Geez, our local TV news keeps referring to the community in Wisconsin as "sick".

[no_hypocrisy]

He's pronounced it "sick" at least six times so far.

Is this a valid alternate pronunciation of Sikh?

[ErikJ]

1. I thought it was Seek.

[oldhippydude]

2. from a personal association with a number of them...

yes seek.. is the correct pronunciation...

[pnwmom]

3. Technically, neither may be correct.

Both are ignoring the final "kh" sound.

http://www.hindu.com/lr/2005/08/07/stories/2005080700310600.htm


The guest host for the show for one day, Manpreet Grewal, a local freelance journalist and — the name gives it away — a Sikh, did a professional job. Except, every time she said the word "Sikh", she pronounced it with the long vowel /i:/ as in "sea". And to think that I often gritted my teeth in silent fury upon hearing non-Indians say "seek" when they meant "Sikh", a practice quite common in North America.

Could this lapse on Ms. Grewal's part, this act of mispronouncing the quintessential word of Sikh religion, be considered a sacrilege, I wondered; akin to someone smoking inside a Sikh holy shrine or a gurudwara. Especially when one of the persons interviewed on air, Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, the president of the Council of Khalistan, a group based in Washington, D.C. that lobbies for Sikh independence, always pronounced the word (he probably came to the U.S. as an adult) as it should be, with the short vowel /i/ as in "sit".

SNIP

Now about mispronouncing the syllable "kh". Semitic language groups, including Arabic and Hebrew/Yiddish, have the "kh" sound we use in Sikh. In Yiddish, it is represented by the spelling "ch". Any dictionary of English worth its name will tell you that the Yiddish chutzpah, meaning shameless audacity, is pronounced as "khutzpah", with "kh" represented by the international phonetic symbol "x". Guidance on the pronunciation of challah, a bread traditionally baked to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath, has it as /xa:'la:/, with "x" for "kh" and /a:/ for the long vowel (as in arm).

The stiff-tongued who keep pronouncing Sikh as Seek because, they claim, they are unable to articulate the dorsal sound "kh", can be found saying chutzpah and challah with perfect ease. This sound, made with the back of the tongue (k, g), is also found in Scots, a dialect of English language spoken in Scotland, where "ch" in loch (meaning lake), is pronounced as "kh". What else than chutzpah to continue to say Seek!