> If you are actually offended by someone mispronouncing your name, then everything else in life is probably going to be extremely difficult.
You apply your own indifference, which is perfectly fine to have, so broadly to other people whose contexts you know nothing about. To assume that because you're at peace with your name getting mispronounced in the context of your life, other people should feel the same within the context of theirs, is pretty glib.
There's no need to trivialise a situation that has nothing to do with you with such an off-hand remark.
This was not an attempt to trivialize anyones experience. Im a non English native immigrant surrounded by immigrants. People are free to feel different about the topic.
It doesn’t change reality: if you’re going to allow yourself to be distressed by the occasional mispronunciation of your own name, in a world with so many different languages and cultures, then the level of your mental development is such that most of life’s actual hardships will seem completely out of reach.
Imagine such a person having to speak with a customs agent in another country, or going to the DMV, or doing something difficult, like filing their taxes. Even the most basic of human interactions would be distressing.
I'm a non native English speaker with a name that is written exactly like a very common English name. In my native tongue the pronunciation is different from English by quite a bit. There is no way anyone could pronounce it without having background information like my nationality. It would be unfair to expect anyone to get it right without they knowledge, and it would be annoying to reveal that info whenever meeting someone in order to allow them to "get it right".
On a more general note. I find it jarring when people mess up to the intonation and flow just to "correctly" pronounce a foreign name which is outside the norm for the language the conversation is in. It sounds like those memes where people replace key words to rewrite the dialogue.
If i speak my native tongue, then I will pronounce my name like it is supposed to, if not then the pronunciation with the least amount of friction will do just fine.
Why stop at the names? Imagine someone thinks he is a samurai, and thus all others must bow to him a little to express their respect. If they refuse or "forget", he must punish the offenders. We can master the art of feeling offended together.
I personally prefer my name to be pronounced in the style of the local language instead of them trying to pronounce it according to its "original" pronunciation (which in my case growing up with two languages and cultures basically doesn't exist anyway).
That said I think everyone should make an effort to call people by the names they prefer to be called and that include pronunciation. On the other hand, I think if you have a name that is difficult for certain speakers of certain languages to pronounce, it's kind of silly to complain about their difficulties in pronouncing your name.
I make an effort to learn how to pronounce the names of people as closely as possible to how they call themselves.
At the same time, in English-speaking countries I go by my first name because it's common around the world and easy to pronounce, rather than my middle name, which is rather unique and difficult to pronounce, even though I prefer the latter. Likewise, I appreciate it when folks that were born with uncommon names "adopt" a simpler one, as it makes it much easier for others to remember and repeat. As they say, a rose by any other name is still a rose.
I have a really hard time pronouncing words that are not within the standard set I use in most day to day. In some cases, someone can say the word or name to me and i cannot reproduce it. I also can’t hear differences or reproduce many music tones. If you play a few notes, I can’t hum them back. I suspect the part of my brain used in sound identification and reproduction has a very low “iq” relative to the average.
I find it pretty stressful when I’m meet someone with an uncommon sounding name, as I worry they will take offense and I really don’t know what to do. I practice the names offline in the hopes of learning them.
I love that my name is Andrew. When I am in Mexico, I become Andrés. When I am in France, I become André. And by friends I am sometimes called Anderg or Andross, just for fun!
Much like CogitoCogito here, I feel a special sense of translation when I am elsewhere. I do not feel the need to have others refer to me as how I know me, as their image of me is already not my own. I am reminded by this when I am called a variation of my name, and wish that others could experience this if they so wished.
People should be called what they want to be called, or called whatever if they don't care, like me!
Part of embracing diversity is accepting that it is hard, sometimes impossible, for other people to pronounce names that are uncommon in their native tongue
When I lived in China, nobody could pronounce my name anywhere close to correctly and I didn’t care. I didn’t do much better with theirs despite putting daily effort into my Mandarin pronunciation. They mostly ended up simply adopting common English names when working with their American colleagues. This was a wise approach.
I am reminded of the tourist who comes back from Europe talking about “ParEE”, having no idea how bad their pronunciation really is. When speaking English we use English place names. We say “Paris”, or “China” because it is hard or impossible to pronounce these place names the same way natives of those places do.
The key is to be respectful and try to make others comfortable, while expecting the same from others.
Some languages just lack the phonemes and unless the speaker practices a lot, there is no way they will pronounce foreign names correctly, even relatively simple ones. Other languages blur certain phonemes and while they have separate sounds the speakers cannot tell the difference between the two [dark L and clear L in English for example].
So I think this is asking too much of a speaker who does not speak the foreign language. Just imagine an English or Spanish speaker landing in Podunk China. Very few of their names will be approximated by people who have not studied the foreign language.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 44.0 ms ] threadIf you are actually offended by someone mispronouncing your name, then everything else in life is probably going to be extremely difficult.
You apply your own indifference, which is perfectly fine to have, so broadly to other people whose contexts you know nothing about. To assume that because you're at peace with your name getting mispronounced in the context of your life, other people should feel the same within the context of theirs, is pretty glib.
There's no need to trivialise a situation that has nothing to do with you with such an off-hand remark.
It doesn’t change reality: if you’re going to allow yourself to be distressed by the occasional mispronunciation of your own name, in a world with so many different languages and cultures, then the level of your mental development is such that most of life’s actual hardships will seem completely out of reach.
Imagine such a person having to speak with a customs agent in another country, or going to the DMV, or doing something difficult, like filing their taxes. Even the most basic of human interactions would be distressing.
On a more general note. I find it jarring when people mess up to the intonation and flow just to "correctly" pronounce a foreign name which is outside the norm for the language the conversation is in. It sounds like those memes where people replace key words to rewrite the dialogue.
If i speak my native tongue, then I will pronounce my name like it is supposed to, if not then the pronunciation with the least amount of friction will do just fine.
That said I think everyone should make an effort to call people by the names they prefer to be called and that include pronunciation. On the other hand, I think if you have a name that is difficult for certain speakers of certain languages to pronounce, it's kind of silly to complain about their difficulties in pronouncing your name.
At the same time, in English-speaking countries I go by my first name because it's common around the world and easy to pronounce, rather than my middle name, which is rather unique and difficult to pronounce, even though I prefer the latter. Likewise, I appreciate it when folks that were born with uncommon names "adopt" a simpler one, as it makes it much easier for others to remember and repeat. As they say, a rose by any other name is still a rose.
I find it pretty stressful when I’m meet someone with an uncommon sounding name, as I worry they will take offense and I really don’t know what to do. I practice the names offline in the hopes of learning them.
Much like CogitoCogito here, I feel a special sense of translation when I am elsewhere. I do not feel the need to have others refer to me as how I know me, as their image of me is already not my own. I am reminded by this when I am called a variation of my name, and wish that others could experience this if they so wished.
People should be called what they want to be called, or called whatever if they don't care, like me!
When I lived in China, nobody could pronounce my name anywhere close to correctly and I didn’t care. I didn’t do much better with theirs despite putting daily effort into my Mandarin pronunciation. They mostly ended up simply adopting common English names when working with their American colleagues. This was a wise approach.
I am reminded of the tourist who comes back from Europe talking about “ParEE”, having no idea how bad their pronunciation really is. When speaking English we use English place names. We say “Paris”, or “China” because it is hard or impossible to pronounce these place names the same way natives of those places do.
The key is to be respectful and try to make others comfortable, while expecting the same from others.
So I think this is asking too much of a speaker who does not speak the foreign language. Just imagine an English or Spanish speaker landing in Podunk China. Very few of their names will be approximated by people who have not studied the foreign language.
Could you ELI5?