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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#231

Post by SlapperKoala »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #116

> The vast majority of Chinese people in the world today writing their names using the English alphabet use a system called Pinyin Pet peeve of man, but roman script is not the 'English alphabet'. Unless you think people write Spanish in 'English'... If you want to be super pedantic and say you can write pinyin using the subset of the roman alphabet that English uses, I can in turn be even more pedantic and say Pinyi…

Pinyin uses English style punctuation, which is different from what is used in other Latin alphabet languages

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#232

Post by enriquto »

The "opposite" side of this issue is people who intentionally adopt a pronounceable name of their destination country. I may have observed that, but I'm not really sure. Some of my Chinese students, who could barely speak French, were called totally french-sounding names like "Cédric" or "Pauline". I guess they invented them on the spot, to avoid people butchering their real names. But I never thought of a non-awkward way to ask them about that.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#233

Post by seszett »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #136
ajmurmann wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually true for English speakers? Especially prominent Latin names have been totally butchered. For example Markus Antonius always gets butchered as Mark Anthony which clearly isn't a name anyone in Rome would have had. This also seems to go hand in hand with the general ignorance of the huge problem that's the great vowel shift that messes everything up for native English speakers pronouncing words from ot…

Mark Anthony is a transliteration rather than a mispronunciation is it not?

It's more of a translation than transliteration.

Mark and Anthony are just the English translations of Marcus and Antonius. In French he's called Marc Antoine, in Spanish and Italian Marco Antonio, etc.

All Latin languages do that for names (at least historical names, but it's common enough for other names too) it's just less common for Germanic languages except English which is like always a bit in-between the two.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#234

Post by rlpb »

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…

Even within English there are different accents. I'm British. If I meet an American "Annie" then do I put on a faux American accent while saying her name? Or do I just say "Annie" with a British accent? If it's allowed or even expected that I shift "Annie" into my accent, why not a non-English name? What about European names that have English equivalents but are pronounced differently in European languages?

My own name is foreign. Native English speakers cannot pronounce one of the vowels in it, and if they try, they end up using what is to me a different vowel entirely (imagine someone saying "Dive" instead of "Dave"). I gave up when I was about six, and am quite happy for people to use a common, roughly similar English name for me instead. In fact I prefer it, since then I don't have to hear it being mangled constantly.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#236

Post by tralarpa »

paradite wrote: post #205
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"?

Native Chinese speaker (though not linguist) here. For "q" and "ch", both are valid pinyin. "ch" in pinyin is actually the same as "ch" in English in terms of pronunciation. "q" in pinyin doesn't have a equivalent in English so it is just "q", which is similar to "q" but not really.

It was explained to me that the difference between "q" and "ch" (and the same for "j" and "zh") is the position of the tongue, that is it is rolled back in "ch" and "zh". Correct?

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#237

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

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…

Conversely, I had a friend named Γωγώ, a Greek name trasliterated as "Gogo" in the Latin alphabet. When she went to stay in France she wrote her name as Roro to help French speakers produce the correct sound (gamma, "γ", is pronounced much like the French "r").

And to avoid being called "go-go" of course.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#238

Post by blackshaw »

ajuc wrote: post #165
ithinkso wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, could you elaborate on the difference in 'w' between 'wise' and 'when'? I'd say 'Wookash' as in star-wars 'Wookie' is a good way (way, hehe) to say Łukasz. I'm not a linguist though so I'm curious

Some English speakers pronounce "w" differently than "wh". They will say sth that sounds like "hwhen" instead of "when" for example. I think it's a dialect thing I only met like 5 people online who spoke like that but they were all native English speakers so it must be correct?

Obligatory Family Guy link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMopBpOfv_E

I'm not sure I've ever met anyone in real life who says "hwen", "hwere", etc., although you can hear it in some Johnny Cash songs. I'm not sure exactly where in America you can hear it - is it a southern thing? You'll never hear anyone say "hwen" in the UK.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#240

Post by blackshaw »

ithinkso wrote: post #115

People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…

> pronounced as in 'put'/'dude'.

FYI: "put" and "dude" have a different vowel sound in most dialects of English.

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