Today a certain member of Men's Chorus stood up to say the prayer and he gave the usual introduction before he prayed: his name, his major, how long he had been in Men's Chorus, and where his served his mission. This man had apparently served in "Cheelay."
It occurred to me that whenever return missionaries who serve their mission in South America speak about where they served, they pronounce it with the pronunciation of the mission-language. This is also true about "tone-gah." I don't think that this is true for any other places. I have never told someone that I served in "Pahree, Frahnce" but that's just probably because they might worry that I'm strangling if I used the real French pronunciation. People don't say they served in "Doich-land" or "Espanya" or "Jong-gwoa" either though.
I have on occasion told people that I served in "Gay Pahree."
I thought at first that maybe it was just because Americans are notorious for the rotten geography skills, and maybe the first time they ever heard someone say the name of the country where they served was when they got there. If this were the case though, we'd probably be getting a lot more reports of people who served in "Ahrlund" for example.
I guess this is just one of those mysteries that we will just have to wait until the other side to get answered.
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Is there another country besides Chile where the pronunciation sounds foreign to you? You would notice a Spanish pronunciation of Argentina or Uraguay. Maybe "chili" really isn't the right way to pronounce the name of the country in English either. Do people talk about a place in southern Utah called Hurricane and say "hurricayn"? Not unless they're foreigners. It's "hurricn" to those of us who know. And that's good ol' English.
One of my pet peeves is when I tell people I served my mission in Frankfurt and they say, "Oh, you mean Frahnkfoort?" No, I mean Frankfurt, thank you very much. And it case you were wondering, I can speak German, but I happen to be speaking English at the moment.
I think this is less of an issue for countries that have a totally different name in the local language. Like you don't have anyone saying they served in Moskva, Raseeya. Or Praha, Cheskoslovensko.
The people I know who served missions in Australia do tend to say "Melbun" rather than Mel-born.
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