According to BBC News 24, two car bombs have been successfully diffused in London. I don’t think that is what they are intending to say, but every TV anchor and reporter on the spot is saying this. If it were true, it would mean that the car bombs had been spread out across the capital. What the journalists mean to say, but are mispronouncing, is that the car bombs have been defused.

The two words are frequently mixed up, with defused most often being pronounced “diffused”, but they should be kept clearly apart, as, if a bomb explodes, its contents are diffused over a large area.

defuse:  DEE-FEWZ (both syllables equally stressed - almost as if they were separate words)

diffuse: diFEWZ (only the second syllable stressed)

The knighthood conferred on this author has brought him back into the spotlight. Unfortunately, many people still find it difficult to pronounce his name correctly, including some BBC newsreaders (Natasha Kaplinsky on 18 June, for instance). The man in the street can be excused - not everyone know Sir Salman personally, nor speaks Urdu, but everyone working for the BBC has access to SpeakEasy, the Pronunciation Unit’s computerised database which I helped design in the 1990s. This not only gives a re-spelling of all its entries, but also has a voice component, so that broadcasters in doubt can listen to it as well. What a shame that so many fail to take advantage of it.

For the record, the correct pronunciation is sal-MAAN ROOSH-di (stressed syllables in capitals, -al as in “pal”, -oo as in “foot”)

A number of broadcasting journalists are of Asian origin. Most - if not all - of them speak English without any trace of a “foreign” or non-native accent - until it comes to names from their parents’ part of the world. A case in point is Afghanistan, which Mishal Husain pronounces with a very un-English sound for the “gh” spelling. BBC policy for pronunciation has always been to use the nearest English sound for the native one for all languages, in order to make it easy for the presenter to pronounce, and for the listener to understand. The problem is that while Ms Husain may very well be able to pronounce Urdu or Pashtu or Dari with native competence, can she do the same for French, Spanish, Portuguese or German? And how about Hungarian or Xhosa? All she is doing is parading her knowledge to the audience (listen to me - I know how to pronounce this!) and at the same time exhibiting her ignorance of the languages she does not know. If we must now say a voiced uvular fricative instead of [g] in Afghanistan, then why not the rolled uvular ‘r’ in Paris (and don’t forget - the final ’s’ is silent!) instead of the long-established ‘parriss’?

Yesterday I had to go to a funeral. There was a complete order of service, as is normal these days, and I was rather surprised to see, not once, but three times, reference to the deceased’s “internment”. This had nothing to do with service in the IRA during the Northern Irish Troubles, but was telling us where his body was to lie after the ceremony. I put the confusion down to poor proof-reading in the hurry to produce the sheet in time, so I was very much taken aback to hear the priest in charge (this was a very high Anglican funeral, complete with request for God to bless the Pope - Henry VIII would not have been amused), having told us that the body would be interred in the parish burial ground, go on to invite all members of the congregation to attend the “internment”. The order of service was clearly deliberately spelled in that way.

Ironically, in her eulogy, the widow told us that one of the things her late husband had always hated, and pointed out in books and newspapers, was misspelling.

inter = bury

intern = imprison without trial

interment = burial

internment = imprisonment without trial