5 ms·

> In my personal experience, I won't easily switch between languages For me the trickiest is switching fluently between the sound systems of several languages

> In my personal experience, I won't easily switch between languages For me the trickiest is switching fluently between the sound systems of several languages in a split second. Suppose I'm speaking in American English and mention a double-barreled word like "Stern-Brocot tree" which contains a German and a French name. In that context it's very difficult to maintain proper pronunciation even though I can pronounce the parts perfectly well individually.

_delirium 16y ago
In those cases I usually try to pronounce the words with an accent of the language I'm speaking in, rather than the way they were in the source language. Sometimes this actually takes more work if I know both languages, but I find it makes me more understandable, and helps keep me mentally "in" the language I'm speaking. For example, if I mention an American city while speaking Greek, my instinct is to pronounce it as in American English, but it's more colloquial and easier to understand if I pronounce it with Greek phonology. So for example, I'd pronounce Chicago roughly as see-KAH-gho (i.e., how you'd pronounce Σικάγο), George Bush as Tzortz Bous, etc., rather than switching to an American phonology for one word or phrase.
- psykotic 16y ago
  Yes, that tends to happen automatically if you speak fast. I'm fastidious on this question because I hear most foreign names utterly mispronounced by English speakers, so I try to do my small part in rectifying it.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    I guess I don't really consider adapting a word or name to the sound system of the target language to be "mispronunciation". When speaking Greek, I use Greek phonemes, and when speaking English, I use English phonemes, which seems to be how most native speakers do things in their own language. I mean, since I speak both natively I could mix the phonemes, pronouncing Greek names in English as if I were speaking Greek and vice-versa, but it would seem weird and affected, like I was showing off that I knew multiple languages. If anything it's something of a marker of non-native speakers; native English speakers who learn Greek as a foreign language will often slip back into English phonemes to "correctly" say the names of people or places from English-speaking countries rather than adapting them to Greek phonemes, whereas Greeks typically don't (not even Greeks who speak fluent English).
    - psykotic 16y ago
      There are two levels of mispronunciation. If you pronounce 'Hermite' in English so it rhymes with 'thermite', you have no excuse. It's ignorant and plain wrong. If you pronounce it with a silent 'H' and use the right ending sound and as close approximations to the vowels and intonation as your language will accommodate, that's perfectly fine; I do that too. It's the difference between ignorance and knowledge, carelessness and respect. That still leaves room for pragmatism and plain speech.
      - _delirium 16y ago
        I sure hope, then, that you correctly pronounce the initial 'p' in Greek names starting with a 'pt' and 'ps' consonant cluster, rather than omitting it like an ignorant American! (Do you pronounce the 'p' in Ptolemy, or mispronounce it as if it were written Tolemy?) For good measure one should pronounce it in words like psychology as well, but I suppose the pronunciation error there has been sufficiently fossilized that it's now an English word with a new pronunciation. Perhaps the Hermitian will suffer the same fate as the Ptolemies and psychologists?
        psykotic 16y ago
        That's where pragmatism comes in! Some words are grandfathered into the language and that's that. For names of people that have yet to be entered into dictionaries, I fight my little fight to have their pronunciations conform more closely to the original. To prove my dedication to pragmatism, when I first moved to the US many years ago, no-one was able to pronounce my one-syllable first name, to say nothing of my last name. After a week or so I gave up and started introducing myself as 'pair'. When I later lived in Korea, a country whose language is deficient in diphthongs, I introduced myself as 'pae-uh' and wrote my name accordingly in Hangul.
        _delirium 16y ago
        Ah ok, I think I see what you mean--- you're willing to adapt for phonemes that don't exist, but not otherwise. It seems that's easiest to do when going between scripts, because the transliteration step lets you rewrite the word phonetically in the new language, as close as possible. But between languages like English and French that share a script, you have to keep the same spelling, which then will typically imply a different pronunciation in the target language, unless you apply special "remember, this was a loanword" pronunciation rules. An alternative would be to do transliteration even when going from Latin->Latin languages, taking a French word and respelling it so it reads phonetically in English, but I suspect people would like that even less. I believe French actually does do a little bit of that when borrowing English words, but in that case there's an official language academy to invent the new spellings.

_delirium 16y ago

In those cases I usually try to pronounce the words with an accent of the language I'm speaking in, rather than the way they were in the source language. Sometimes this actually takes more work if I know both languages, but I find it makes me more understandable, and helps keep me mentally "in" the language I'm speaking. For example, if I mention an American city while speaking Greek, my instinct is to pronounce it as in American English, but it's more colloquial and easier to understand if I pronounce it with Greek phonology. So for example, I'd pronounce Chicago roughly as see-KAH-gho (i.e., how you'd pronounce Σικάγο), George Bush as Tzortz Bous, etc., rather than switching to an American phonology for one word or phrase.

psykotic 16y ago
Yes, that tends to happen automatically if you speak fast. I'm fastidious on this question because I hear most foreign names utterly mispronounced by English speakers, so I try to do my small part in rectifying it.
- _delirium 16y ago
  I guess I don't really consider adapting a word or name to the sound system of the target language to be "mispronunciation". When speaking Greek, I use Greek phonemes, and when speaking English, I use English phonemes, which seems to be how most native speakers do things in their own language. I mean, since I speak both natively I could mix the phonemes, pronouncing Greek names in English as if I were speaking Greek and vice-versa, but it would seem weird and affected, like I was showing off that I knew multiple languages. If anything it's something of a marker of non-native speakers; native English speakers who learn Greek as a foreign language will often slip back into English phonemes to "correctly" say the names of people or places from English-speaking countries rather than adapting them to Greek phonemes, whereas Greeks typically don't (not even Greeks who speak fluent English).
  - psykotic 16y ago
    There are two levels of mispronunciation. If you pronounce 'Hermite' in English so it rhymes with 'thermite', you have no excuse. It's ignorant and plain wrong. If you pronounce it with a silent 'H' and use the right ending sound and as close approximations to the vowels and intonation as your language will accommodate, that's perfectly fine; I do that too. It's the difference between ignorance and knowledge, carelessness and respect. That still leaves room for pragmatism and plain speech.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      I sure hope, then, that you correctly pronounce the initial 'p' in Greek names starting with a 'pt' and 'ps' consonant cluster, rather than omitting it like an ignorant American! (Do you pronounce the 'p' in Ptolemy, or mispronounce it as if it were written Tolemy?) For good measure one should pronounce it in words like psychology as well, but I suppose the pronunciation error there has been sufficiently fossilized that it's now an English word with a new pronunciation. Perhaps the Hermitian will suffer the same fate as the Ptolemies and psychologists?
      - psykotic 16y ago
        That's where pragmatism comes in! Some words are grandfathered into the language and that's that. For names of people that have yet to be entered into dictionaries, I fight my little fight to have their pronunciations conform more closely to the original. To prove my dedication to pragmatism, when I first moved to the US many years ago, no-one was able to pronounce my one-syllable first name, to say nothing of my last name. After a week or so I gave up and started introducing myself as 'pair'. When I later lived in Korea, a country whose language is deficient in diphthongs, I introduced myself as 'pae-uh' and wrote my name accordingly in Hangul.
        _delirium 16y ago
        Ah ok, I think I see what you mean--- you're willing to adapt for phonemes that don't exist, but not otherwise. It seems that's easiest to do when going between scripts, because the transliteration step lets you rewrite the word phonetically in the new language, as close as possible. But between languages like English and French that share a script, you have to keep the same spelling, which then will typically imply a different pronunciation in the target language, unless you apply special "remember, this was a loanword" pronunciation rules. An alternative would be to do transliteration even when going from Latin->Latin languages, taking a French word and respelling it so it reads phonetically in English, but I suspect people would like that even less. I believe French actually does do a little bit of that when borrowing English words, but in that case there's an official language academy to invent the new spellings.