Written By Rani Shah

November 11th, 2017

ROCHESTER, MN – Medical professionals and scientists at the Mayo Clinic recently concluded their 15-year linguistics study concerning American speech patterns.

“After more than a decade of research, we’ve come up short in terms of finding an answer,” says Dr. Vinaya Joshi, “Test after test we see Mary Poppins’ ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ being sung perfectly but as soon as we ask our white subjects to pronounce their coworker’s name it’s game over.  Names like ‘Arti‘ and ‘Abhijeet‘ seem to light up parts of the brain usually associated with confusion.”

Fuss Class News (FCN) inquired about this sudden shift in linguistics. For decades we’ve seen foods such as quesadilla, jalapeno, mozzarella, linguine, prosciutto, or kombucha be seamlessly used and pronounced correctly in mainstream American conversation.

Not just foods, but names such as Schwarzenegger, Tchaikovsky, or McConaughey are household name spoken with ease.

We inquired with Dr. Joshi about this ‘selective pronunciation’ phenomenon.

She responded, “That’s essentially the basis of the study, we wanted to understand why ‘Nikhil’ becomes nickel or how ‘Kinnari’ becomes canary – even after being corrected multiple times it’s as if it’s not registering.”

Dr. Joshi’s associate, Dr. Rakesh Tiwari added, “My advice? Just name your kid Raj.”

[Read: White Man Tries To Relate To South Asian Coworker By Mentioning Chicken Tikka Masala]