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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#261

Post by neltnerb »

22c wrote: post #173
darkwater wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In any case, my pet peeve is people expecting speakers of English to accommodate foreign sounds, but not extending the same ask to foreign speakers who often mangle English name sounds just as much. Sorry... what? Us non native speaker live in a world where English is taught in almost any school on the planet and where you have a peer pressure to know and speak decently English. This on top of one of the most irreg…

As a native English speaker, for the most part I typically know what someone means when they say "gl-OW-kester square" or "Green-witch mean time", so don't worry about it. I have a Russian friend who has specifically asked me to go out of my way to correct their mispronunciations, but for the most part if someone says an English word in a weird I don't even blink. I'd say part of being an effective English communicat…

English is also unusually flexible, something I noticed abroad. In English you can do ridiculous wrong things and still create something that a skilled listener can easily understand. Subject and verb all you know? Eh, I can guess from context.

Try putting the subject and verb in the wrong order in Japanese or forget your counter particle for a particular kind of counting and you just get blank stares.

I think that English, for its many faults, is at least extremely error tolerant in terms of it being possible to say something that's comprehensible enough dozens of ways and often with words practically in random order. It's probably the most amazing thing about English to me, although I only know a few other languages they are much more strict.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#262

Post by thrwyoilarticle »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #20
gamegoblin wrote: post #12

Something that always kind of bugs me is when I am traveling at an airport in the US, and there is an announcement like “Passengers X and Y, please come to gate 7” and the announcer obviously has no idea how to pronounce non-English names. This is even in airports like LAX which see a massive number of travelers from Latin America and East Asia. I would think that after making those sorts of announcements frequently…

> The basic ones I can think of that would increase accuracy measurably are: > 1. How to pronounce “Nguyen” You say that like there's only one way to do it.

It's not even one name. Nguyễn is the very popular family name & Nguyên is a distinct given name with a distinct pronunciation.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#263

Post by LordAtlas »

Tabular-Iceberg wrote: post #214
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 thin…

OK, I'm Indian and I will stipulate that transliterations of Devanagari are inconsistent, but that guy you linked to is just being a crude racist asshole. (0:39 "and it's so appropriate because she's Indian." Fuck you, Paul Henry!)

In the specific case, her last name would be pronounced "deekshit", with both "d" and "t" being soft like in Spanish. Both those consonant sounds do not exist in standard American/British English.

What is more exasperating to me is that we are not even consistent in English spellings of the same names. For instance, "Sameer" and "Samir" are both pronounced the same but the first is closer to the actual pronunciation.

As far as pronunciation goes, I have made peace with foreigners incorrectly pronouncing sounds that don't exist in their languages, but it bugs me when they can't be arsed to get the syllable emphasis right or when they use the wrong vowel sound even though the correct vowel sound is familiar to them.

Example of #1: A friend of mine is named "Manohar". The syllable emphasis and spelling is: "Muh-NOH-huhr". But his name gets pronounced as "Man-oh-HAAR" in the US. And it's not because he's pronouncing it wrong. Imagine if he pronounced every "Michael" as "Mikhail". People would be pissed.

Example of #2: I can understand them not pronouncing the soft "t" and "d" in "tandoori", but not so much having the first syllable rhyme with "can" instead of "run". Or "Punjab" becoming "Poon-jab" instead of "Puhn-jaab".

Also, #PSA, Hindi does not have the "zh" sound in it, so please stop pronouncing "Raj" as "Razh". Thank you. :)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#264

Post by draw_down »

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…

Not only this, but the reverse never seems to go remarked upon. Speakers of other languages have their way of pronouncing our names and we’re fine with it.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#265

Post by carlob »

ajuc wrote: post #185
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

> First time I see a word in any language that consists only of consonants Polish is quite tame with these as far as Slavic languages go. "Strč prst skrz krk" is a proper sentence in Czech and Slovak :)

Except in most Slavic languages r can work as a vowel.

(if you are confused think about how the y in year is a vowel sound but works as a consonant in the syllable)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#266

Post by flyinghamster »

gryson wrote: post #145
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…

The article brings up categorical perception when it says one shouldn't assume they are hearing sounds in another language correctly, since our brains will map those sounds to the nearest English equivalent. What the article is really addressing is how different orthographic romanization systems map to English sounds. It's not advocating (as far as I can tell) that English speakers attempt to produce non-English soun…

> The article brings up categorical perception when it says one shouldn't assume they are hearing sounds in another language correctly, since our brains will map those sounds to the nearest English equivalent.

I've noticed a similar thing with Spanish (my second language). I can kind-of read Portuguese as a side effect, but if I try to listen to spoken Portuguese I find it completely incomprehensible. My auditory circuits just aren't wired for it.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#267

Post by mmarq »

qalmakka wrote: post #111

It always puzzles me how little knowledge of foreign languages the average English native speaker has. Every time I hear an English speaker trying to pronounce Italian or Spanish words it generally ends up in a complete disaster (especially Italian). For instance, lots of folks haven't realized that the Great Vowel Shift happened, and so try to pronounce vowels as in English, without realizing that 99% of cases, that…

I find it very annoying when Italian speakers pronounce foreign names using sounds that do not exist in Italian. Pronouncing “Merkel” as a German would, makes it impossible to write and unrecognisable to 99% of Italian speakers. It is not reasonable to expect people to be able to pronounce and process sounds from all languages. It doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t even try, but if your name is “ Friedrich” you should accept that it’s unpronounceable for an Italian and that “fredrik” is probably good enough. Likewise I don’t expect English speakers to pronounce my name correctly (they never will), and I’m sure I don’t pronounce theirs as a native speaker would.

As a side note, I find it funny that the English seem to enjoy pronouncing guttural Rs and nasal sounds when they say French names. The English love saying “Macron” (usually producing the sound of a lung exploding and being expelled through their nose), while they don’t mind vandalising Italian or Spanish names.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#268

Post by PeterisP »

ylyn wrote: post #117
akersten wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a resource (maybe with sound samples) that expands on the voiced/unvoiced vs aspirated/unaspirated distinction? It sounds fascinating, but I'm struggling to conceptualize it just with the text here.

Compare the t in 'stellar' vs the t in 'tell'.

What's the difference between the t in 'stellar' vs the t in 'tell'? I seem to pronounce them identically, dictionary pronunciation guides (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis... and https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...) do not make a distinction..

[edit] ah, one (!) of the two "tell" audio recordings in that dictionary seems to pronounce it in a different way that would illustrate the aspiration, but that seems different to how I've usually heard 'tell' being pronounced.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#270

Post by ithinkso »

OldOneEye wrote: post #254
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…

Thank you very much for this summary! I have a lot of polish colleagues in my work, and I always feel bad for not knowing how to start pronouncing their names aside from memorization (which I will promptly forget). This will definitively help me.

> and I always feel bad for not knowing how to start pronouncing their names

No worries, give it your best approximation and if it's way off or if someone cares a bit too much they will correct you, use the corrected version since then and you're golden.

We know it may be hard, no problem whatsoever and no one cares, don't worry about it one bit and definitely don't feel bad about it. I think poles actually prefer if you say their name in 'english way' rather than super-correctly in polish because it sounds more natural instead of being suddenly jerked back into polish for a millisecond and then back into english. Just remember the 'w'->'v' and you will get a lot of street cred for free

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