3 ms·

> Why would people want to work in such a homogeneous culture? Why would they want to work for someone who couldn't even be bothered to search the web for "How

> Why would people want to work in such a homogeneous culture? Why would they want to work for someone who couldn't even be bothered to search the web for "How to pronounce Nguyen"? Hilariously, I did a search for "How to pronounce $my_last_name" and each result I checked mispronounced it the same way English speakers always mispronounce it.

mnm1 8y ago
Yeah seriously. Almost every single American mispronounces my name even after I say it multiple times. Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American names like "Lou" more than half the time. When I tell them my name is like another name they can pronounce except without the "o" at the end, they still can't pronounce it despite being able to pronounce my name with an "o" at the end. After three decades of this, I've given up trying to correct people, trying to go with the Americanized pronunciation, or even using my full name at all. It's pointless. Americans are simply incapable of pronouncing anything even remotely foreign even if I enunciate it for them. I don't even bother with my last name. However they say it is fine because it's always wrong. I would recommend people adopt very simple American nicknames if they move here like many Chinese do, even if the name seems like it would be easy to pronounce. There's just no hope in getting people to pronounce your name right. Or accept the American wrong pronunciation and go with that. I've used all these strategies at some point in my life so now I have three names.
- kitten_mittens_ 8y ago
  Germans pronouncing my American first name is the same way. It's a boring common Old Testament name. German has all the phonemes they need to say it too, even if the vowel is off a bit. It's just something that happens, and I don't blame them for it after so long. I get the feeling that Anglicizing or Deutchifying names is universal.
  - mnm1 8y ago
    British people usually have no problem with my name. I guess my issue is that people don't even make an effort. It's one thing to Americanize the name when you've never heard it pronounced correctly, it's another to continue pronouncing it that way after you've heard the correct pronunciation. But yeah, I've given up on this long ago.
- msla 8y ago
  > Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American names like "Lou" more than half the time. That sounds like a dialect, not mispronunciation. > Americans are simply incapable of pronouncing anything even remotely foreign even if I enunciate it for them. Ditto every other nationality, naturally.
msla 8y ago
> Hilariously, I did a search for "How to pronounce $my_last_name" and each result I checked mispronounced it the same way English speakers always mispronounce it. Probably because they insist upon using dictionary respelling schemes instead of IPA, so they can't even notate the phonemes English speakers have trouble with. Of course, trying to learn how to pronounce a phoneme your native language doesn't have without one-on-one instruction is a doomed endeavor for most people, and I daresay you likely mispronounce any number of English words, given how idiosyncratically large the English phonological inventory is.

mnm1 8y ago

Yeah seriously. Almost every single American mispronounces my name even after I say it multiple times. Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American names like "Lou" more than half the time. When I tell them my name is like another name they can pronounce except without the "o" at the end, they still can't pronounce it despite being able to pronounce my name with an "o" at the end. After three decades of this, I've given up trying to correct people, trying to go with the Americanized pronunciation, or even using my full name at all. It's pointless. Americans are simply incapable of pronouncing anything even remotely foreign even if I enunciate it for them. I don't even bother with my last name. However they say it is fine because it's always wrong. I would recommend people adopt very simple American nicknames if they move here like many Chinese do, even if the name seems like it would be easy to pronounce. There's just no hope in getting people to pronounce your name right. Or accept the American wrong pronunciation and go with that. I've used all these strategies at some point in my life so now I have three names.

kitten_mittens_ 8y ago
Germans pronouncing my American first name is the same way. It's a boring common Old Testament name. German has all the phonemes they need to say it too, even if the vowel is off a bit. It's just something that happens, and I don't blame them for it after so long. I get the feeling that Anglicizing or Deutchifying names is universal.
- mnm1 8y ago
  British people usually have no problem with my name. I guess my issue is that people don't even make an effort. It's one thing to Americanize the name when you've never heard it pronounced correctly, it's another to continue pronouncing it that way after you've heard the correct pronunciation. But yeah, I've given up on this long ago.
msla 8y ago
> Hell, they mispronounce common, one syllable American names like "Lou" more than half the time. That sounds like a dialect, not mispronunciation. > Americans are simply incapable of pronouncing anything even remotely foreign even if I enunciate it for them. Ditto every other nationality, naturally.

msla 8y ago

> Hilariously, I did a search for "How to pronounce $my_last_name" and each result I checked mispronounced it the same way English speakers always mispronounce it. Probably because they insist upon using dictionary respelling schemes instead of IPA, so they can't even notate the phonemes English speakers have trouble with. Of course, trying to learn how to pronounce a phoneme your native language doesn't have without one-on-one instruction is a doomed endeavor for most people, and I daresay you likely mispronounce any number of English words, given how idiosyncratically large the English phonological inventory is.