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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 expe

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 background. At last, it seems to me that the people who care the most about this issue are monolingual. It's one thing to do a quick effort at it; you can ask "how do you say your name" real quick and let it go after a try. Or just try to catch how I'll introduce myself, and say it the same way. On the other hand, some folks get hung up on pronouncing my name "properly" and get very annoying about it: "no no no I reaaally want to say your name properly, it's important _for me_". In a 30min meeting, I don't feel like spending 5 minutes giving a useless French pronunciation class for something so pointless. I much prefer hearing my name pronounced wrong by mistake, than wasting time in a useless woke-posturing session with someone using my time to teach them how to make sounds their mouth hasn't been trained to make, supposedly out of respect for my foreignness.

Veen 5y ago
I find the same. My (English) name seems very challenging for French people to pronounce correctly. Probably because it has a diphthong in the middle that doesn’t occur in French. I’ve basically never heard a French person say it right (even my French ex-gf). It doesn’t matter. So long as people attempt some approximation and it doesn’t sound too outlandish, who cares. It’s just part of their accent.
kodah 5y ago
I commonly refer to my last name as vowel soup (I'm french, and it's the Americanization of my family name). It's such a niche last name that I've heard all of two people get my name right and both of them were Cajun or Cajun adjacent - most native French speakers are totally lost on it. I always tell people to call me by my first name when this comes up. I've watched as people did as you described where they spend an inordinate amount of net time (it usually occurs in fragments, such as at the beginning of a meeting) trying to get someone's name "right". When I let people do this, instead of just opting for my very American first name, it almost always felt like I was watching a parody of my last name play out in real time. I didn't put too much thought into it, but holy hell does it get old. I don't like being in the spotlight and wokeism is already very offputting to me. If you find yourself doing this, consider this: I have a weird name and I don't remember people's names very well at all. I remember faces, experiences, and feelings much more. You'll get my name right over time as you hear people around me say it. That's just fine with me.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  Heh, I think employees should be given a fully synthetic identity, mostly for privacy reasons, but it can help with this thing too. The nickname can be also selected so that names aren't reused in a team, which would reduce ambiguity in communication. Even in small teams a lot of time is spent resolving ambiguities which John was referred.
  - kodah 5y ago
    I've thought on this before. I think it's a really cool idea, and maybe a great place to use something like PGP. Some other usecases: - prevents hero worship in software (eg: I'm an x-Googler, believe me) - might put a dent in bigotry based identity issues
remarkEon 5y ago
My last name is French, but in reality the name comes from Germany. My family has been pronouncing it incorrectly for 100 years, and I … just don’t care enough to enforce the correct pronunciation. It feels snobbish to me, like you said. Might be an artifact of being an American.
- seszett 5y ago
  > My family has been pronouncing it incorrectly Well, the French usage for names generally is just to use either a straight French pronunciation based on how the name is written, or an approximation of the foreign pronunciation using sounds that exist in French. Only a handful of well-known names get to have a special pronunciation. If your family has been in France for 100 years, I wouldn't say they pronounce the name "incorrectly", they just pronounce it the correct way in France.
  - neltnerb 5y ago
    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 "wrong", anymore than pronouncing it as you likely say "karate" is not more wrong than "ka-ra-te" (the japanese pronunciation) or that the japanese prounciation of the english word "sweater" being "su-we-ta" is wrong. Borrowed word pronunciation is entirely up to the user.
    - Radim 5y ago
      And also of "Socrates", an American Quake 3 player who insisted on the "soh-crates" pronunciation :-) I also love the double mind-fuck of "karaoke": EN: pronounced "owe-kee" JP: "oh-keh"! EN: but "oke" comes from the English "orchestra" (kara-oke = empty orchestra)… so really should be pronounced "or-keh"? Are we mispronouncing a Japanese mispronounciation of OUR OWN WORD?? (and then of course the Greeks chime in, OG)
jaimebuelta 5y ago
I have an strategy of two pronunciations for my name (Jaime, it's a Spanish name): - Quick chats, like answering your name at Starbucks, talking with the electric company on the phone, etc. I use directly the English pronunciation of my name (like Jamie). It's faster, easier and who cares, frankly... Gratefully, I can now use "wrote as Lanister" and fix some writing problems - With more meaningful relationships, like coworkers or acquaintances that I will be talking several times, etc, the only thing that I care about is an honest try. Most people tends to have problems with the ending vowel, and the initial "hard H" sound, so it sounds more like "Hi-me", but that's absolutely no problem. Different languages have different sounds, and I mispronounce things all the time. All I care about it's the other person putting a bit of effort into it, but that's about it...
- happy_path 5y ago
  Good idea. Establishing a relationship between your name and with some named thing of the real world: a TV series character, a city, etc.
  - throwaway287391 5y ago
    I get your point but I like that you describe the name of a character in a fictional TV show as a "thing of the real world", as compared to the name of a coworker you speak with regularly. :p
    - happy_path 5y ago
      Well, maybe "thing of their culture" would have been a more appropiate term.
- eyko 5y ago
  Same boat here. Vicente in Spanish so I go by Vincent most of the time (either the english or the French pronounciations, I don't care). Most people see my name in Spanish and pronounce it like it was Italian ("Vinchente", they always add an N). I've never been bothered by it one bit, at least they tried. For the curious, the correct pronounciation is either "Vee-sen-teh" or with the spanish voiceless-dental-fricative θ[1] "Vee-θen-teh". If you ever bought into this idea that mispronouncing someone's unfamiliar/foreign name is somehow rude or racist or an extension of white supremacy/privilege, you should see how english names and surnames are pronounced in non-english speaking countries. People give it their best shot and fail, that's all there is to it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative
speleding 5y ago
I feel the same way. I avoid the problem by pronouncing my (Dutch) name the way an American would pronounce it when introducing myself. (If there happen to be other Dutch people present, they'll figure it out, as it's a common name)
xenocratus 5y ago
Thanks, I have the same problem - I'm an Eastern European living in the UK, must've heard my name pronounced correctly (just from someone seeing it written down) maybe 3 times in 9 years. But I actively avoid telling people the correct pronunciation because it's not in anyone's interest (unless they're a close friend, I guess). I never understood why someone would selfishly expect a stranger to pronounce their name correctly if your name is difficult/not intuitive. There are billions of people out there whose names are so difficult to get right, isn't it more important for us to spend that mental energy being nice to each other in a practical way instead of doing this useless ritual?
- deleted 5y ago
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YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
Conversely, I had a friend named Γωγώ, a Greek name trasliterated as "Gogo" in the Latin alphabet. When she went to stay in France she wrote her name as Roro to help French speakers produce the correct sound (gamma, "γ", is pronounced much like the French "r"). And to avoid being called "go-go" of course.
neltnerb 5y ago
I get what you mean and agree with the broad point, but I really, truly do both want to learn more about foreign languages and also feel it is both polite and good culture to try to pronounce the names of long-term colleagues as well as I can. I love foreign languages, I love Korean consonants, I love German Vowels, I love the French Schwa. I wouldn't want to put that on anyone to explain when obviously I can just get more foreign language tapes, but I do actually legitimately prefer to get it right if I can, and the process of learning to say it right is super fun... but I've spent my whole life having to spell and pronounce my name for everyone so it just doesn't seem like a big deal. But yeah, I can see it getting annoying. I definitely wouldn't insist on it over a casual "<foo> is fine" but I do want to learn to do better at things if I can!
draw_down 5y ago
Not only this, but the reverse never seems to go remarked upon. Speakers of other languages have their way of pronouncing our names and we’re fine with it.
nindalf 5y ago
> 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 pronounce everything correctly and if they don’t, it’s for lack of effort. I was wrong. I learned this while learning how to pronounce Chinese names. I thought I was saying them right. For example I’d pronounce “Xi” as “Shi”. But it wasn’t the right Shi, evidently (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Ston...). My friend sat with me patiently as I attempted it over and over. Every time she’d say “no, not Shi, it’s more like Shi”. I couldn’t hear the difference. So even if I put in more time, I wouldn’t succeed. So now I’m more tolerant of people making mistakes. As long as they make an effort, it’s good enough. If anyone would like a challenge, try pronouncing the word “Tamil” from the language Tamil. I haven’t heard anyone who wasn’t a native speaker pronounce it correctly.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  I have no problem learning foreign languages, but when I saw how Chinese phonetics works I ran away screaming.
- deleted 5y ago
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- kragen 5y ago
  How's http://canonical.org/~kragen/tmp/tamiltamiltamil.ogg http://canonical.org/~kragen/tmp/tamiltamiltamil.ogg? I've never tried to utter a retroflex approximant before, and while I think I might have pronounced it correctly, I think I'd have a hard time reliably distinguishing it from a retroflex tap or a voiced (really) alveolar approximant. As for learning to distinguish X from Sh, and the Ch/J/Zh/Q and C/Z distinctions in Mandarin, I think your beliefs may have swung too far from one pole to the other. It took me six or seven years to learn to pronounce American English [ɹ] correctly, and I made lots of hearing errors during that time as well. It can take time to learn to hear phonetic differences. Unsurprisingly you weren't able to learn the difference between [ɕ] and [ʂ] in a single fifteen-minute session, but if you'd done two fifteen-minute sessions a day for two years, you'd almost certainly get it. In fact, you might find that it only takes you a few weeks!
notafraudster 5y ago
I am E/F bilingual. I taught in an educational institution which is multicultural with dozens of cultural origins. When I get names wrong, I see grimaces on their faces. When I hear other people get common but foreign names -- like Nguyen for instance -- wrong, I grimace too. I am now at an institution in a country where basically no one outside the country knows how to pronounce anything. It takes me about 5 minutes to Google names I'm unfamiliar with before I start a new class to make sure I get it right. I don't know and I should not be expected to know Chinese, but I think I should be expected to be polite enough to try to get it right before I take a stab and butcher someone's name. I don't think it is an enormous burden to put on myself, and I don't think I'm performatively self-flagellating by doing it. I think it's just me trying to be polite. I think everyone should try to be polite in as many contexts as possible. On another context of names: My own names are Hebrew and Germanic respectively, two syllables each. My given name is common in North America. Most people pronounce it wrong anyway. I would greatly prefer if they didn't. It's a little disrespectful. I politely correct people and then find most of the same people make the same mistake again and again. I find it disrespectful, the same way I find it disrespectful if someone spells my name wrong even though my email address is first@last. It's not because they're frothing at the mouth racists, it's because they're minorly inconsiderate. My wife has a common name with two English spellings (let's say similar to Meghan/Megan). People frequently misspell it. She's not bothered by people guessing wrong. She is bothered when she corrects them and they still get it wrong. When I met her, it's not like I cosmically knew which of the two spellings was correct. I simply learned which of the two spellings was correct. It was a basic act of politeness and care. When people don't do it, it comes off like they don't care.
- mynegation 5y ago
  The proper pronunciation of my name requires an emphasis that is not on a first syllable, rolling R, and palatalization of a consonant in the middle. Even if I tell people how to pronounce it properly, repeating it back to me would be too much to ask from people who never palatalized a consonant in their life. My point is: I don’t grimace and I don’t bother.
- rootsudo 5y ago
  That seems so much work, to not ask or help someone pronounce a name. The world is globalized, it's not expected as a norm to be able to pronounce every name properly. My name isn't in "English" and I grew up in the USA. The people whom act like you when I introduce myself and talk are the most annoying. I don't have any onus on everyone pronouncing my name properly and if they say it with English phonetics then that's acceptable because they're trying to adapt their language to my name. That is much more polite then having this internal monologue and judging/having bias to everyone else that they're "inconsiderate." Just ask how to pronounce if you can't, read the room and then apologize if it needs to be said. Loosen up.
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
>At last, it seems to me that the people who care the most about this issue are monolingual. I had someone asking for a way to identify 'gender from the names of overseas customers'[1] on my problem validation platform. At a glance it seems like a similar problem and there could be some who doubt the veracity of the problem. Then there were several business solutions posted for that problem. The same people who wanted to know the gender could probably also benefit from knowing how to pronounce the name if they ever get on a call or meet the person. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/94-identifying-gender-from-a-name-for-marketing-profiling-marketing https://needgap.com/problems/94-identifying-gender-from-a-na...
brezelnbitte 5y ago
I have a German last name that not even my family pronounces “correctly” and myself didn’t learn the “correct” pronunciation until I studied German at university. Most other Americans butcher it, Germans get the German pronunciation right but never the way I grew up hearing it. My opinion is just call me what you want as long as I know to respond to it.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Even language carriers don't get my name right. Sometimes I say it myself, they realize they were mispronouncing it and say "why didn't you say about it?", but two weeks later they mispronounce it again as if nothing happened.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
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 someone attempts to make you happy by doing this, there will be an even smaller minority of people with hard to pronounce names and right-of-center political views who will be absolutely furious that the PC brigade (i.e. you) are trying to dictate what English speakers are allowed to make small talk about about in their own country, stifling free speech just in case some foreigner gets annoyed. Then they'll insist that English speakers should always do whatever their gut instinct tells them to even, no especially, if it annoys some oversensitive immigrant. Some people would much prefer to defend the noble principle of free speech than worry about something silly like wasting 5 mins in a meeting.
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  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.
  - gerbilly 5y ago
    I think some of us feel that you sounded a bit peevish about the whole thing.
    - AYBABTME 5y ago
      Oh yes, that would be a correct statement.
  - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
    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.
rayiner 5y ago
> 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 This. My name is a whimsical permutation of a Monacan name but I’m south Asian so it confuses the heck out of people. So I just go by Ray, which frankly is kind of a sketchy name, like “Trent” or “Chad.” But it’s easy to pronounce. It’s no big deal! Why would I take offense when an American who is often mispronouncing his own French, German, or Polish family name mispronounces mine? (Sorry, Mr. Koch, your name is “Cock” not “Coke.”)
- Y_Y 5y ago
  Monacan like the Native Americans, or like Monégasque?
  - rayiner 5y ago
    The latter (he said sheepishly). My mom named me after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_III,_Prince_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_III,_Prince_of_Monaco. But added a vocalized "y" for whimsy. (Boomers--my kids all have biblical names.)
Causality1 5y ago
As usual, the people with the biggest stick up their ass tend to be the least useful and most time-wasting.
tarsinge 5y ago
French is a good example, nasal vowels are everywhere and are just impossible to pronounce correctly for English speakers without training, so not only we shouldn't take offense but it's even insensitive to expect it.
j45 5y ago
So people can learn names like Schwarzenegger but not others? We can learn chai and yoga and namaste but not the names of the people it belongs to. Seems more not wanting to make people uncomfortable which is fine, I have had to navigate the same. When I come across a name I haven’t heard before, I just go out of my way to ask people how to pronounce their name and say it’s important to me. Sometimes demonstrating how to have the conversation of asking comfortably is the most important first step.
908B64B197 5y ago
> I much prefer hearing my name pronounced wrong by mistake, than wasting time in a useless woke-posturing session with someone using my time to teach them how to make sounds their mouth hasn't been trained to make, supposedly out of respect for my foreignness. The French language is perceived as refined and hard to get right. And France in general is very romanticized in American culture. Maybe it's less "woke respect" and little more curiosity than you think.
xwolfi 5y ago
Ahah Im French too with a difficult name and usually I just correct with humour if it s super far off, we laugh and done. People hung up on perfect pronunciation I tell them to just use the english equivalent (think William for Guillaume) and basta. I gave my daughter a perfectly language neutral, 2 syllable, "a monkey can say it" name to avoid all this next generation :D
shahar2k 5y ago
yup! two of the three phonemes in my name just plain old dont exist in English so depending on how amused I'm feeling I either say the English version, english + explanation, or if I'm bored I simply say it in hebrew and walk away and see how the name changes the next time it's spoken back to me....
diehunde 5y ago
Nobody should stress out too much about not getting a name right. But it's also not ok to not care at all and just go around butchering names without ever asking the proper way or even worse, ask for a nickname because they can't pronounce it (I've seen it coming from a CTO in an all-hands meeting). Both extremes are not ok.
sriku 5y ago
As long as there is symmetry in expectations, I don't mind taking this stance. If some English people get miffed when non-English speakers mispronounce their names, it becomes a matter of social justice :)

Veen 5y ago

I find the same. My (English) name seems very challenging for French people to pronounce correctly. Probably because it has a diphthong in the middle that doesn’t occur in French. I’ve basically never heard a French person say it right (even my French ex-gf). It doesn’t matter. So long as people attempt some approximation and it doesn’t sound too outlandish, who cares. It’s just part of their accent.

kodah 5y ago

I commonly refer to my last name as vowel soup (I'm french, and it's the Americanization of my family name). It's such a niche last name that I've heard all of two people get my name right and both of them were Cajun or Cajun adjacent - most native French speakers are totally lost on it. I always tell people to call me by my first name when this comes up. I've watched as people did as you described where they spend an inordinate amount of net time (it usually occurs in fragments, such as at the beginning of a meeting) trying to get someone's name "right". When I let people do this, instead of just opting for my very American first name, it almost always felt like I was watching a parody of my last name play out in real time. I didn't put too much thought into it, but holy hell does it get old. I don't like being in the spotlight and wokeism is already very offputting to me. If you find yourself doing this, consider this: I have a weird name and I don't remember people's names very well at all. I remember faces, experiences, and feelings much more. You'll get my name right over time as you hear people around me say it. That's just fine with me.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
Heh, I think employees should be given a fully synthetic identity, mostly for privacy reasons, but it can help with this thing too. The nickname can be also selected so that names aren't reused in a team, which would reduce ambiguity in communication. Even in small teams a lot of time is spent resolving ambiguities which John was referred.
- kodah 5y ago
  I've thought on this before. I think it's a really cool idea, and maybe a great place to use something like PGP. Some other usecases: - prevents hero worship in software (eg: I'm an x-Googler, believe me) - might put a dent in bigotry based identity issues

remarkEon 5y ago

My last name is French, but in reality the name comes from Germany. My family has been pronouncing it incorrectly for 100 years, and I … just don’t care enough to enforce the correct pronunciation. It feels snobbish to me, like you said. Might be an artifact of being an American.

seszett 5y ago
> My family has been pronouncing it incorrectly Well, the French usage for names generally is just to use either a straight French pronunciation based on how the name is written, or an approximation of the foreign pronunciation using sounds that exist in French. Only a handful of well-known names get to have a special pronunciation. If your family has been in France for 100 years, I wouldn't say they pronounce the name "incorrectly", they just pronounce it the correct way in France.
- neltnerb 5y ago
  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 "wrong", anymore than pronouncing it as you likely say "karate" is not more wrong than "ka-ra-te" (the japanese pronunciation) or that the japanese prounciation of the english word "sweater" being "su-we-ta" is wrong. Borrowed word pronunciation is entirely up to the user.
  - Radim 5y ago
    And also of "Socrates", an American Quake 3 player who insisted on the "soh-crates" pronunciation :-) I also love the double mind-fuck of "karaoke": EN: pronounced "owe-kee" JP: "oh-keh"! EN: but "oke" comes from the English "orchestra" (kara-oke = empty orchestra)… so really should be pronounced "or-keh"? Are we mispronouncing a Japanese mispronounciation of OUR OWN WORD?? (and then of course the Greeks chime in, OG)

jaimebuelta 5y ago

I have an strategy of two pronunciations for my name (Jaime, it's a Spanish name): - Quick chats, like answering your name at Starbucks, talking with the electric company on the phone, etc. I use directly the English pronunciation of my name (like Jamie). It's faster, easier and who cares, frankly... Gratefully, I can now use "wrote as Lanister" and fix some writing problems - With more meaningful relationships, like coworkers or acquaintances that I will be talking several times, etc, the only thing that I care about is an honest try. Most people tends to have problems with the ending vowel, and the initial "hard H" sound, so it sounds more like "Hi-me", but that's absolutely no problem. Different languages have different sounds, and I mispronounce things all the time. All I care about it's the other person putting a bit of effort into it, but that's about it...

happy_path 5y ago
Good idea. Establishing a relationship between your name and with some named thing of the real world: a TV series character, a city, etc.
- throwaway287391 5y ago
  I get your point but I like that you describe the name of a character in a fictional TV show as a "thing of the real world", as compared to the name of a coworker you speak with regularly. :p
  - happy_path 5y ago
    Well, maybe "thing of their culture" would have been a more appropiate term.
eyko 5y ago
Same boat here. Vicente in Spanish so I go by Vincent most of the time (either the english or the French pronounciations, I don't care). Most people see my name in Spanish and pronounce it like it was Italian ("Vinchente", they always add an N). I've never been bothered by it one bit, at least they tried. For the curious, the correct pronounciation is either "Vee-sen-teh" or with the spanish voiceless-dental-fricative θ[1] "Vee-θen-teh". If you ever bought into this idea that mispronouncing someone's unfamiliar/foreign name is somehow rude or racist or an extension of white supremacy/privilege, you should see how english names and surnames are pronounced in non-english speaking countries. People give it their best shot and fail, that's all there is to it. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_dental_fricative

speleding 5y ago

I feel the same way. I avoid the problem by pronouncing my (Dutch) name the way an American would pronounce it when introducing myself. (If there happen to be other Dutch people present, they'll figure it out, as it's a common name)

xenocratus 5y ago

Thanks, I have the same problem - I'm an Eastern European living in the UK, must've heard my name pronounced correctly (just from someone seeing it written down) maybe 3 times in 9 years. But I actively avoid telling people the correct pronunciation because it's not in anyone's interest (unless they're a close friend, I guess). I never understood why someone would selfishly expect a stranger to pronounce their name correctly if your name is difficult/not intuitive. There are billions of people out there whose names are so difficult to get right, isn't it more important for us to spend that mental energy being nice to each other in a practical way instead of doing this useless ritual?

deleted 5y ago
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YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

Conversely, I had a friend named Γωγώ, a Greek name trasliterated as "Gogo" in the Latin alphabet. When she went to stay in France she wrote her name as Roro to help French speakers produce the correct sound (gamma, "γ", is pronounced much like the French "r"). And to avoid being called "go-go" of course.

neltnerb 5y ago

I get what you mean and agree with the broad point, but I really, truly do both want to learn more about foreign languages and also feel it is both polite and good culture to try to pronounce the names of long-term colleagues as well as I can. I love foreign languages, I love Korean consonants, I love German Vowels, I love the French Schwa. I wouldn't want to put that on anyone to explain when obviously I can just get more foreign language tapes, but I do actually legitimately prefer to get it right if I can, and the process of learning to say it right is super fun... but I've spent my whole life having to spell and pronounce my name for everyone so it just doesn't seem like a big deal. But yeah, I can see it getting annoying. I definitely wouldn't insist on it over a casual "<foo> is fine" but I do want to learn to do better at things if I can!

draw_down 5y ago

Not only this, but the reverse never seems to go remarked upon. Speakers of other languages have their way of pronouncing our names and we’re fine with it.

nindalf 5y ago

> 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 pronounce everything correctly and if they don’t, it’s for lack of effort. I was wrong. I learned this while learning how to pronounce Chinese names. I thought I was saying them right. For example I’d pronounce “Xi” as “Shi”. But it wasn’t the right Shi, evidently (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Ston...). My friend sat with me patiently as I attempted it over and over. Every time she’d say “no, not Shi, it’s more like Shi”. I couldn’t hear the difference. So even if I put in more time, I wouldn’t succeed. So now I’m more tolerant of people making mistakes. As long as they make an effort, it’s good enough. If anyone would like a challenge, try pronouncing the word “Tamil” from the language Tamil. I haven’t heard anyone who wasn’t a native speaker pronounce it correctly.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago
I have no problem learning foreign languages, but when I saw how Chinese phonetics works I ran away screaming.
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kragen 5y ago
How's http://canonical.org/~kragen/tmp/tamiltamiltamil.ogg http://canonical.org/~kragen/tmp/tamiltamiltamil.ogg? I've never tried to utter a retroflex approximant before, and while I think I might have pronounced it correctly, I think I'd have a hard time reliably distinguishing it from a retroflex tap or a voiced (really) alveolar approximant. As for learning to distinguish X from Sh, and the Ch/J/Zh/Q and C/Z distinctions in Mandarin, I think your beliefs may have swung too far from one pole to the other. It took me six or seven years to learn to pronounce American English [ɹ] correctly, and I made lots of hearing errors during that time as well. It can take time to learn to hear phonetic differences. Unsurprisingly you weren't able to learn the difference between [ɕ] and [ʂ] in a single fifteen-minute session, but if you'd done two fifteen-minute sessions a day for two years, you'd almost certainly get it. In fact, you might find that it only takes you a few weeks!

notafraudster 5y ago

I am E/F bilingual. I taught in an educational institution which is multicultural with dozens of cultural origins. When I get names wrong, I see grimaces on their faces. When I hear other people get common but foreign names -- like Nguyen for instance -- wrong, I grimace too. I am now at an institution in a country where basically no one outside the country knows how to pronounce anything. It takes me about 5 minutes to Google names I'm unfamiliar with before I start a new class to make sure I get it right. I don't know and I should not be expected to know Chinese, but I think I should be expected to be polite enough to try to get it right before I take a stab and butcher someone's name. I don't think it is an enormous burden to put on myself, and I don't think I'm performatively self-flagellating by doing it. I think it's just me trying to be polite. I think everyone should try to be polite in as many contexts as possible. On another context of names: My own names are Hebrew and Germanic respectively, two syllables each. My given name is common in North America. Most people pronounce it wrong anyway. I would greatly prefer if they didn't. It's a little disrespectful. I politely correct people and then find most of the same people make the same mistake again and again. I find it disrespectful, the same way I find it disrespectful if someone spells my name wrong even though my email address is first@last. It's not because they're frothing at the mouth racists, it's because they're minorly inconsiderate. My wife has a common name with two English spellings (let's say similar to Meghan/Megan). People frequently misspell it. She's not bothered by people guessing wrong. She is bothered when she corrects them and they still get it wrong. When I met her, it's not like I cosmically knew which of the two spellings was correct. I simply learned which of the two spellings was correct. It was a basic act of politeness and care. When people don't do it, it comes off like they don't care.

mynegation 5y ago
The proper pronunciation of my name requires an emphasis that is not on a first syllable, rolling R, and palatalization of a consonant in the middle. Even if I tell people how to pronounce it properly, repeating it back to me would be too much to ask from people who never palatalized a consonant in their life. My point is: I don’t grimace and I don’t bother.
rootsudo 5y ago
That seems so much work, to not ask or help someone pronounce a name. The world is globalized, it's not expected as a norm to be able to pronounce every name properly. My name isn't in "English" and I grew up in the USA. The people whom act like you when I introduce myself and talk are the most annoying. I don't have any onus on everyone pronouncing my name properly and if they say it with English phonetics then that's acceptable because they're trying to adapt their language to my name. That is much more polite then having this internal monologue and judging/having bias to everyone else that they're "inconsiderate." Just ask how to pronounce if you can't, read the room and then apologize if it needs to be said. Loosen up.

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

>At last, it seems to me that the people who care the most about this issue are monolingual. I had someone asking for a way to identify 'gender from the names of overseas customers'[1] on my problem validation platform. At a glance it seems like a similar problem and there could be some who doubt the veracity of the problem. Then there were several business solutions posted for that problem. The same people who wanted to know the gender could probably also benefit from knowing how to pronounce the name if they ever get on a call or meet the person. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/94-identifying-gender-from-a-name-for-marketing-profiling-marketing https://needgap.com/problems/94-identifying-gender-from-a-na...

brezelnbitte 5y ago

I have a German last name that not even my family pronounces “correctly” and myself didn’t learn the “correct” pronunciation until I studied German at university. Most other Americans butcher it, Germans get the German pronunciation right but never the way I grew up hearing it. My opinion is just call me what you want as long as I know to respond to it.

GoblinSlayer 5y ago

Even language carriers don't get my name right. Sometimes I say it myself, they realize they were mispronouncing it and say "why didn't you say about it?", but two weeks later they mispronounce it again as if nothing happened.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

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 someone attempts to make you happy by doing this, there will be an even smaller minority of people with hard to pronounce names and right-of-center political views who will be absolutely furious that the PC brigade (i.e. you) are trying to dictate what English speakers are allowed to make small talk about about in their own country, stifling free speech just in case some foreigner gets annoyed. Then they'll insist that English speakers should always do whatever their gut instinct tells them to even, no especially, if it annoys some oversensitive immigrant. Some people would much prefer to defend the noble principle of free speech than worry about something silly like wasting 5 mins in a meeting.

AYBABTME 5y ago
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.
- gerbilly 5y ago
  I think some of us feel that you sounded a bit peevish about the whole thing.
  - AYBABTME 5y ago
    Oh yes, that would be a correct statement.
- ZeroGravitas 5y ago
  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.

rayiner 5y ago

> 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 This. My name is a whimsical permutation of a Monacan name but I’m south Asian so it confuses the heck out of people. So I just go by Ray, which frankly is kind of a sketchy name, like “Trent” or “Chad.” But it’s easy to pronounce. It’s no big deal! Why would I take offense when an American who is often mispronouncing his own French, German, or Polish family name mispronounces mine? (Sorry, Mr. Koch, your name is “Cock” not “Coke.”)

Y_Y 5y ago
Monacan like the Native Americans, or like Monégasque?
- rayiner 5y ago
  The latter (he said sheepishly). My mom named me after: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_III,_Prince_of_Monaco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainier_III,_Prince_of_Monaco. But added a vocalized "y" for whimsy. (Boomers--my kids all have biblical names.)

Causality1 5y ago

As usual, the people with the biggest stick up their ass tend to be the least useful and most time-wasting.

tarsinge 5y ago

French is a good example, nasal vowels are everywhere and are just impossible to pronounce correctly for English speakers without training, so not only we shouldn't take offense but it's even insensitive to expect it.

j45 5y ago

So people can learn names like Schwarzenegger but not others? We can learn chai and yoga and namaste but not the names of the people it belongs to. Seems more not wanting to make people uncomfortable which is fine, I have had to navigate the same. When I come across a name I haven’t heard before, I just go out of my way to ask people how to pronounce their name and say it’s important to me. Sometimes demonstrating how to have the conversation of asking comfortably is the most important first step.

908B64B197 5y ago

> I much prefer hearing my name pronounced wrong by mistake, than wasting time in a useless woke-posturing session with someone using my time to teach them how to make sounds their mouth hasn't been trained to make, supposedly out of respect for my foreignness. The French language is perceived as refined and hard to get right. And France in general is very romanticized in American culture. Maybe it's less "woke respect" and little more curiosity than you think.

xwolfi 5y ago

Ahah Im French too with a difficult name and usually I just correct with humour if it s super far off, we laugh and done. People hung up on perfect pronunciation I tell them to just use the english equivalent (think William for Guillaume) and basta. I gave my daughter a perfectly language neutral, 2 syllable, "a monkey can say it" name to avoid all this next generation :D

shahar2k 5y ago

yup! two of the three phonemes in my name just plain old dont exist in English so depending on how amused I'm feeling I either say the English version, english + explanation, or if I'm bored I simply say it in hebrew and walk away and see how the name changes the next time it's spoken back to me....

diehunde 5y ago

Nobody should stress out too much about not getting a name right. But it's also not ok to not care at all and just go around butchering names without ever asking the proper way or even worse, ask for a nickname because they can't pronounce it (I've seen it coming from a CTO in an all-hands meeting). Both extremes are not ok.

sriku 5y ago

As long as there is symmetry in expectations, I don't mind taking this stance. If some English people get miffed when non-English speakers mispronounce their names, it becomes a matter of social justice :)