3 ms·

I appreciate the effort, but I don't like this attitude of blaming the speaker. My company once even had a video saying that mispronouncing a name was a 'micro

by axaxs 5y ago

I appreciate the effort, but I don't like this attitude of blaming the speaker. My company once even had a video saying that mispronouncing a name was a 'microaggression.' That insanity aside, there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age. As long as we aren't being demeaning, why go for perfection? Nearly every foreigner pronounces the short 'i' in my name as 'ee', and I've never once cared enough to be upset or attempt to correct them.

tluyben2 5y ago
Not even age... English-only speakers generally (let's say it never happened and my business is with British and Aus people mainly) cannot correctly pronounce either or both my first or last name. Some of them, especially the closer partners, want to try but we literally had sessions where we recorded me saying it and them saying it and listening to it to show them it was still different even though in their head it sounds exactly the same... and I really really don't care: I have a client calling me 'tiktok' (long before the tiktok app) because he got fed up struggling with my name. Fine with me.
- wink 5y ago
  Had a native English speaker as a coworker who struggled with U vs Ü in German. No matter how we tried to convey the difference in sound, "you're saying the same thing".
- axaxs 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. The worst for me personally is 'ng'. My wife has tried a hundred times to teach me. To me it just sounds like a nasally 'n'. I tried that and get laughed at. She tries our short 'i' and gets laughed at. All in fun of course.
nielsole 5y ago
When I (German) was ~15 I was blaming esp. US folks for not managing to pronounce my handle correctly. That changed when I completely failed to pronounce Baltic and Arabic names to the name-holders satisfaction. I can't even hear where I am going wrong.
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago
  > I can't even hear where I am going wrong. Same effect for me, once on a flight between Florida and New York I asked for water (I'm French), I did my best to pronounce it correctly but the flight attendant couldn't understand me. Another passenger told him "I think he wants water". For me, he used the exact same pronunciation as me. I never understood what was wrong.
  - FroshKiller 5y ago
    No kidding, try asking for "agua" (Spanish) next time.
gnicholas 5y ago
> there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age. It's not that people can't make the sound above a certain age, it's that above a certain age it becomes difficult to learn new sounds that are not in your language. This age varies by person, and for some people it is well before adulthood arrives (when you are likely to be exposed to a much greater diversity of names). One of my linguistics professors, whose specialty is to learn and document 'dying languages', told me that if I wanted to learn a new language, I should do it before 30. Even for him — a trained linguist who knows the IPA forward and backwards — age makes a difference.
- axaxs 5y ago
  Thanks for your experience. I think the age is closer to 13 than 30. You can learn and speak 'well enough' at many ages, but past a certain age you will always sound different, and it's much younger than 30 for the majority of folks.
Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
I heard from a linguist that the best way to learn foreign pronunciation as an adult is to learn to imitate the accent of a native speaker of that language. Which of course is also a microagression, so you just can't win no matter what you do. It makes sense, though. Trying to learn the grammar, vocabulary and phonology all at once makes you task saturated, learning them separately is easier.
bmn__ 5y ago
> there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age That's false. > why go for perfection? It's politeness, nay, more than that: respect. Trying hard to produce a name as accurately as one can shows one's dialogue partner or audience that one is making an effort. A name is a very personal thing. People like it when they notice that they are paid attention to, and will approve of and in their mind raise the social status of the speaker. Positive examples are: • Max Miller of "tasting history" who quite obviously spends some time to learn a word or name correctly from an experienced speaker. • Louis Rossmann who does not prepare, but is apologetic ("pardon me for butchering the pronunciation") or would altogether skip reading a name out loud rather than mangling it. This is okay because the text of the news article is also on the screen. Negative examples are: • Most other people who in general just hope for the best and simply blindly apply the rules from the embedding language (here: English), or if confronted with something out of their experience, just make shit up. • Adam Ragusea whose argument boils down to "I am American, therefore exceptional and I get a free pass to knowingly and willingly mispronounce".

by axaxs 5y ago

tluyben2 5y ago

Not even age... English-only speakers generally (let's say it never happened and my business is with British and Aus people mainly) cannot correctly pronounce either or both my first or last name. Some of them, especially the closer partners, want to try but we literally had sessions where we recorded me saying it and them saying it and listening to it to show them it was still different even though in their head it sounds exactly the same... and I really really don't care: I have a client calling me 'tiktok' (long before the tiktok app) because he got fed up struggling with my name. Fine with me.

wink 5y ago
Had a native English speaker as a coworker who struggled with U vs Ü in German. No matter how we tried to convey the difference in sound, "you're saying the same thing".
axaxs 5y ago
Thanks for sharing. The worst for me personally is 'ng'. My wife has tried a hundred times to teach me. To me it just sounds like a nasally 'n'. I tried that and get laughed at. She tries our short 'i' and gets laughed at. All in fun of course.

nielsole 5y ago

When I (German) was ~15 I was blaming esp. US folks for not managing to pronounce my handle correctly. That changed when I completely failed to pronounce Baltic and Arabic names to the name-holders satisfaction. I can't even hear where I am going wrong.

JPLeRouzic 5y ago
> I can't even hear where I am going wrong. Same effect for me, once on a flight between Florida and New York I asked for water (I'm French), I did my best to pronounce it correctly but the flight attendant couldn't understand me. Another passenger told him "I think he wants water". For me, he used the exact same pronunciation as me. I never understood what was wrong.
- FroshKiller 5y ago
  No kidding, try asking for "agua" (Spanish) next time.

gnicholas 5y ago

> there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age. It's not that people can't make the sound above a certain age, it's that above a certain age it becomes difficult to learn new sounds that are not in your language. This age varies by person, and for some people it is well before adulthood arrives (when you are likely to be exposed to a much greater diversity of names). One of my linguistics professors, whose specialty is to learn and document 'dying languages', told me that if I wanted to learn a new language, I should do it before 30. Even for him — a trained linguist who knows the IPA forward and backwards — age makes a difference.

axaxs 5y ago
Thanks for your experience. I think the age is closer to 13 than 30. You can learn and speak 'well enough' at many ages, but past a certain age you will always sound different, and it's much younger than 30 for the majority of folks.

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago

I heard from a linguist that the best way to learn foreign pronunciation as an adult is to learn to imitate the accent of a native speaker of that language. Which of course is also a microagression, so you just can't win no matter what you do. It makes sense, though. Trying to learn the grammar, vocabulary and phonology all at once makes you task saturated, learning them separately is easier.

bmn__ 5y ago

> there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age That's false. > why go for perfection? It's politeness, nay, more than that: respect. Trying hard to produce a name as accurately as one can shows one's dialogue partner or audience that one is making an effort. A name is a very personal thing. People like it when they notice that they are paid attention to, and will approve of and in their mind raise the social status of the speaker. Positive examples are: • Max Miller of "tasting history" who quite obviously spends some time to learn a word or name correctly from an experienced speaker. • Louis Rossmann who does not prepare, but is apologetic ("pardon me for butchering the pronunciation") or would altogether skip reading a name out loud rather than mangling it. This is okay because the text of the news article is also on the screen. Negative examples are: • Most other people who in general just hope for the best and simply blindly apply the rules from the embedding language (here: English), or if confronted with something out of their experience, just make shit up. • Adam Ragusea whose argument boils down to "I am American, therefore exceptional and I get a free pass to knowingly and willingly mispronounce".