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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#211

Post by GordonS »

dorkwood wrote: post #199

> First, if you can remember only 3 things: > Zh is like a J sound (as in "Jam") > X is like a Sh sound (as in "Shot") > Q is like a Ch sound (as in "China") This is very useful to know, but I have a question. When converting the original characters into English, why didn't the creators of this system choose letters which more closely match the native pronunciation? For example, why "Qi" instead of "Chi"?

Basic-level Mandarin speaker here, but well-versed in Pinyin.

There are actually kind of 2 "sh" sounds and 2 "ch" sounds in Mandarin.

"Sh" is a "heavy" sound, as in "shot", where your mouth makes an O shape, whereas "X" is a much "lighter" sound that AI don't believe has a comparison in English.

Similarly, "Ch" is a "heavy" sound, and "q" is much lighter sound.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#212

Post by yosito »

robocat wrote: post #74

At least English speakers often try to pronounce names correctly, for example celebrities and well known sports stars. Not that we always succeed, and many people don’t care! Bach, Cézzane, Jesus, Jahn etcetera. I notice Spanish people don’t seem to try, I think in part because there is a one-to-one correspondence between words and pronunciation in Spanish. The common Spanish pronunciation of Michael Jackson is unint…

Spanish speakers in the Dominican Republic often leave our S sounds in words, and some do it in foreign names as well. I remember a friend excitedly asking me if I like what I heard as "Brooli". It took me a good 5 minutes to realize that he was asking if I liked Bruce Lee.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#213

Post by happy_path »

robocat wrote: post #74

At least English speakers often try to pronounce names correctly, for example celebrities and well known sports stars. Not that we always succeed, and many people don’t care! Bach, Cézzane, Jesus, Jahn etcetera. I notice Spanish people don’t seem to try, I think in part because there is a one-to-one correspondence between words and pronunciation in Spanish. The common Spanish pronunciation of Michael Jackson is unint…

Don't know what kind of Spanish speaker you spoke to, but no Spaniard/Latin-American I know would pronounce a famouse people name lke Michael Jackson "wrong".

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#214

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

prvc wrote: post #40

One thing that has puzzled me about complaints about English speakers' pronunciation of transliterated Chinese words (the only topic of TFA), is why the speaker is blamed rather than the transliteration. If the official transliteration into the Roman alphabet leads to less accuracy in pronunciation than some other (for example see the second vs third columns in the table in TFA), then would it not make better sense f…

I'm always puzzled by certain British imperial transliteration schemes that seem to do their best to set you up for failure and embarrassment.

Apparently "Burma" is supposed to be pronounced in a non-rhotic fashion, but would it have killed the non-rhotic speakers to write "Bama"? Then the rhotic speakers who form the majority of English speakers would have at least had a fighting chance to get it right.

Another thing is their scattering of seemingly pointless "h"s in their transliteration of Devanagari, which together with "s"s leads many speakers to incorrectly assume a fricative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l8x36fjvjk

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#215

Post by pchm »

tdeck wrote: post #108
pledess wrote: post #78

Because of categorical perception (as defined on the https://dictionary.apa.org/categorical-perception page), there's no general agreement on the "correct" way to pronounce a non-English name within English communication to a mostly English speaking audience. Some people argue that the right approach is to always use the closest equivalents within the English phonemic inventory. In this view, it's incorrect to sudden…

I see this a lot in with Americans having Polish surnames (or other Slavic). People typically pronounce theirs somewhere on a spectrum between the original and a monolingual english-speaker's attempt to make sense of the letters, so you just have to wait for them to say it. Example: Susan Wojcicki, whose name is apparently pronounced "woh-jisky" but I think in Polish (not a speaker) would be more like "voy-chitsky".…

C in Polish is pronounced as ts/tz and 'ck' is an interesting case in Polish-American surnames: American pronunciation turns 'ck' into 'kk' and Polish speakers will often have a hard time recognizing the original spelling.

Listening to audio mentioning Susan Wojcicki, I could never figure out the spelling of her name... BTW, Polish pronunciation for Wójcicki (notice the 'ó') is Vooy-chits-ki

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#216

Post by ajuc »

mkotowski wrote: post #182
narag wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anything else I've been interacting with a Polish web and got very confused because what happens with stand-alone w , that seems to mean in . Indeed Google Translate pronounces it as a v. First time I see a word in any language that consists only of consonants :-m

It is quite funny, because when I was learning English, it was so bizarre that the first-person pronoun was only one letter (putting aside the required capitalization). On the other hand, having to write and instead of i still seems quite unwieldy to me.

Well in English it's actually 2 sounds (a+i) they just have them mixed into one letter :)

Not unlike Russian where the reversed R is the same sounds just in reversed order (i+a) and it also means I.

Polish prefers to have sounds separated so it's "ja". And it's never capitalized, English is very egocentric about it's pronouns :)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#217

Post by ajuc »

ithinkso wrote: post #149
wink wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kinda gets me is the name Łukasz, because in German and English it is indeed an L and all the ones I know actually use the L (maybe unless talking to other native speakers).

Yeah, Łukasz is the same name as Lucas and because ASCII and internet it's very common to just write it as Lukasz because no matter if you're talking to the native or not, they will know what you mean (it is very common for polish people to omit polish letter altogether when texting/writing informally online because the correct letters can be inferred from the context so why bother pressing that alt key). If you were…

> it is very common for polish people to omit polish letter

Is it still common? It was popular when there were many encodings that always broke and when people wrote SMS by pressing number keys 5 times for 1 letter, now I don't see it that often. I'd say it's about as common as writting l8r in English :)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#218

Post by ithinkso »

smcl wrote: post #202
mkotowski wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, if we are talking about aspiration, word-initial p and t are also left un-aspirated in Polish, contrary to many (most?) English dialects.

That is interesting, I can’t think how else to pronounce the word-initial “t”s in something like “Tu jest carrefour, a tu jest kurwa jeż” (a phrase that has entered the canon of my friend group) any other way, I wonder if I’m already saying it unaspirated. :D

I'll be honest, I'm very interested in knowing how that polish phrase entered a Scotsman's, living in Czech Republic, canon and what it means

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#219

Post by smcl »

ithinkso wrote: post #218
smcl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is interesting, I can’t think how else to pronounce the word-initial “t”s in something like “Tu jest carrefour, a tu jest kurwa jeż” (a phrase that has entered the canon of my friend group) any other way, I wonder if I’m already saying it unaspirated. :D

I'll be honest, I'm very interested in knowing how that polish phrase entered a Scotsman's, living in Czech Republic, canon and what it means

It's all down to this video where a Polish guy was amazed at a hedgehog he saw in some city centre somewhere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwR6KS6vJWg

Edit: oh and it means “Here’s the carrefour (supermarket chain), and here’s the fucking hedgehog”

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#220

Post by xenocratus »

AYBABTME wrote: post #161

Some people take this idea to heart a bit too much. Barely anyone can pronounce my name properly and I really don't bat an eye at it. It's not pragmatic to expect most people to do so, especially in a place like the US where so many people come from different backgrounds. And that's nothing to say about the fact that the same name, written the same way, can be pronounced very differently depending on the bearer's bac…

Thanks, I have the same problem - I'm an Eastern European living in the UK, must've heard my name pronounced correctly (just from someone seeing it written down) maybe 3 times in 9 years. But I actively avoid telling people the correct pronunciation because it's not in anyone's interest (unless they're a close friend, I guess). I never understood why someone would selfishly expect a stranger to pronounce their name correctly if your name is difficult/not intuitive. There are billions of people out there whose names are so difficult to get right, isn't it more important for us to spend that mental energy being nice to each other in a practical way instead of doing this useless ritual?
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