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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#281

Post by ithinkso »

rendall wrote: post #272

If you speak any non-English language, you will know that this obsession with getting English-language speakers to pronounce foreign words "correctly" is unique. No speaker of any other language in the world even tries to pronounce foreign words like foreigners do, nor are they expected to. Just pronounce it the way it's spelled, and if you're speaking English, that is the correct way. Join me in my militant quest to…

Celebrating incorrectness, eh? Nothing wrong with being wrong, but not willing to learn... I don't know.

> If you speak any non-English language, you will know that this obsession with getting English-language speakers to pronounce foreign words "correctly" is unique

It's not unique, you think is unique because you are English-language speaker. Anyone speaking X natively will correct others learning X if they ask, but they will not mention it or pay attention to it if they are just talking, only encourage it. The proper 'correctness' will come much later when you really want to learn the language but at that point you will ask for the correcting yourself

And if you mean the names of people/places/movies/etc. how can you not be corrected? It's literally the name you are trying to say

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#282

Post by nindalf »

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…

> it seems to me that the people who care the most about this issue are monolingual.

Sort of. I’d speculate that those who care about it the most are people who’ve never struggled and failed to pronounce a name in another language. In my limited experience of knowing 3 languages I never had trouble with any pronunciation. So I came to the unfounded conclusion that a. I can pronounce anything and b. everyone should pronounce everything correctly and if they don’t, it’s for lack of effort.

I was wrong. I learned this while learning how to pronounce Chinese names. I thought I was saying them right. For example I’d pronounce “Xi” as “Shi”. But it wasn’t the right Shi, evidently (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Ston...). My friend sat with me patiently as I attempted it over and over. Every time she’d say “no, not Shi, it’s more like Shi”. I couldn’t hear the difference. So even if I put in more time, I wouldn’t succeed.

So now I’m more tolerant of people making mistakes. As long as they make an effort, it’s good enough.

If anyone would like a challenge, try pronouncing the word “Tamil” from the language Tamil. I haven’t heard anyone who wasn’t a native speaker pronounce it correctly.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#283

Post by eyko »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #256
eyko wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same boat here. Vicente in Spanish so I go by Vincent most of the time (either the english or the French pronounciations, I don't care). Most people see my name in Spanish and pronounce it like it was Italian ("Vinchente", they always add an N). I've never been bothered by it one bit, at least they tried. For the curious, the correct pronounciation is either "Vee-sen-teh" or with the spanish voiceless-dental-fricativ…

Yup. Take Bob; in English, especially American English it's pronounced like "Baawhb" (exaggerated, weirdly phonetic), but over here (Dutch) it would be pronounced as "Bop", with a very short / clipped O sound. Of course there's also names that have transformed to nearly unrecognizable forms; George over here has evolved into Sjors (or the other way around?), John into Sjon, etc.

Another interesting one: James and Jacob are the same name (from the Hebrew Yaʿqob), and in spanish it's either found as "Jaime", "Jacobo" or "Santiago" which comes from "Saint Iago" (Iago being an old spanish conversion of the Latin "Iacobus" which came to other romance languages as Yago, Iaco, Jacob, Yacobo, Jacobo etc).

The "J" consonant leads to many interesting things because of how many pronounciations it has. It can be an english "J" or the softer latin "J" (identical to an I) or an in between Y which could be between an english J and SH. In current spanish, however, the J is pronounced as the "voiceless velar fricative"[1] (a very strong H?), so whilst the name started sounding like "Iacobo", it's now a very firm HHakobo.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_velar_fricative

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#284

Post by bjowen »

PeterisP wrote: post #268
ylyn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

This is so hard to explain in text, given the variation of English accents and that aspiration is not meaningful in English. For my regional speech, the strongest difference would be something like the difference between the /k/ sounds in “kale” and “scale”. Nothing to do with my feelings for the vegetable, but it gets an extra scornful bit of turbulence.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#285

Post by FroshKiller »

eyko wrote: post #245
jaimebuelta wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an strategy of two pronunciations for my name (Jaime, it's a Spanish name): - Quick chats, like answering your name at Starbucks, talking with the electric company on the phone, etc. I use directly the English pronunciation of my name (like Jamie). It's faster, easier and who cares, frankly... Gratefully, I can now use "wrote as Lanister" and fix some writing problems - With more meaningful relationships, like…

Same boat here. Vicente in Spanish so I go by Vincent most of the time (either the english or the French pronounciations, I don't care). Most people see my name in Spanish and pronounce it like it was Italian ("Vinchente", they always add an N). I've never been bothered by it one bit, at least they tried. For the curious, the correct pronounciation is either "Vee-sen-teh" or with the spanish voiceless-dental-fricativ…

My first name is Jonathan, and my Indian colleagues whose mother tongue is Marathi either say "Jonatan" or avoid it altogether because they think it has five syllables due to Marathi's implicit schwa. I'm sure I've done all kinds of violence to their names myself.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#286

Post by bjowen »

schoen wrote: post #89
dhosek wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I learned how to pronounce the Dutch ui which I had been treating as if it were Spanish (wee). Once I learned it corresponded to English ow, suddenly a whole host of written Dutch opened itself up to me.

If you happen to know German, ui --> au is an amazing discovery (huis --> Haus, uitgang --> Ausgang, various others).

I cannot thank you enough

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#287

Post by PeterisP »

Epenthesis wrote: post #11
yesenadam wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "A" as in the "au" in "caught" Not an expert, but I can't offhand think of a language where this is even approximately how a is pronounced—which ones are you thinking of?

* Spanish: "hacer" * French: "pas" * Italian: "casa" * Mandarin (written using pinyin): "bàng" * German: "katze" * Japanes (written in romaji): "arigato" * Bahasa Indonesia: "bahasa" Note that the sounds in these various languages are not exactly the same, but the "au" in "caught" is the closest sound in the native phonological inventory of a General American speaker (given said speaker pronounces "caught" and "cot"…

It's worth noting that "given said speaker pronounces "caught" and "cot" differently" is a bit misleading qualifier - there are many who have some difference between "caught" and "cot" (with "caught" being similar to "cot" but longer/smoother, with a clear differentiation), but it's clearly not the sound you intended that would match Italian "casa" and IPA 'a'; so pronouncing "caught" and "cot" differently apparently does not necessarily imply pronouncing "caught" the same way you do.

Also, if I listen to the audio examples at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger then it's exactly the other way around, that the "merged" pronunciation seems like an appropriate representation of "a" in words like Italian "casa", with "non-merged" "cought" sounding very different from that?

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#288

Post by flyinghamster »

neltnerb wrote: post #257
renewiltord wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very reasonable. But I wonder if there is a word (in any language) for the pointless pleasure of saying a foreign word in the foreign language pronunciation. And for the pleasure of observing someone mistakenly do so. How many Pauls build a Les Paul? For my part, even my two syllable first name can be hard for Anglophones, though they are usually very eager to learn how to say it (people are usually very kind…

Cosmopolitan aesthetics would be the root of the phenomena I imagine, if that word doesn't still apply. I know it was a discussion for many decades about whether a piece of music should be in the original language or the translation. Everyone settled on the original, so we all sing with absolutely atrocious accents in foreign languages as best we can. I feel like this whole area is a giant minefield for actors now, s…

> I know it was a discussion for many decades about whether an piece of music should be in the original language or the translation. Everyone settled on the original, so we all sing with absolutely atrocious accents in foreign languages as best we can.

I can relate to that. Pre-pandemic, I was singing in a community chorus, where we routinely had to sing in languages we don't necessarily speak. Typically, the director would coach us. We had an actual German in the audience one time when we did some Christmas pieces in German, and he told us that we sang the words correctly, but it was still odd to hear German with a Chicago accent. :)

I've heard of one top-level group bringing in a professor to coach Church Slavonic when they did Rachmaninoff's _Vespers_. Since I don't even speak modern Russian, I have no idea how well they did it, but their musicianship was outstanding.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#289

Post by ithinkso »

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".…

Susan Wojcicki - polish people would immediately assume it's written online and would correct the surname to Wójcicki because it makes much more sense grammatically speaking and I think that's what it was originally before being anglicized.

Note that 'ó' in not a form of 'o' but of 'u' so subsequent pronunciations with 'o' sounds a bit weird for us polish speakers

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#290

Post by elros »

rlpb wrote: post #234
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 na…

> (imagine someone saying "Dive" instead of "Dave")

So, an Australian? :D

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