Simon Sebag-Montefiore. What a dick the man is.
The documentary is in general ok - the kind of lightweight, insight-free, “history as colourful anecdotes about the rich and powerful” that Lucy Worsley and others like her churn out competently - mildly entertaining and informative and one knows not to expect anything better.
But it really winds me up no end that SSM can’t be arsed to make even a token effort to pronounce the German names correctly. The main one was Wallenstein (and yeah I know the dude’s name was originally Czech and was “germanified” into its better known version). SSM kept saying it with the opening sounds like the “wa” in the English word “want”. I mean how fucking superciliously ignorant is that? It’s not as if the correct pronunciation uses anything outside our English language sound set. Or as if it’s peripheral to a series about Vienna that some names are German. Or as if SSM brings anything like historical expertise to what is a simple “talk to camera” job* that he is apparently, in a quintessentially English way, too lazy or complacent to bother learning correct pronunciations for.
Rant over.
* tbf, maybe he wrote the script rather than just delivering it, I don’t know. But if he did, then he is also responsible for its various naff inanities, such as, “on the Danube - between the Black Forest and the Black Sea!”
The documentary is in general ok - the kind of lightweight, insight-free, “history as colourful anecdotes about the rich and powerful” that Lucy Worsley and others like her churn out competently - mildly entertaining and informative and one knows not to expect anything better.
But it really winds me up no end that SSM can’t be arsed to make even a token effort to pronounce the German names correctly. The main one was Wallenstein (and yeah I know the dude’s name was originally Czech and was “germanified” into its better known version). SSM kept saying it with the opening sounds like the “wa” in the English word “want”. I mean how fucking superciliously ignorant is that? It’s not as if the correct pronunciation uses anything outside our English language sound set. Or as if it’s peripheral to a series about Vienna that some names are German. Or as if SSM brings anything like historical expertise to what is a simple “talk to camera” job* that he is apparently, in a quintessentially English way, too lazy or complacent to bother learning correct pronunciations for.
Rant over.
* tbf, maybe he wrote the script rather than just delivering it, I don’t know. But if he did, then he is also responsible for its various naff inanities, such as, “on the Danube - between the Black Forest and the Black Sea!”
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