Iago/Chicago (was Re: singing after Agincourt)

[Jane Van Tassel 101233.342@xxxxxxxx]

On 3 Feb. David W. Fenton wrote (in part) "I sa[w] Victor/Victoria last week ...
, in which Iago is rhymed with
Chicago."

My first reaction was, How else would you rhyme it?

But then I remembered a college roommate, brilliant but from an utterly
non-bookish background and wholly self-educated, who pronounced "chaos" to rhyme
with "boss".

I'm sure we each have in our inner ear idiosyncratic pronunciations for arcane
words and, especially, for names which we've read about but never heard
pronounced. My inner ear has always told me that the name "Jago" (as in C. P.
Snow's "The Masters") should rhyme with "say go"; maybe Fenton pronounces the
name of Othello's nemesis to rhyme with my rhyme for "Jago". And if it's just
the inner ear speaking, Fenton has as much right to listen to his inner ear as I
have to listen to mine .

But the inner ear is sometimes re-taught, in obedience conventions about
place-names, names in literature etc. (some of which conventions differ on the
two sides of the Atlantic).  Thus, most British people I know, if they haven't
spent a lot of time in the USA, rhyme "Maryland" and "fairyland". While I don't
*think* that -- on either side of the Atlantic -- I've ever heard "Iago"
pronounced to rhyme with anything *but* "Chicago", I should add that I would be
delighted to be better informed. Does anybody know anything about this?

						Eric Van Tassel