Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers • Hacker News Board

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#461

Post by Markoff » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 6:51 AM UTC

Vaphell wrote: post #450

Markoff wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about rz, is it same as ř in Czech? Good luck with this letter to any native English speaker. :-))

no, it traces back to the same thing pretty much, but in modern Polish it's indistinguishable from ż (ž?) I assume that long time ago it went like this r' -> ř -> řż -> ż, which effectively removed the foundational r-ness of the thing. Off the top of my head, the Polish language has lost the phonetic distinction between rz and ż -> ż, h and ch -> ch, u and ó (flat u vs long o) -> u In some regional dialects near sout…

there is still distinction between ř and ž in Czech and it would be noticable to native speaker, though I guess non-native speakers would not notice the difference, same can't be said about Slovak ä vs e unless you try to speak extremely clearly and pronounce very hard (which would look odd), for most of the people ä was completely replaced with e

dřevo in Czech is actually drevo in Slovak

noga, drugi, bog, you can in all replace g with H and you will have CZ/SK version, seems Polish is in this aspect way closer to Russian with overused G instead H

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#462

Post by eozoon » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 10:21 AM UTC

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…

I'm from HK, the sounds in my name only really make sense in Cantonese - it is difficult to pronounce in most Chinese dialect, even I get stuck trying to say it in Mandarin myself.

So when I'm with non-Cantonese speaking people, I go by a random Anglo name I picked for myself decades ago. Honestly, I feel more attached to that name than any non-Cantonese pronunciation of my legal name.

It gets annoying when some well meaning people insist that they must learn how to pronounce my "real name", it leaves me two choices:

A) Lie and say that their attempt is good, and resign to never knowing if they're calling me for the rest of time, or

B) Repeat it dozens of time until they give up, and sometimes have them complain that they never encountered those sounds in their Chinese 101 class...

So while I think it's good to make an effort to pronounce names correctly, it's probably better to give up after a few honest attempt, if the person you are addressing don't mind.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#463

Post by ZeroGravitas » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 11:08 AM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #355

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someon…

You got me well confused here. Take my experience of the phenomenon as you wish and incorporate it or not into your decision making process, at your leisure. I'm not the only one who feels this way when citizens corner us immigrants into pronouncing our names for a while.

Feel free to be annoyed and to share whatever you think the right thing to do is whenever you encounter these people.

However, calling them "woke-posturing" in a disparaging way is a paradox if you prefer them to be aware of your opinions and experiences and change to better accommodate you as a member of an outgroup.

That's what "woke" means.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#464

Post by rendall » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 11:22 AM UTC

scaryclam wrote: post #427

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…

> 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 really not. The entire point of language is to be understood by others. If you're unwilling to take any time to find out how to be understood, then you're really just failing at basic communication. It's not up to others to interpret your misunderstan…

> "The entire point of language is to be understood by others. If you're unwilling to take any time to find out how to be understood, then you're really just failing at basic communication. It's not up to others to interpret your misunderstanding of how to correctly say something, it's up to you to put some effort into being understood."

These are all true statements. They are also non-sequiturs: true statements that have no bearing on the argument.

The question here is: Who gets to decide the correct pronunciation of a foreign word? Who gets to say brew-SKET-ta is correct and BREW-shet-uh is wrong? Italians? Native English speakers?

If you think "Well, clearly, Italians, because they invented bruschetta" then where is the line? Why would you not then pronounce "prosciutto" pro-SHOOT-toh? And the "Bifrost Bridge" BEEF-roast? And "sauna" SOW-na?

Who gets to decide that Hausa people must pronounce "New York" as Americans do, and that Japanese must no longer add a vowel onto the end of foreign words like "Disney Land"?

I'd love your principled answers to those questions.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#465

Post by rendall » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

nautilius wrote: post #413

rendall wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans drive this too. If you read carefully I didn't say we don't.

You wrote "Despite the stereotype, it's not Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce English words in their native tongue." Sure, technically 'Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce their own words in their native tongue.' is different, but it seems an even lower threshold.

If you'd like to address the original point, I'm happy to discuss. No, Americans generally do not tell people how to pronounce English words in their own native language. Not really sure the point you're making here.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#466

Post by nautilius » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 2:41 PM UTC

rendall wrote: post #465

nautilius wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote "Despite the stereotype, it's not Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce English words in their native tongue." Sure, technically 'Americans running around telling foreigners how to pronounce their own words in their native tongue.' is different, but it seems an even lower threshold.

If you'd like to address the original point, I'm happy to discuss. No, Americans generally do not tell people how to pronounce English words in their own native language. Not really sure the point you're making here.

I'm glad that you have full control over every American all of the time, but my experience is quite different.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#467

Post by rendall » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

nautilius wrote: post #466

rendall wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd like to address the original point, I'm happy to discuss. No, Americans generally do not tell people how to pronounce English words in their own native language. Not really sure the point you're making here.

I'm glad that you have full control over every American all of the time, but my experience is quite different.

You're telling us all that you have, on a regular basis, seen Americans telling non-English speakers how to pronounce English words while speaking the foreign tongue?

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#468

Post by Liquid_Fire » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 3:27 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #378

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.

This is not helped by many romanisations omitting the long vowels entirely (e.g. Tokyo).

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#469

Post by nautilius » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

rendall wrote: post #467

nautilius wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad that you have full control over every American all of the time, but my experience is quite different.

You're telling us all that you have, on a regular basis, seen Americans telling non-English speakers how to pronounce English words while speaking the foreign tongue?

Reread your own comment to which I answered, which is quite different from what you're arguing now.

Honestly, I can't tell if you're just trolling with your baiting blatant indiscriminate generalizations 'No speaker of any other language in the world', etc. There's no point in arguing any of it, it speaks for itself.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#470

Post by kazinator » Tue, Jul 27, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

I cannot second the advice to remove the i in Yamashita such that it becomes Yamashta.

It could come across as rude, like you're just trying to spit the person's name out of your mouth to make way for more important words.

Just say ya-ma-shi-ta.

There is a way to actually devoice it so that it still occupies four beats without a prominent "i"; that is more acceptable: ya-ma-sh-ta. The airflow and tongue placement is more or less the same as "shi", just the voice isn't there.

If you don't speak Japanese, don't try to fudge it.

The "shta" elision is acceptable when you're using shita as "down", "bottom" rather than part of a name (even if it means "down" in that name). Or when -shita is the past tense of -suru.

E.g. "kutsushta" -> socks. "benkyōshta" -> studied.