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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#371

Post by rendall »

throwaway02824 wrote: post #351
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…

> No speaker of any other language in the world even tries to pronounce foreign words like foreigners do [citation desperately needed] I'm a mothertongue Italian speaker. Never in my life I heard someone pronouncing "Bill Gates" or even "Google" with the Italian grammar/pronunciation rules. People would routinely ask how to pronounce foods in a Japanese or Chinese restaurant. Or thank the waiter/waitress for correcti…

> Never in my life I heard someone pronouncing "Bill Gates" or even "Google" with the Italian grammar/pronunciation rules.

But if you native Italian speakers did happen to pronounce it "gah-tes" or "googleh" or whatever while speaking Italian, Americans would not insist that Italians are pronouncing it wrong. They would just say that's how Italians pronounce it.

By contrast, if a native English speaker pronounces an Italian word according to how it's spelled according to English conventions (we're using "bruschetta" as the example, so, as BREW-shet-uh), while speaking English an Italian will insist that this pronunciation is wrong.

>> If someone gives you a hard time, smirk at them for being the unsophisticated provincial they are.

> This is incredibly arrogant.

I was making a joke. Probably didn't land well with those who disagree with me.

It might be a cultural difference, but it strikes me as incredibly arrogant to tell people who are speaking their own native language that they are pronouncing a word wrong simply because it originated in your native language and they don't pronounce it like you do.

e.g https://youtu.be/rHBFt11zz7U

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#372

Post by zhte415 »

HuShifang wrote: post #51

Not a native speaker, but at least in a Beijing accent, I wouldn't say that "Chen" rhymes with "fun." "Cheng" or "Zheng," or "Feng," sure, "fun" works as a comparison. "Chen," "Zhen," etc. would rhyme more with "pen" or "hen."

That one threw me too, quite a few did, and it's certainly not a north/south accent thing.

It might be easier just to use one of the many dictionaries with embedded audio.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#373

Post by LordAtlas »

OJFord wrote: post #307
LordAtlas wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm studying Hindi as a second language, and the inconsistency of transliterations drives me crazy, I'd rather nobody transliterated and just used devanagari if it's not going to be IAST. Worse, Google has updated the (abc -> हिंदी) keyboard on Android so that in many cases it actually refuses the standard transliterations in favour of popular ones, I assume. And so if you want पीता you have to type 'peeta'; 'piita'…

You have my condolences for Google's nonsense. I have not written anything in Hindi for the past couple of decades, I think, despite growing up in Delhi and speaking the language fluently. All my work communication and conversation with friends is in English. The good thing about Hindi is that if you know the script, it's pronounced exactly as it's written. There are no strange inconsistencies like the monstrosity that is English.

> In fairness to butcherers of Manohar's name though, you really do need to be told/have learnt how the transliteration (IAST or roughly) is supposed to work. Otherwise of course you're going to read it in the language you know.

I have absolutely no ill-will for people who pronounce any language's names solely after reading them. But if you work with someone and they introduce themselves to you, it's just common courtesy to at least make a best effort attempt to get the syllable emphasis and the vowels right. If you _hear_ it and still get it hopelessly wrong, I would be less charitable.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#374

Post by zamadatix »

jldugger wrote: post #8

"Non-English" -> Mainland Chinese. Well, it's a start I guess. Probably worth adding Vietnamese considering how few people in the US know how to pronounce "Nguyen".

The one thing I've learned about pronouncing Nguyen is that everybody agrees English speakers pronounce it wrong. And when I say everybody agrees I mean you can't find an example of somebody saying it where there isn't further debate that example is also incorrect somehow. Typically because it's an anglicized version but also debates on dialects. At this point I'm not sure there is an always "right" way to say that name in an English context even if there is a "correct" way it should be said.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#375

Post by PeterisP »

elros wrote: post #295
PeterisP wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Both recordings of the "tell" word exhibit aspiration. I guess it is perhaps more noticeable to me because I'm quite well-versed in phonetics. A common way of illustrating aspiration is: hold a sheet of paper in front of your mouth (or your hand), as you say the words. "tell" will give you a noticeable puff of air as it leaves the mouth, as opposed to "stellar", which won't. Maybe these recordings are helpful to you:…

Thanks, that was helpful, I seem to get the difference now - just the "tell" example wasn't working as I (apparently unlike most English speakers) seem to pronounce that word with an unaspirated t.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#376

Post by lou1306 »

oblio wrote: post #259
lou1306 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the original commenter, but I'll try to explain because something similar happens in Italy as well It's not a "wrong" pronunciation, but it's clearly influenced by how Spanish/Italian stresses individual letters way more than English. Let's take Hillary Clinton as another example: Italians pronounce it "Heel-lah-ree Clean-tone" (/ˈilari ˈklinton/), which is way different from the actual pronunciation.

I don't think they pronounce it "Clean-tone", though. Knowing Italian, it's more likely to be Clean-tohn.

Indeed, it's more like "tohn" (is there any common English word with that sound?)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#377

Post by yoz-y »

I don't care how you pronounce my name at all. However I do care about how people write it - if they have a way of knowing the correct spelling. I find it quite baffling that some people don't even bother to look at the signature, much less copy paste it.

Making people who dwell upon pronunciation is harder. The article misses half of the story by ignoring Chinese tonalities. Also in my experience many sounds from Eastern European languages are indistinguishable by some non-practitioners. (E.g. a difference between a "n" and "ň" is seldom heard by the French)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#378

Post by Symmetry »

Another aspect of pronouncing Japanese names is paying attention to how long you're supposed to hold a syllable. I knew a Japanese researcher named Yuuki (moderately common Japanese name meaning "courage") who was bothered by people always calling him Yuki (common girl's name meaning "snow") so he just went by a chosen English name.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#379

Post by toastal »

peteretep wrote: post #332
toastal wrote: post #299

No one could produce the sounds for my name in Thailand, so I just picked a nickname (as is the local custom) and I've rolled with that as my primary name ever since.

Having a common name they’ve heard before helps to some degree here, but also there’s a Thai way of saying it and woe-betide you if you don’t say it the Thai way… My favourite Thai pronunciation is the common Thai nickname “Apple” which is a loanword. However they pronounce it “ah-poon” because the character they use for the l sound (ล) is pronounced as an n in the terminal position. Also, Thais like to shorten words…

The schwa + 'l' ("le") is the exact sound I'm talking about. As a someone wanting to practice good privacy, having an alias is always nice.

It's pretty obvious now though. Most all 'weird' Thai pronunciations for English come from transliterating English into the RTGS Romanization system (whose sounds don't align with English, like 'p' being ป, the unaspirated version of that sound which English doesn't have) an then translating from the Romanization to the Thai abugida to be pronounced. Speculating, since someone misunderstood stress syllables always put a falling tone on the final syllable and now you have the Thai pronunciation. Pepsi isn't translated as phonemes as เพพซิ, but p-e-p-s-i as ป-เ-ป-ซ-•ี; smash in that falling tone and you get เป๊ปซี่ which honest to Godzilla sounds like bep-SEE instead of PEP-si. Ask someone to read your ID and they'll use this same system to read it instead of trying to think about how English writing works.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#380

Post by myself248 »

soperj wrote: post #335
neltnerb wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the story of the town of Versailles, Indiana. It was common knowledge nearby that anyone who came in and pronounced it "ver-sai" was from out of town. Because everyone living there called it "ver-sails". I use this as an example of how if anyone gets to decide how something is pronounced, it's the people who live there. The city is simply called "ver-sails" and that's all there is to it. It is not…

> This reminds me of the story of the town of Versailles, Indiana. Detroit would be the same way if it wasn't such a big city. Easier to see when you add back the accent, Détroit.

Oh, DEE-troit is just the beginning. Other notables include the home of Milan Dragway, pronounced MYL-in, or Lake Orion, pronounced OR-ee-yin.
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