I very rarely blog about political or cultural issues, but this commentary was so dead-on accurate that I just had to comment on it:

In a recent episode of Top Chef, the American cooking show I appear on, I complained about the other judges’ insistence on pronouncing ‘paella’ as ‘py-ay-a’. ‘You don’t say “Bar-the-lona” or “Me-hi-co”,’ I pointed out. ‘So why say ‘py-ay-a’?’ I thought this was fairly uncontroversial, but it was as if I had just produced a white hood and a burning cross. [...] the only people who take offence if you Anglicise foreign words are upper-middle-class Caucasian Americans. They imagine that other, less fortunate people will be insulted by your ‘imperialist’ attitude and they get offended on their behalf. In fact, to imagine that non-English-speakers are a poor, victimised group, requiring the protection of the American elite, is far more condescending than mispronouncing non-English words.

I don’t know why, but this is a huge pet peeve of mine. I’ve even had a similar conversation.

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