Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 474 posts

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#321

Post by GoblinSlayer »

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…

Even language carriers don't get my name right. Sometimes I say it myself, they realize they were mispronouncing it and say "why didn't you say about it?", but two weeks later they mispronounce it again as if nothing happened.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#323

Post by throwaway287391 »

happy_path wrote: post #210
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…

Good idea. Establishing a relationship between your name and with some named thing of the real world: a TV series character, a city, etc.

I get your point but I like that you describe the name of a character in a fictional TV show as a "thing of the real world", as compared to the name of a coworker you speak with regularly. :p

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#324

Post by bloak »

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…

"Just pronounce it the way it's spelled" might make sense in some languages, and it probably makes a lot of sense in Russian, say, where the person who transcribed a name from Latin letters has already decided how it should be (mis)pronounced (though the position of the stress makes a big difference in Russian), but it doesn't make sense in English because the spelling is rather inconsistent even if you're looking just at ordinary everyday words like "machine", "chemical", "bough", "cough", "put", "but", whatever.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#325

Post by [deleted] »

nindalf wrote: post #282
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 pr…

[deleted]

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#326

Post by mynegation »

notafraudster wrote: post #300
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…

I am E/F bilingual. I taught in an educational institution which is multicultural with dozens of cultural origins. When I get names wrong, I see grimaces on their faces. When I hear other people get common but foreign names -- like Nguyen for instance -- wrong, I grimace too. I am now at an institution in a country where basically no one outside the country knows how to pronounce anything. It takes me about 5 minutes…

The proper pronunciation of my name requires an emphasis that is not on a first syllable, rolling R, and palatalization of a consonant in the middle. Even if I tell people how to pronounce it properly, repeating it back to me would be too much to ask from people who never palatalized a consonant in their life. My point is: I don’t grimace and I don’t bother.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#327

Post by Symmetry »

ajmurmann wrote: post #93
mastazi wrote: post #45

Four points for Italian: 1. Vowels are like in Spanish ("a" always sounds "ah" etc.) 2. The group "ch" sounds like a "k" sound, e.g. bruschetta is "broos-keh-tah" 3. The groups "gl" and "gn" sound like Spanish "ll" and "ñ" respectively. Those are hard to pronounce for English speakers, the easy shortcut is just imagine that the "g" is silent and that the "l" or "n" are a bit more pronounced. 4. Double consonants need…

"Vowels are like in Spanish ("a" always sounds "ah" etc.)" This is mostly true for every language that uses the Roman alphabet and isn't English. The great vowel shift in English changed his vowels get pronounced in English when they were a lot more similar. This even holds for transliteration systems like Hepburn and painting. If you try to pronounce vowels in a language other than English you are likely gonna be le…

My last name has an 'ough' in it and that has made me intensely aware of that fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ough_(orthography)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#328

Post by jagger27 »

qalmakka wrote: post #310
mmarq wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> if your name is “ Friedrich” you should accept that it’s unpronounceable for an Italian and that “fredrik” I think that the only unpronounceable things in "Freidrich" for an Italian speaker are the guttural Rs and the /ç/ sound at the end. Most Italians are acquainted to the fact that 'ei' is /ai/ in German thank to South Tyrol and names such as "Einstein" being common knowledge - nobody would ever pronounce it /'e…

I think people really overdo the idea that certain sounds simply cannot be replicated by non-native speakers. If there is any remote proximity to native speakers and a bare minimum effort is made to practice tricky sounds, it's totally doable.

I certainly picked up French quite easily in school. Later, in university, I picked up Italian very easily (though I had some exposure from older relatives). More recently, I absorbed a tiny bit of "hey how are you" Mandarin from coworkers, who were surprised at my ability to accurately parrot some words after a little bit of practice.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#329

Post by ZeroGravitas »

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…

Are you saying these people should be more aware and considerate of your culture and experience as an immigrant with a hard to pronounce name in an English speaking country? That they should consider your feelings and change how they behave to suit you better?

Because that sounds pretty 'woke' to me, and you seem to be attacking people for trying to be woke and annoying you in the process.

I just worry that if someone attempts to make you happy by doing this, there will be an even smaller minority of people with hard to pronounce names and right-of-center political views who will be absolutely furious that the PC brigade (i.e. you) are trying to dictate what English speakers are allowed to make small talk about about in their own country, stifling free speech just in case some foreigner gets annoyed. Then they'll insist that English speakers should always do whatever their gut instinct tells them to even, no especially, if it annoys some oversensitive immigrant. Some people would much prefer to defend the noble principle of free speech than worry about something silly like wasting 5 mins in a meeting.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#330

Post by ithinkso »

rendall wrote: post #319
ithinkso wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, bu…

> you think is unique because you are English-language speaker I am a native English-language speaker, but I speak other languages as well. In all languages, there is exactly zero expectation that speakers will pronounce English words like English-speakers do. Because in all languages, foreign words are remade into native words. As it had been in English until the mid 20th century. > And if you mean the names of peop…

You are being downvoted, as should you, but I still want to answer your questions.

> Not sure what language you speak natively

Polish

>but no one corrects Italians for saying "Germania" instead of Deutschland, nor Spaniards for saying "Nueva York", nor the French for saying "Angleterre".

It's literally the second thing people learn when learning a second language. The first is how to say your name, the second is where are you from. And then you pretend to be from somewhere else and do to the above. After the first lesson of any language the only thing you know is your name and names of other countries lol so I'm not sure what are you talking about

Post reply on HN