‘Cache’ and ‘cachet’ nab the unwary

Near as I can tell, when it comes to spelling and/or pronouncing the names of various organizations, countries and individuals in the daily news report, the rule is simple: Do as you damn well please.

The Middle East terrorist organization currently itching to commence World War III in Lebanon is spelled “Hezbollah” by The Associated Press and probably most newspapers in the world, but “Hizbullah” by Newsweek magazine, and variations of the two by Internet bloggers and others.

Pronunciations of the word are all over the board, as well. Some experts put the emphasis on the first syllable (HEZ-boll-ah), some on the second syllable (Hez-BOLL-ah), and some on the third (Hez-boll-AH). The impression left with anyone trying to make sense of the lashup is that it is entirely possible that members of the radical outfit themselves haven’t a clue what their name is or how to spell or pronounce it. Call us anything, as long as you don’t call us late to the next opportunity to raise hell with the world.

We went through the same drill when the independent emirate of Qatar was often in the Mideast news. Pronunciations by television’s talking heads ranged from “Cutter” and “Cater,” to “Gutter” and “Git-tar.” God only knows what the reporters and anchors might have done with Ypres, had television been around when that World War I site was in the news. I suspect that the dictionary pronunciation “E-pr” probably wouldn’t have been their first guess.

A few nights ago, a television network carried a story about the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. A line of type ran across the bottom of the picture, identifying the Korean village of Panmunjom as “Panmanjon.” And for some time now, the South Korean port city that will always be Pusan to the thousands of American servicemen and women who have passed through it has come out “Busan” in press reports.

The network’s mangling of “Panmunjom” looks suspiciously like the handiwork of some lowly network clerk who learned via the modern education system that, when it comes to spelling, close-but-no-cigar is good enough.

The Pusan/Busan thing would seem to have more to do with the Asian/African/Third World penchant for periodically changing the spelling of place names in order to confuse foreigners. (You know you are a really old fogy when you still think of Thailand as Siam, or Zaire as the Belgian Congo.)

When it comes to renaming its cities on a whim, though, the prize goes to Russia, where St. Petersburg became the Petrograd that became the Leningrad that became the St. Petersburg that one day may well morph into something else, depending upon the outcome of the next revolution.

The war in Iraq has produced some unique misusage of words, but perhaps none with the fingernails-scraping-the-blackboard cringe factor of “cachet” (pronounced “kashay”) when mistakenly used for “cache” (pronounced “kash”), which is a hiding place for concealing provisions, implements and the like. A stash, in common speech.

“Cachet” has several dictionary definitions dealing with prestige, seals of official approval, designs on envelopes commemorating stamp- collecting events, and a medicinal preparation (leave it to the French). None, though, is even remotely close to a hiding place for provisions.

While watching a television documentary about the war in Iraq a while back, I heard a soldier refer several times to “cachets” of enemy ammunition his outfit had discovered. A day or so later, I heard an Army bird colonel also speak of “cachets” of weapons, and I figured I had found the source of the GI’s confusion.

A number of readers subsequently sent e-mails commenting on the misusage. Among them was Scott Taylor, a former resident of Hancock County who hopes one day to return to Maine. Writing from an Ohio location, he stated that in watching television coverage of the war he hears “all too often an authoritative military type referring to having discovered that rarest of things, a weapons cache that rhymes with ‘sashay.’ If that weren’t sufficiently irritating, I’ve also discovered two instances in print of references to weapons ‘cachets.’

“My reaction, in either case, is similar to that when my darling’s grapefruit squirts me in the eye from across the table…”

I know the feeling. It’s about the same reaction I have when I read stuff like the real estate ad in the newspaper describing a home that features all-new “Thermo Pain” windows, or an obituary datelined “Westbridge Water, Mass.”

Both, of course, were long ago added to my cache of keepers. As speed bumps on the information highway they may not carry the cachet of the caches of weapons in Iraq, but they do entertain.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.