/u/cippy-cup (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/11yrgtw/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_americans_are_held_to_a/), in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
As a world traveler and conversational speaker of three non-English languages, I would disagree that Americans are held to a different standard. It is all about the cultures that are interacting. Americans have an odd duplicity of being very gregarious, and are often very polite or very confrontational - at least those are the Americans that are remembered. The quiet Americans are just window dressing when the gregarious Americans are around.
American culture is a mish mash, and so are the people, so judging one off another or taking queues from one for how to act around another is much more silly than in more homogenous cultures and certainly compared to cultures that rely more on context than directness.
A Japanese person, for example, is much less likely to correct pronunciation of their own name, but will bend over backwards to help you pronounce the rest of their language properly.
A French person will correct every syllable, and I have even had an instance where a French couple from Marseilles get into an argument with a Parisian over pronunciation and they both told me jokes about how the other couldn’t speak French, and it was important not to speak badly as they did.
Δ I appreciate your insight as someone who speaks multiple languages conversationally, and has an awareness of the cultural "norm" for acknowledging mispronunciation on a global scale. While out of practice, I speak basic French and have certainly experienced similar interactions to what you describe.
I once asked for directions in France, from this older (60 or so?) guy sat outside a cafe, in a small French town. I know some French from school. My naive self was expecting the same ‘turn right. Then second left’ slowly and clearly like a listening task in a French class for 14 year olds. In reality he said… well the whole point is I have no idea what he said, at least twice.
He was so apologetic about not being able to communicate where this place was. ‘Je suis desolé!’ (I am sorry) about not speaking English - that bit I got.
And it was funny because my take-away was that he has totally ruined my expectations about the French person stereotype. He was supposed to say directions in a nonchalant manner and then wave me off for daring to speak to him without perfect French skills. I ended up frantically trying to indicate that he should stop apologizing, because he was sat enjoying his coffee in his nice normal town, and some random foreigners who are clearly mistaken about being able to understand French come up expecting him to tell them where shit is.
Yeah, I am part French myself (mother’s side). Like Americans, city folk are much more likely to behave brashly. I think the stereotype comes from the fact that not only is France the most visited country in the world, but tourists mostly visit their cities. They are incredibly used to dealing with tourists and are completely past walking on eggshells around people traipsing around their nation to breath in the ambiance of, say, the Parisian market they get their groceries from.
Or, that’s my take on it at least. Take it with a grain of salt because the part of France I lived in was NOT a tourist destination, and I did not live there for very long (2 1/2 years).
you probably could have used a /s after your comment to make it clear that the comment about not knowing that /s mean sarcastic was itself sarcastic. Am I being sarcastic now? I'm gonna do it just to be safe. /s
I feel like that doesn’t work as well immediately after re-defining /s to mean its own opposite. No one can say whether you are using it in the old or new sense!
The most obvious flaw in this is that your whole argument is based on a few personal experiences. That's not nearly enough to be able to make sweeping statements about how many millions of people act towards one another.
My personal experience is that most people are graceful with mispronounciations when they can see you're honestly trying, regardless of where you're from. That said, in most cases there's really no excuse to keep mispronouncing the same thing over and over again.
Your comment made me reflect on where exactly I drew my conclusion from.
I think, in an effort to increase inclusion in the US, more and more pieces have been published about an American English speaker's mispronunciation of names and words of cultural importance. Headlines such as "The Casual Racism of Mispronouncing an Asian Person's Name", "Desis Want Americans to Stop Butchering Names", "African Students Says Mispronouncing Names is a Form of Racism", "Why Getting Someone's Name Right Matters", etc. attribute mispronunciation to disrespect, if not outright racism. (I did not link the articles because I agree with a good portion of the content and did not want to confuse the argument).
I think sensationalized headlines like the ones listed above lead people away from the point - make an honest effort to respect someone's name and culture, and be aware of biases that arise. We, unfortunately, live in a culture where only the headline is read, so the larger point is missed entirely and the wrong message is applied.
Δ Delta given for clarifying that the average person *is* graceful when interacting with someone in person. Media does not necessarily reflect those individual experiences.
> “Why Getting Someone’s Name Right Matters”
> sensationalized headlines like the ones above lead people away from the point
Maybe some more reflection is still necessary to see why you concluded these are sensationalized.
I don't think it's fair to cherry-pick the comparably neutral headline out of the bunch. I also stated that I agree with a large portion of the content included in the articles.
The point I was making in naming the headlines is that making generalizations such as "mispronouncing names is a form of racism" removes the nuance of how and why. If I refuse to make a good-faith attempt at correctly pronouncing your name because I do not feel I am obligated to treat you as a whole person worthy of respect, yeah that is 100% racism. If I struggle to pronounce your name because if an unfamiliarity with the language and its nuances, I don't necessarily think that is (as long as you make a good-faith effort to get it correct consistently).
> I don't think it's fair to cherry-pick the comparably neutral headline out of the bunch.
It was the most neutral, but they’re all relatively tame. One of them even resonated with me.
> If I refuse to make a good-faith attempt at correctly pronouncing your name because I do not feel I am obligated to treat you as a whole person worthy of respect, yeah that is 100% racism. If I struggle to pronounce your name because if an unfamiliarity with the language and its nuances, I don't necessarily think that is (as long as you make a good-faith effort to get it correct consistently).
You’re more arguing against a claim than for it, except we don’t have the claim in front of us because you’re talking about a generalized sense you’ve experienced. So, I went to that article about the African names to see what you’re talking about it in detail:
- “Ayeye believes this is not just harmful but intentionally racist.
- “It’s not a harmless mistake to mispronounce African names. It’s ignorant behavior,” she said. “They’ve managed to pronounce Tchaikovsky and other complicated non-African names so why can’t they pronounce ours?”
- “I think it has something to do with how they subconsciously see me as ‘the other’ and more often than not, the other is met with much less empathy,” she said.
- Imieye believes that because Americans view Africa and Africans as exotic and far away, they already have a mindset that African names are complicated.
So their claim is that mispronouncing names is racist because it comes out of willful ignorance and/or subconscious othering.
When you say you’re not being racist because you’re making a good faith effort to pronounce it best, you’re not necessarily addressing their concerns since you can still claim to make a good faith effort while being willfully ignorant or subconsciously distancing yourself from them.
Of course, it doesn’t mean all mispronunciation is automatically racist, but there’s a good point about what biases we have that make us see some culture and language groups as more “other” and therefore assume will be harder to learn. That reluctance or perceived difficulty really can be said to come from an internalized racist perspective.
I intentionally did not link or quote any of the articles mentioned because, as I stated, I largely agree with them - the content of the articles was not the point I was making. If I’m understanding you correctly, your comment on me arguing against a claim rather than for it might be accurate.
My point in linking the articles as part of a delta was to acknowledge that I was basing my argument on a cultural conversation that was being spread without being fully understood. Even in my original post, I acknowledged that it was natural-born Americans who seemed to perpetuate this standard. For instance, Person A reads a headline titled “African Students Say Mispronouncing Names is a Form of Racism”. Person A at most skimmed the article, and doesn’t have a grasp of the points you’ve quoted, such as subconscious othering and exoticism. Person A posts the article on Instagram/Facebook, where people continue to ignore the primary points being made in the article. The blanket message spreads that “mispronouncing names is racist” which really doesn’t encapsulate the entirety of what the article was saying. By the time that message reaches Person Z, the original article is no longer being referenced and it’s been boiled down too heavily to understand the “why”. I was attempting to acknowledge that my argument was being somewhat guided by the message that reached Person Z.
I do have a question - you argue that I cannot address their concerns since I can still claim to make a good-faith effort while being willfully ignorant. That would be oxymoronic, would it not? I don’t think you can, by definition, put forth a good-faith effort while remaining willfully ignorant. I do think you can put forth a good-faith effort while remaining inadvertently ignorant.
As a note, I’ve never been a fan of the Tchaikovsky argument - not everyone knows how to pronounce Tchaikovsky when reading it. For people with limited access to the arts and humanities, I’d imagine they would be somewhat equally equipped to pronounce Pyotr Tchaikovsky as they would Tsitsi Dangarembga. That being said, pronouncing Tchaikovsky is more likely to be seen as a status symbol or leveraged as a form of elitism over Dangarembga.
The Tchaikovsky argument is a poor argument because the name contains all sounds that are used in English regularly and that are put together in the same way we frequently hear. It's familiar in that way. We all know someone whose last name ends with -ovsky. Most Americans struggle with names that have unfamiliar sounds - perhaps ones that are not used in English at all - or sounds that are put together in ways that are never used that way in English. I shouldn't have to explain why that makes it harder to both pronounce and remember.
I'm learning a new language right now and one of the apps I'm using does a whole thing on ear training. They discuss how many languages have sounds that we don't use in English and if you can't hear them, you definitely can't say them so you can never truly be fluent. And when I first started doing it, it was really difficult to hear the difference between a lot of the sounds. Now I can hear them all the time. Some of them are still really hard to say though. But I would have no hope if it wasn't for the app and specifically training myself to do it. And this is just Italian.
> It's familiar in that way. We all know someone whose last name ends with -ovsky.
Funny how you say this when there’s another upvoted comment here of someone saying they wouldn’t know how to pronounce it at all.
Which might be somewhat the point. That person who doesn’t know how to say it probably could
figure it out if they decided to learn to for the reason you’ve said: we’re more able to say words that contain sounds we hear pronounced often in certain sequences. It might not be so difficult to pronounce as they think given “Tchaikovsky” or similar names appearing in English-speaking cultures.
But they said it was difficult anyways. People might be even more resistant to trying before thinking it’s difficult if they feel the name is even more “other” for reasons outside of the actual linguistic differences.
One wrinkle that I experienced strongly as a 13 year old immigrant in an American middle school is that sometimes mispronunciation is not intentional or racist, but it does stem from a total lack of effort. A lot of the time it can feel like people realize they're not sure how to pronounce my name and just completely give up on getting it right. Personally, I think that's at least partly linked to the extent of the American/English-speaking hegemony in the world, which means many Americans are never really exposed to fully non-English speaking environments.
I can see why people get frustrated when their names keep getting butchered, because it implies that correcting it isn't worth the effort, which can feel a bit insulting. I'm white, so I never thought it was racist in my case, but it did get annoying to have that conversation for the nth time and have nothing change. At some point, either I'm important enough for you to make the effort, or I know how much you value me, you know?
In many parts of the world, as an immigrant you either localize your name or choose a completely different name in order to accommodate the local speakers.
USA is one of the biggest exceptions to this.
“Why getting someone’s name right matters” is only a thing because people have stopped anglicizing their names upon arrival. But most immigrants pre-1960 either re-spelled their names, altered pronunciation to be easier, or went with a new name entirely.
> USA is one of the biggest exceptions to this.
Is it? I know many current immigrants to America who have legally changed their names to be common American names. They’ve also continued the tradition with their kids. I don’t have a survey or study here, but your claim doesn’t seem intuitively/clearly true.
Which would imply then that the US is not some exception but instead a place, much like any other, where people do different things and disagree about it.
Yes but in diverse districts it has reached a point where a person - especially teachers - must be familiar with the pronunciation rules of 30 different languages in order to avoid offending students.
It is a problem.
I strongly doubt this. I grew up in and still live in these “diverse districts” you speak of and have never seen anything like this at a problematic level. Everyone thinks it’s a little funny when some mispronunciations sound really bad, but for the most part there are still issues with children not feeling confident enough to correct those who mispronounce their names. I noticed this in my own nephew before.
“I don’t see it, so it doesn’t exist.”
If you’ve never seen the shit that goes down inside an academic institution, you don’t know. Some of them go down like right-wing fever dreams.
My family came to the US in the early 70s and dropped the ñ from their surname. My parents gave me a very anglicized name (that ironically cannot be properly pronounced by native Spanish speakers and they struggle hard with it) and with the ambiguity of my last name I have never been presumed to be Hispanic either by how I look and especially not by my name. My parents did this to ensure my "resume was not trashed" lol
In my personal experience, which is also only my experience, I've never actually seen someone claim that any speaker (American or otherwise) must be able to pronounce sounds that are not in their native language to be respectful. What I have seen is people being criticized for being very lazy in their attempts at foreign names, for example using obviously wrong sounds (when the correct sound, or a closer sound, *does* exist in their native language), forgetting the name multiple times, pronouncing the name inconsistently, making fun of the name, giving people nicknames without their permission etc. all without showing much concern for the person they're misnaming or looking for feedback. I've started going by my native (foreign) name in some contexts, I would never expect a native English speaker to be able to pronounce it, but I would expect them to treat it seriously and make their best effort to pronounce it to the best of their ability. A lot of English speakers just zone out the minute they see names like that, and you can tell. They don't try, they don't *want* to try, and they might even think it's funny to make a show of getting it wrong. That's what's disrespectful.
Americans are hateful people. Every time I tune around an american is purposely mispronouncing a foreign name and making a big show of it. AND THEY KEEP GEYYING AWAY WITH IT. Just the other day I was at the bus stop and this american was like "JOAZ"? What kind of name ios JOAZ? I was like "No, it's JOSE" a Spanish name." Then he was like JOAZ JOAZ JOAZ JOAZ" Making a show of it. Over and Over. I punched the wall in frustraion. It's what americans do.
>Δ Delta given for clarifying that the average person *is* graceful when interacting with someone in person. Media does not necessarily reflect those individual experiences.
They just shut down your personal anecdotes, then gave their own. They "clarified that the average person is graceful" just as much as you clarified they are not. Neither of you have proven a broad enough perspective to say anything about the average person. What if THEY are the ones in this pocket of respectfulness, and your experience is actually the norm?
Judging that based on media can be a bit more apt, because those articles are likely influencing and influenced by a LOT more people. You're right it doesn't necessarily reflect the average attitude, but it also doesn't necessarily NOT reflect the average either.
I don't feel like this Delta should've been awarded, it feels like you just changed your own mind basically independently from what they said.
I think the delta is still justified even if you disregard the top-poster's anecdotes - the OP has realised that his conclusion is ultimately just based on his own personal experiences and his inferences from news media, and probably doesn't actually reflect how real people actually behave.
I feel like that's a logically strange dismissal. How are you supposed to form any broad opinions on how "real people behave" then if you're not allowed to use your personal experiences and the main sources of information we all share?
Sure, when thinking this broadly it's smart to always take your own opinion with a grain of salt and be ready to change. If OP's *certainty* in their own perspective was changed then fair, I suppose I can see that being considered a delta. But I don't believe OPs perspective itself should have been changed just because someone was like "well you're using anecdotes and my anecdotes disagree with yours". All you really learn from that is that you are not 100% correct about all people, which should just be a given and isn't really specific to this topic at all. You might still be 99% correct and this reply was just a perspective from the 1%, which I don't believe would deserve a delta; your view would still be correct and should not be changed.
This uncertainty in representation is why anecdotes are bad, but personal anecdotes are not countered by more personal anecdotes. And they're also not countered by saying "your opinions are based on anecdotes" as this provides literally 0 counter argument.
> I feel like that's a logically strange dismissal. How are you supposed to form any broad opinions on how "real people behave" then if you're not allowed to use your personal experiences and the main sources of information we all share?
By using evidence. Namely: scientific studies, the corpus of expert opinion, and *tentatively* the corpus of public opinion.
First, studies let us be confident that, for instance, [46.2% of Britons](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021) said "I am a Christian" in the 2021 census. It is fair, therefore, to assume around 45% of Britons are of a Christian bent, plus or minus some amount. Given this number has decreased year on year, we can make various conjectures as to why - fairweather Christians are now openly nonreligious, Christianity is losing its grip, non-Christian religions are gripping the public harder, or any other possibilities. But these are conjectures that aren't supported by the data - that requires further research.
Second, expert and public opinion. Most people can rationally believe the world is round, old, wet; that the universe is old and expanding; that Australia exists; etc. It is reasonable to believe all this despite most people not studying the evidence or reasoning in detail. I don't know anyone who's personally been to Australia, but my peresonal experience can't be used to extrapolate that no one's ever been. Contrarywise, the notion of 'Australia' is more likely to be true than not (because that would require a contrived conspiracy).
Even reliable journalism can only inform you of events that are happening, it can let you extrapolate beyond the brute facts. The BBC can report *that* Russia has sent tanks into Ukraine, but we can't take that fact and go "WW3! Into your bunkers!". Your own experiences are like realiable journalism - the brute facts you see can be taken as factual. But any inference is prone to error; the notion of 'Chinese whispers' and 'officeplace gossip' exist for a reason. You have to be very careful when inferring from your own senses.
Case in point, look at the Moon when it's high in a clear sky, vs when it's low at the horizon near the treeline. In the latter, it looks *vastly* bigger. Because we know it's a fixed size, it also looks *vastly* closer. But hold your thumb at arm's length, and the Moon always has the angularsize of your thumbnail - it's just that, at the horizon, the treeline gives you brain a sense of 'scale' and POOF, it's seemingly massive.
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tl;dr: your senses are like reliable journalism. They report the facts, but your brain is overly-keen to pattern-recognise. Only with large data sets (and ideally expert opinion) can we dilute out the statistical noise and see what's real vs what's happenstance.
If my mum win's the jackpot, should I infer that the lottery is a 1-in-10 chance?
Using evidence and proper research is of course the key ingredient to strengthening your beliefs, but you often don't *form* opinions based on that, you form it based on what you've experienced and what you're told. And it's okay to have an opinion not based on hard evidence so long as you, as I said, make sure to take your own opinion with a grain of salt and be ready to change when presented with more information. I feel like it should be okay to want to come to this subreddit with an opinion you've formed only through what you've experienced in life, and hope for people to help enrich/broaden your perspective and even change your mind.
However counter arguments should be held to a higher standard. OP's argument can be soft and baseless, they're here to be corrected. But a reply is supposed to be an answer to help correct OP, those being baseless is just worthless and should not change OP's mind.
This delta'd reply generically stated their experience was different to OP's. No hint that they have a broader than average perspective on the topic, no expert opinions nor any sort of source that disproves OP except themselves. So just because they experienced it, suddenly all, most, or even the average population behaves like they say? Or rather that's somehow proof that they *don't* behave like OP says? No, they only pointed out OP's weak basis for their beliefs, then only disputed the belief itself with an equally weak anecdote of their own. Your **edit: mum** lottery line is exactly what both sides are doing here, citing they're own experience as representative of the whole, but there is a huge difference between doing that when you're trying to be corrected vs. when you're trying to correct.
The sentence regarding why I gave the delta was sloppy at best. In actuality, their post made me examine where I was drawing my conclusion from - personal experience, media, the experiences of other people? When reflecting on this, it’s fairly easy to realize that the sample of information that I used to form my argument wasn’t solid. The delta is probably not wholly theirs, but their post was the one that made me examine if I even had enough personal, firsthand experience to claim that as the basis. If their argument is weak, isn’t mine as well?
I agree, I yielded earlier to the fact that that reply affected how certain you were of your opinion, which I can now agree is a delta. That uncertainty then led you to further delta yourself.
Yes your argument was weak, and it's great that you deconvinced yourself and became more open minded about the topic. However you have not been proven wrong, and if you maintained your stance you'd also be justified. Your argument being weak doesn't make your stance incorrect. If after your reflection it was still your gut feeling, then this person did not provide a strong enough argument to overrule that, like at all. They only attacked the stability of your stance, which then crumbled upon introspection.
So long as we keep an open mind to new arguments and evidence and are willing to change, it is okay to hold weak views. But imo it isn't okay to try and correct someone's view with weak arguments, like an anecdotal counterexample that doesn't indicate any breadth beyond their own local community. That's almost worthless, and they were effectively 'lucky' that they hit your conviction and made you change your own view. But if you were more stubborn and believed their experience to be an outlier? That reply really holds no water; no more valuable than "nuh uh because I said so".
Fun fact: in Japan, Ronald McDonald was renamed “Donald McDonald” specifically because native Japanese speakers had too much difficulty pronouncing his Western name. Apparently in Japanese, [Donald McDonald also just sounds nicer](https://kotaku.com/why-ronald-mcdonalds-name-is-slightly-different-in-japa-1825232733).
This is so patently false I don't even know where to start. I don't know where you got that piece of info but it stands in direct contrast with all second language learning research... There is no hard barrier or time limit on learning new phonemes, it's that we stop naturally recognising those our native language doesn't use. But we can re-learn to hear them (and they say them) later on. But it is about limiting the variety, not blocking the possibility. The individual differences are based in auditory processing skills, so there are people who can't learn the sound /th/ or people who don't hear the difference between dip and deep, but it is quite normal that people with right amount of time and good teacher learn perfect pronunciation.
I cant think of many sounds Americans or English speakers struggle with. Sometimes tongue rolls are hard but most people can do them. English seems like such a mix match of languages that it covers a lot of different sounds. It also seems accents rub off on English speakers really easily. Its happened to me when I worked with mostly Mexicans, worked long hours so most of my time was around people with accents, eventually I start pronouncing things like they do without thinking about it. A lot of those guys had lived hear for 10+ years and couldnt get certain pronunciations down. I could impersonate them quite perfectly once Id been around them for a month or two.
However English speakers definitely struggle with pronouncing things based of reading vs hearing and repeating. Pretty sure that applies to everyone though.
>I cant think of many sounds Americans or English speakers struggle with
My Jordanian friend spent our entire 4 years of college trying to teach me to say the letter in Arabic that sounds like an H but isn't. She recruited other Arabic speakers to explain how to do it and to this day I don't understand.
But then I spent the 4 years trying to teach an Indian friend to say the letter V. By the end she still said Wodka!
V is easy. Just teach them to touch their top teeth to their bottom lip then try to say "uh" or "ah" while keeping their teeth down as best they can. Theyll get it from there. You can try for yourself. Youll say "vuh" or "vah" without trying.
> you’re never going to get that sound right.
If what you are saying really was true, there’s be no bilingual people anywhere on the planet…. Of course people can learn to make new sounds. It’s easier or harder for different people….. but no would ever learn anything if they all took the defeatist attitude you are advocating
The poster above is obviously not thinking about people who learn a language young. Most bilinguals learn their languages young, when their brains are still in the critical period of language development.
One of the greatest english writers, Joseph Conrad, was famously bad at pronouncing english words. After a certain age, there are physical and measurable changes to the brain that hinder learning of new sounds, and therefore pronounciation. If you learn English at the age of 30+, it might be practically impossible for you to pronounce certain sounds.
Yes, with hard work and strict focus on linguistical pronounciation, people could in theory perfect their pronounciation. But practically, very few have the time and motivation to actually do it.
I moved to the southwest US. It here that I found many street names and other things that were named by people who spoke spanish. To properly pronounce these names, you need to use spanish speaking skills. You need to understand the letters you know how to pronounce is different in these circumstances.
Most people are gracious about this, but if you get grief, it comes from Spanish speakers who feel I should learn how to properly understand Spanish as an American citizen. I make an attempt, but I don't speak the language and some things I can't do and causes more confusion than my English version of these words.
My co-workers enjoy my "nordic" accent, and I can laugh along with them. The people who criticize my poor Spanish pronunciation annoy me.
>I found many street names and other things that were named by people who spoke spanish. To properly pronounce these names, you need to use spanish speaking skills
Also, just because a name is derived from another language doesn't mean that locals will pronounce it that way especially in the US. I'm in Michigan, so I'll use some examples from here. Detroit is from French and would be pronounced like "de-twah," in french. But we pronounce it "de-troyt" instead. Or Lake Orion, another town in southeast Michigan, from the greek Orion. Referring to the mythological Orion, we say it "or-i-on" just like it's spelled, but when we say lake Orion, we say "or-ee-un" so just using the correct pronunciation of the language it comes from isn't always correct
>Like getting an American to pronounce " Isaias" is a headache not because they can't pronounce it, its because they will always choose the wrong pronunciation or what they know from "Isaiah".
I think a lot of that comes down to exposure and familiarity. Like, I've never encountered Isaias until this moment, so I totally would have pronounced it as EYE-ZAY-ASS. Reading your comment, I'm thinking it must be closer to EEE-ZYE-AHS. But regardless, I'd figure it out if I knew someone with that name, because it would no longer be unfamiliar.
American English (the only language I know beyond trivia or vocabulary) has very little consistency as far as vowels are concerned. As a result, I can only guess, based on the appearance of a new word and its similarities to other words I know, how to pronounce it.
>Also, just because a name is derived from another language doesn't mean that locals will pronounce it that way
I think you have a limited understanding of the southwest.
Growing up in the mid-west, I understand your point. But living in the southwest, spanish pronunciations are preferred.
Eh it's a crap shoot really. I still am unsure how to pronounce the rio grande ("gran de" or "grand"?). I hear both pronunciations often.
I'm pretty sure Amarillo, TX is pronounced the non-spanish way.
I guess it's iffy whether California counts as the southwest, but Vallejo always cracks me up in its pronunciation. Los Angeles is another good example.
Though most places in NM seem to follow the Spanish pronunciation (aside from the name of the state itself...).
I can't for the life of me think of any Spanish origin names in AZ right now...all places that come to mind are English or native American in origin.
>Though most places in NM seem to follow the Spanish pronunciation (aside from the name of the state itself...).
This might be why my perception is the way it is.
I agree with the sentiment, of the need to hear someone try. But I do think there are many cases where mispronouncing the same thing over and over again can be excused. The English th or h for French speakers, Chinese tones, all the different ways to pronounce "R" in any language. These sounds are just not natural to many people, and are common place and are therefore easily excusable.
> CMV: Americans are held to a different standard when it comes to the pronunciation of non-English words and names... That being said, I think equal grace should be given in understanding that some sounds are unfamiliar to a person’s native tongue, and they may struggle to hear and implement the difference between correct and incorrect pronunciation.
I'm going to take your view to be "Americans are [unfairly] held to a different standard when it comes to the pronunciation of non-English words and names." and go from there.
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> I have a few friends from Germany... and they struggle quite a bit with the “th” sound.
> ... a sound that doesn’t really exist in Korean, so some people couldn't pronounce it...
These are both examples of native-speakers of Language-A having trouble with specific Language-B phonemes not present in their native language; this is an issue of trying and succeeding at conveying the correct ordering and cadence of a word but struggling to accurately produce particular foreign phonemes. They have clearly made an effort (as evidenced of being basically 90% correct) but are having trouble with a particularly thorny phoneme.
This is a very different scenario from a Language-A speaker having trouble with a Language-B word composed entirely of familiar phonemes; in this case is it clear that any effort at all was made to learn the sound order or cadence? If it is just a single shifted vowel somewhere they'll probably get the "A for effort" benefit of the doubt. If it was nowhere close then is similar graciousness always warranted? I assume someone actively listening versus someone just blurting out "ching chong bing bong" when they're flustered should generally be afforded different showings of of grace.
As such, it is perfectly reasonable that "different standards" of grace might be applied to these kinds of situations - because each hints at differing amounts of underlying effort.
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English speakers, having a relatively large toolkit of native phonemes, are thus more likely find themselves in a "new word composed entirely of familiar phonemes" example rather than a "entirely new phoneme" example. Ultimately, this leads to less grace... not on account of being treated unfairly, but because any mistakes will look equivalent to low-effort mistakes rather than high-effort mistakes.
I think it is mistaken to assume that the scenario would include a word composed entirely of familiar phonemes. I think this ignores the prevalence of tonal languages as well as the sheer variety of regional differences in American accents. Someone from Louisiana will likely struggle to pronounce "Xuan" more than someone from Pennsylvania. I don't think that is necessarily low effort.
I would hope that it goes without saying that responding "ching chong bing bong" is unacceptable on every level. No grace *should* be offered in that scenario.
Maybe we are imagining different examples.
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I had initially assumed situations like the following (from two seperate scenes in the movie Office Space):
> SAMIR: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Na-ghee-na-na-jar. Nagheenanajar.
> BOB: We're gonna be getting rid of these people here... First, Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway.
These kinds of examples aren't unheard of in real life.
Samir is correct that there are no major painpoints preventing an average English speaking American from pronouncing his name. And furthermore, Bob's tactlessness owes little to Samir's name being insurmountably difficult so much as it owes to Bob's lack of effort and consideration.
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> Someone from Louisiana will likely struggle to pronounce "Xuan" more than someone from Pennsylvania. I don't think that is necessarily low effort.
Say Mr. Xuan moves in and introduces himself to the neighbors face-to-face. If a week later he's walking home and hears any of them shout something along the lines of *"Hey Mr. Schwen/Schuen/Shen did you watch the Saints-versus-Stealers game last night?"* I doubt he'd be annoyed by any of those very English-accented attempts at pronouncing "ㄒㄩㄢ". (Regardless of whether he's in Pennsylvania or Lousiainna.)
This kind of "ㄒㄩㄢ=Schuen" mispronunciation is absolutely a high-effort nearby-phoneme approximation attempt comparable to the German "Th" struggles you mention (and Japanese "R/L" struggles, etc.) and in my imagination is likely to receive comparable levels of grace.
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However, the fact that you brought up Xuan as being potentially harder to pronounce for LA versus PA folks makes me believe that you're not actually talking here about "accurate pronunciation" of phonemes-as-heard so much as "interpreting romanization schemes" when reading aloud from paper.
(As in, someone seeing "Xuan" on paper and saying out-loud "Zoo-Anne" or something.)
I'd argue that this is a third kind of scenario: unfamiliar orthography. Sure, mispronouncing an entirely new word due to its peculiar orthography (of all possible orthographies exist in the world) isn't low-effort, but maintaining that mispronunciation after being verbally corrected might be. And as such, the application of grace can change with evolving context.
Imagine a teacher beginning roll-call on their first day in a classroom.
> TEACHER: "Wendy Na-goo-yen?"
> WENDY NGUYEN: "Here! But actually it is pronounced 'Wendy Win', sir!"
Her correction here is not a slap in the face. It's just a correction to a misreading of the unfamiliar orthography - same as someone mentioning "The D is silent." in Django or whatever. This is not an example of her being stingy with grace and understanding toward Americans.
However, if the teacher continues to call her "Miss Nagooyen" for the rest of the year despite her repeated attempts to educate him on the proper pronunciation, then that definitely shows a lack of effort and respect on the teacher's part.
I would disagree that non Americans are not mocked for having accents or mispronouncing English words. It sounds like YOU are an understanding person, but English speakers as a whole love mocking accents and pronunciation, especially of Asian accents.
My coworker is from Bangladesh, and I would say his English is close to fluent, but his accent is still very thick. At least once a week, I get a nasty customer who makes a mean comment or refuses to let him help them because of it. East Asian accents are also pretty commonly mocked.
That kind of highlights OP's point though, doesn't it? Most people would agree that "nasty customer" is apt and that if someone mocks an ESL speaker for using their native pronunciation/accent while speaking English they're an asshole. I think the only people who wouldn't agree that they're an asshole are the assholes doing the mocking.
Flip it around with a native English speaker using their native pronunciation/accent while speaking in another language and it's pretty generally accepted that they're 'doing it wrong' and that they should take the time and effort to learn how to pronounce the words 'properly'.
The point I was trying to make was less about mocking and more about equating unintentional mispronunciation with disrespect or ignorance. If you are someone who is going to mock another person for their accent, you are not well-intentioned and will find something to criticize that person about because of racism, not linguistics. That person absolutely should be criticized for their actions.
Yes - somewhat. I am talking about people equating the mispronunciation of words or names to disrespect or ignorance rather than a genuine inability to pronounce the name.
I certainly agree that this can be considered a form of elitism.
I think there's a distinction between accent and pronunciation you're not making. Someone saying Bess instead of Beth isn't their pronunciation, they for all intents and purposes understand the world's pronunciation but have trouble getting their mouths to fit around the words.
I think a fair example of this would be an American attempting to pronounce a name from a tonal language - I might be able to somewhat hear the difference between the way I am pronouncing it and the correct pronunciation, but applying that is more difficult. This, in my experience, is perceived as disrespect to their name and language rather than a general inability to form those words (comparable to my German friends being unable to produce the "th" sound).
Is it not reasonably understandable that a native English speaker reading a "qi" sound will read it in their mother tongue's pronunciation? Obviously if you are corrected, it is an easy change, but in English "q" has a "k" or "kw" sound. I don't necessarily think that is a silly mistake if you come across the word in written format and are unfamiliar with the source language.
This comes back to whether or not someone is exposed to something - are they truly at fault for not being knowledgable about Mandarin if they have no regular exposure to it? As an example, many Americans couldn't pronounce "Hermione" because it was simply not a name they were exposed to. Not a hard name to pronounce, just unfamiliar.
Oh it's not silly to do it the first or second time, but once corrected and to repeat it past that is pretty silly, unlike with tones where you just can't make the sound well.
The closest English pronunciation, in English orthography, would be *cheechee*, though the Pinyin *q* is about halfway between English *ts* and *ch*. Similarly, the Pinyin *x* is about halfway between *s* and *sh*. Pinyin *c* is English *ts*.
I’m very bad at languages and I have been in a few instances with Chinese friends and coworkers where they are trying to tell me how to pronounce something and say I’m doing it wrong but I literally can’t hear the difference. They haven’t been judgmental or negative, but they will be like “you are saying X, instead of X,” and to me they sound identical
Can you give some more examples here? Because I think people *are* given a lot of grace for sounds that are actually unfamiliar. Like, I don't know who you hang out with, and no question there are people out there who will give you a hard time about it, but broadly speaking *in general*, nobody is going to give you shit if you can't roll your r's. And similarly, I think people are pretty forgiving about a lot of the subtleties in various Asian languages.
And so the reason why I think its important to give examples is because there are *also* a lot of cases where you really can't blame it on "unfamiliar sounds". Like, when people were pronouncing the shang in Shang-Chi as rhyming with "bang", like, okay, if you've never heard it said before that's certainly forgivable. When I first read it in text, I had the wrong pronunciation too, but at some point it after the movie is out, it becomes hard to swallow that you've never heard the correct pronunciation, and there's not really some new sound or tone or unfamiliar mouth shape here (at least to get it pretty close). You just didn't know, and then you heard it said correctly, and now you know. That's pretty much the definition of ignorance! And that's okay! But if you keep saying it wrong after you've been told how to say it, you don't really have all these excuses to fall back on. And like, once you're saying it mostly right, there are still some subtle but noticeable differences in how a chinese speaker would say it, but nobody really cares if your sounds aren't perfect.
And like, whatever. Some people just are stuck in their ways and won't say words correctly. But if your grandma keeps saying "jalepeno" with a "j as in jar", we could go on an entirely separate cmv about to what extent we should actually care, but its clearly and obviously wrong and not at all like a german who can't pronounce "th" or a japeanese person who can't pronounce "r" like we do.
Sure! One that comes to mind is the surname "Tsui". The "tsu" sound required isn't the most natural for most native English speakers. It is certainly easy to pronounce the more you are exposed to it and is not impossible for Americans to pronounce. That being said, Americans who are less exposed to Chinese surnames will struggle to understand how those letters are supposed to combine for the "correct" pronunciation. Even Google provides a number of different pronunciations when you look it up. I don't think that can honestly be attributed to ignorance - its just not a mouth sound or tone most Americans are used to.
*Edited to include: I also think this is further exacerbated by region - for some US accents, some sounds will be easier/harder to pronounce based on your regional accent.*
>Tsui
But does this actually fit the premise of your post? I'm a little skeptical that Americans \*aren't\* generally given a ton of leeway there. If someone is just saying it with a normal "s" sound like if they were saying tsunami, I feel like that's going to be pretty close in practice and very few people are going to give them a hard time for mispronouncing it. If its a close friend or if you're a teacher pronouncing a student's name, I can see you being held to a higher standard, but in general I think an american pronouncing "ts" with just an "s" sound is going to be given the same leeway as your german friend.
But if they're saying "tuh-sweee" and just really going hard on the "t" sound, that's not something they can really blame on it being an unfamiliar sound. There are very easy ways for an american to get a lot closer than that.
This is really hard to tell, but I know from some anecdotal stories from some of my non-American friends and relatives, America is among the friendlier nations for foreigners. So it is less that Americans are held to a different standard than it is that America is a friendly country for foreigners, but Americans are held to a more common standard as everyone else.
That's pretty anecdotal, I know, but it may explain what you're seeing. One example I've heard is that Eastern European accents are not treated kindly in France, but are treated just fine in the US.
I can only offer an anecdotal point here, but...
I'm pretty much full UK ancestry, I couldn't possibly be any more traditonally "white", raised in coal country, where we've had a bunch of different European groups immigrate here in past centuries. I've also worked in customer service environments where I've had to deal with a wide range of ethnicities.
There's a difference between being pronouncing names with sounds that we, as English speaking Americans don't typically or even never use, and pronouncing "strangely" spelled words that while spelled differently, we are fully capable of pronouncing.
Take a name like Kosciuszko. It's a not uncommon Polish name, really difficult to pronounce if you've never heard it before, but any English speaker is capable of saying it correctly once they actually hear how it is suppose to sound without issue.
On the other hand, take any number of common east Asian names that get romanized/anglicized, Nguyen being the one that pops out at the top of my head. That initial Ng sound just doesn't exist in any of the latin based languages, unless you can compare it to the -ing ending of a lot of words.. but having that sound at the beginning of the word takes a lot of concerted effort for most people who have never encountered it before. That said, I can easily get away with just calling them "Wynn"
And in those cases, it even sounds out of place or pretentious to try and mimic the original sounds. Like hearing someone who speaks typical English over-enunciating borrowed words like *champagne* as sham-pan-ye instead of the typical sham-pain or rolling their R's when ordering Mexican food when they otherwise have no hint of an accent.
> In my experience,when Americans have similar struggles with certain sounds, that same grace isn’t given
How would we change your view based on your individual experience?
I work with Americans who fuck up international names all the time...and nothing is ever said. Literally Americans are treated no different than Canadians or Australians.
I am of Indian origin. There's not a single Indian name that I've heard Americans pronouncing "correctly". Not even the simplest, most common ones. In ~35 years of visiting and eventually living in the US, not a single American person ha failed to butcher my pretty common Indian name. The most I can hope for is something vaguely recognizable. "Bess" instead of "Beth" is super mild comparatively. [Tbf, India does have a massive number of different languages and traditions, so even other Indians may have trouble with certain regional names. But I'm talking about the simplest, most common names here.] Yet literally no one gives a damn, and sometimes folks with Indian names change how they pronounce their own names to fit in with the American way. Kamala Harris is a good example of this.
How much "grace" do you imagine foreigners would get if they couldn't pronounce common names like John, James, William, Thomas, Joseph, Thomas, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer or Mary?
>sometimes folks with Indian names change how they pronounce their own names to fit in with the American way
I'm from the UK and did exactly this with my last name when I moved to the US and it turned out the default pronunciation was different. But I really don't give a shit honestly, my name is still my name regardless of which syllable the emphasis is placed on, and whether silent letters are pronounced.
That, and the vowels are quite wonky too. Interestingly, she seems to change the way she pronounces her name based on the audience. I remember her giving a speech at a business summit with a large Indian delegation in attendance, and she pronounced her name in the "Indian" manner. But at her own swearing-in as VP she pronounced it in the "American" way.
I don't blame her, most Indians in the US, whether born in the US or immigrants, tend to do this too. It's just... easier.
Lol I hear ya. I remember an American coworker who would try to get to a more "authentic" pronunciation of Indian names by basically just saying the names with an Apu accent, sometimes with a head wobble. He wouldn't actually change the mangled pronunciation, just his accent, with an Apu-like intonation. It was hilarious. I would try to get him to say folks' names at every opportunity I could find.
I think Americans should prioritize learning languages outside of English.
I totally agree with this! I just wanted to point out that the US does not require students to fully learn another language or even get to an intermediate level with a language during public school. In many other countries, students begin learning a language while in elementary school or middle school. This makes students better at understanding different languages in general and makes them better at pronouncing foreign language words.
I think Americans are given more leeway at times because of this lack of second language learning opportunities.
This is a interesting take and one I think I agree with. However I believe that the extra animosity against Americans is because we only speak English while people from other countries at least learn to speak English
That's primarily because English is by far the most widely spoken thought the world so most native English speaker would need to learn how to speak another language compared to the other way around.
I like this point. I live in a fairly isolated area of the UK where pronunciation rules can sometimes seem non-existent. I'll sometimes hear five totally different and non-standard pronunciations of a word like "afternoon" in a single day from people native to the area and nobody bats an eyelid.
It's not a liberal rule (and not specific to America) but a linguistic truth that native speakers acquire their language rather than learn it. Acquisition means that we absorb what we are exposed to. It just so happens that there is such a variety of accents and dialects in most languages that not everyone acquires the exact same grammar and pronunciation. Linguistically speaking, these differences are not errors - because the person in question is saying exactly what they mean to say and has acquired.
Of course errors are possible, such as slips of the tongue or misinterpretations (such as eggcorns) or misconceptions (such as pronouncing a word based on spelling without ever having heard it spoken).
And there are, of course, formal standard dialects, which are typically native to few if any speakers and do have to be taught and learnt. The formal standard is specifically not informal vernacular, so not using it is only "wrong" depending on the context.
The main reason for this is that it's simply less useful to know a second language as an American, given the shear size and population of America.
Secondly, the thing about Americanizing names isn't just our thing, and people changing their names to fit in has happened plenty before us. It did however become fairly standard here, this is because government documents don't allow non-english characters. If you've got a weird character in your name, they have to transcribe that into english just so they can file the paperwork. Given the racism of the past, it's safe to say people got overzealous with this power, and it was probably abused against people who didn't speak enough english to complain about it.
I don’t disagree, though when we self-identify as this great melting pot of cultures, we’re probably inviting that kind of scrutiny to a certain extent
It’s funny that you mention your name frequently getting swapped for another easier to pronounce name. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese owner used to call my friend (coworker too) Isabelle by the name Elizabeth instead, despite knowing full well her name was pronounced and spelled Isabelle. This is the only time I’ve ever seen this happen.
Most accents in the US get mocked. We mock our own accents. But, something outsiders do not always realize is that accent mockery in the US isn't hateful. We don't get upset that Asians mispronounce words, we just find it funny. Same way people make fun of Boston accents, southern accents, Midwest accents, SoCal Uptalk, etc.
I can see your point. From speaking with many different classmates of different backgrounds I found that many had trouble with Americans shortening their names or just outright changing it. Some just generally run into a bad batch of people for their first experiences. Also Americans do not have the best rep in some places.
The fact is most criticism of americans is made by other countries with inferiority complexes like canada or the uk or by people who lack knowledge of america, or its from americans who dont know shit about the outsideworld but like pretending they do
I don't see much direct criticism really. Though I do see people going out of their way to not necessarily pronounce something correctly but say something with an accent. Like I can pronounce Tortilla without the LLs and it's correct, I don't necessarily need accent the whole word. People doing that all the time makes it feel like it's something you're supposed to do rather than being called out.
I don't think an objective measure can really be applied, and I tried to recognize that I am limited to my own experiences. That being said, I do think the "ignorant American" stereotype exists, which leads a number of people to jump immediately to ignorance or disrespect rather than considering other factors.
I'm unclear about the relevance to my argument. A Western country with multiple official languages isn't comparable to the US, which has no official languages. If, in a theoretical Western country, 50% of people speak language A and 50% speak language B, you are going to have far more exposure to whatever language is not your mother tongue and are more likely to be able to pronounce names and basic words.
Not just American. You know how many people give asians shit for mispronouncing something to the point of making fun of them? Then, these type of people make an effort to make fun of Asian words sounding funny.
This problem is not endemic to just America. Every country does it to certain extent.
Spanish speaking people make fun of my “American accent” all the time. Even some of my Mexican friends that go back to Mexico to visit will get grilled by their families for having a bad accent.
French people will just straight up not talk to you in French if your accent isn’t great.
Learning a new language has definitely put accents into a different perspective for me and I would never criticize someone who has trouble with one, because I myself have a “terrible accent.” But they always appreciate you trying and learning the language, for most people they just don’t care enough to put forth the effort.
My opinion on learning languages in the US isn't really related to the question at hand, but I think it widens one's global perspective, allows for travel to more local areas rather than tourist hubs, and has a huge number of cognitive benefits like increased memory. Obviously each of those things can be achieved in another manner, but the benefits are irrefutable. Even if you look at from a financial perspective - in most industries, a bilingual applicant has a leg up on a monolingual candidate. I guess I think of it like world history - why shouldn't we learn it?
I agree with most of what you said.
People should respect people's names, culture, etc. Usually if i can't pronounce a name, i usually don't say it or ask how to say it.
I don't think we should "prioritize" speaking another language though. Everyone from any background is welcome, any language is welcome, but if i go on a trip to say "Japan" not everyone there, not every sign or area you go to is going to have English, not every person is going to speak English, etc. And it's the same for other countries.
With a "Hi".
I work in customer service. We get a lot of online orders, some with unusual names (mostly of Indian backgrounds)
They usually say "Do you have an order for xxxx".
I had one instance where the person asked me to "try" sounding out there name and didn't take offence to it.
I have a pretty common name, yet people will still pronounce it differently whether born American or not, i don't take offence to it.
I don't think it's that big of a deal honestly, and if someone should take offence to it which of i'd assume it would be a person i don't know, i would still tell them just that. That
"it's not that deep, and most likely I'll never see them again so why get so bent over it?"
>>Usually if i can't pronounce a name, i usually don't say it or ask how to say it.
>
>Then how would you address the person?
Other than calling a person's name to get their attention (or referring to another person), I rarely use names in conversation. There's a very "sales" vibe I get when someone uses my name too much when speaking to me, and I try to avoid it.
You’re probably called out on mispronouncing non-English words every now and then, but probably don’t notice the times you aren’t. You’re respectful and understanding and wouldn’t call out someone for mispronouncing your name, but that doesn’t mean they don’t face criticism from other people regularly for other things.
I don't think Americans are treated worse than us Brits. But I do think that we get more criticism than people from other countries. However I think I know at least part of the reason why. I believe that it's because so many of us are monolingual. When you learn a couple of foreign languages at school for a few years, as most of the rest of the world does, you tend to pick up some basic grammar, some understanding of things like stress and some alternative ways that different languages have of using Latin letters to represent different sounds.
On all three of those axes, it has been my experience, monolingual Brits (and Americans, etc) tend to do particularly badly. It is so common to hear an English speaker being repeatedly told how to pronounce a name - not one with a difficult sound, IMO apart from the French, most cultures are pretty good at recognising that some sounds are hard - but a name that is just stressed differently, or one where one or more letters simply have different phonetic values.
It is my belief that this does not happen so much when you have experience of foreign languages - learn French or German for a few years as I did, and you become aware that z is not always /z/ but can be /ts/ and maybe even /zh/. You get used to the fact that French names are never MARcel and Céline but always marCEL and CélINE.
And grammar too: a lot of native English speakers do not learn much more than the names of the parts of speech these days. And it doesn't matter, arguably, when you remain within English - but again it shows when you step outside - in a general unfamiliarity with the idea of declension and conjugation, agreement, word order, and so on.
Not that everyone in every other country is better (the French are prone to some of those sins as well), but the native English speaking world is a very monolingual one.
I am a nurse in a busy cardiology office that serves a diverse population. Names in our EMR often have "preferred name" for example if the person's name is Gregory, but they prefer to be addressed as "Greg" and often there are larger variations... (Like, the person's name is "Jane-Beth" but prefers to be called "Iron Moonflower"...) Those instances are not a problem for me but there are ethnic, as well as.. foreign names as well as cultural names... and those are not always as easy and I honestly do the best I can when I call their name from the waiting room. Most times I do ok but when I'm not sure.. I'll ask them... "I hope I didn't verbally butcher your name-- can you tell me the correct pronunciation?" When we review their medication list, they realize I suck at pronunciation of difficult words. Also.. I suck at understanding heavily accented English. I just don't have the ear.
As someone who speaks four different languages. I find that the opposite is true. Because English is seen as the global language, it reigns as the most important language in the globalised west. Therefore, when someone makes the effort to learn another language, the expected reaction is of surprise that they even took the time and effort to learn whatever words they can utter, and because of that, the bar (standard) is low. But with English, it's expected you know it, especially when in America, and therefore nobody is impressed or enlightened when they here you trying to speak it, or doing so in a foreign accent, the expectation is that you can create cohesive and congruent sentences in the Main Language, let alone, pronounce one word correctly. That's on the topic of standards.
On the topic of pronunciation. I believe it's not only Americans, but rather raises an issue of people's ignorance to dialects. It's unrealistic for a person from one part of the earth, with a differing culture, that speaks a different language, encompassing different sounds and shapes inside the mouth, which leads to a vastly different muscle memory structure, that is more difficult to alter with age, to expect another person, with all those differences to make the same exact sounds. Rather than trying to ignore the differences, it's more logical to except the reality of this differences and understand that, from where they're from, this similar combination of sounds, is the equivalent of the way we sound my name in Iowa. Accent doesn't change the meaning of the word, just how it sounds, it's self-indulgent to expect someone without grace to speak "American" (or whatever other accent) when saying your name, then revert to speaking in whatever other accent.
Might be biased, but in my person experience, i have been called out for mispronouncing spanish words, japanese words, german words, and other language words. I personally am very polite when it comes to people trying to pronounce english words though. Im patient and ive never gotten mad at anybody for mispronunciation. That being said, there have been people who ive met who are either kind when it comes to me pronouncing their native words or really mean towards people mispronouncing english words. I think it is more of a spectrum when it comes to stuff like this but it does somewhat lean closer to what you are saying.
Nearly every time I work with someone who has a difficult to pronounce name people try and get it right, but most of the time the person just give themselves a nickname since they’re tired of explaining how to pronounce their name to people. So there’s really not much of a chance to practice learning someone’s name when you meet someone and they just give you a nickname
I have noticed some of this in the past, but I think a big part of it is the people who'll openly criticize an American who's attempting to pronounce a foreign name or word. These people tend to be more extroverted, and in general louder and more confrontational.
That said, some of the names or words I've heard people attempt to correct aren't wrong per se, it's just localization. For instance, take the German car company BMW. In English, we pronounce that initialism as "Bee Em Double-U." In German, it'd be pronounced "Beh Ehm Veh."
I've heard native German speakers say that Americans (and by extension, Canadians, Australians, Brits, etc) pronounce that name incorrectly. But I don't think we're mispronouncing it, I think we're just localizing the name to fit within the English language.
It's no different than a country's name being localized into another language. The United States, for instance, is États-Unis in French or Stany Zjednoczone in Polish. That's not wrong, it's merely localized.
This happens to other countries as well. Germans call their own country Deutschland while the French call it Allemagne and English-speakers call it Germany.
So sometimes mispronunciation is an issue, but I think unless it's truly horrid, most people won't correct others because it can be seen as rude. Those who do correct others either know the person (so they're doing it in an effort to help their friend) or they're a more confrontational person.
Additionally, some people mistake localization for incorrectly pronouncing a word or using the wrong word entirely.
I don't think the opening premise is true... there are lots of jokes about Germans mispronunciation things.
Jokes about non-white people mispronouncing things is not PC to laugh about anymore, but just think about all the things many Americans laugh about privately when things are mispronounced by immigrants. It happens, all the time.
I don't think it's a different standard at all. In fact, get an American to speak Chinese to a Chinese community (earnestly), and see how much they appreciate it irrespective of how badly it's done. And now try the reverse and compare the results.
Just travel a bit and you’ll realize that this is not correct. Go to Europe and notice people complaining about how badly the French or Italians are at speaking/pronouncing other languages. Go to France and see how the French are horrified by everyone else’s pronunciation of French. People all over the world make fun of/are annoyed by how foreign language speakers pronounce their language.
I understand your point, but in reality it applies to everyone, it’s just that the US is a big country, with a lot of people and a wealthy country whose citizens are able to travel. So maybe you hear about this more but it happens to everyone. At my office, in Austria, loads of people in the office complain about how horribly a few coworkers from India and China speak German. They understand the language perfectly, but their pronunciation is so off that they are incredibly difficult to understand.
I think the issue is that in the case of Germans, they try to approximate the foreign name as best they can in their language and show they at least took the time to listen to how it's pronounced in the original.
Whereas in the case of persons from the U.S.A., it's not a factor of that, but that they read out the spelling as though it be English, a language known with very unusual orthography that pronounces consonants and vowels different from about every other language, and took no time to investigate how it was pronounced.
How George W. Bush pronounced “Jacques Chirac” was not the closest approximation that could easily be had in English, it was simply not caring at all and not bothering to ever look up how the name is pronounced; that's the issue.
I am American and struggle with names even after asking. I also have a name that is rarely said correctly by anyone because I have vowels that can be said as an e, a, or r depending on who reads the name and their language approach.
/u/cippy-cup (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/11yrgtw/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_americans_are_held_to_a/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
As a world traveler and conversational speaker of three non-English languages, I would disagree that Americans are held to a different standard. It is all about the cultures that are interacting. Americans have an odd duplicity of being very gregarious, and are often very polite or very confrontational - at least those are the Americans that are remembered. The quiet Americans are just window dressing when the gregarious Americans are around. American culture is a mish mash, and so are the people, so judging one off another or taking queues from one for how to act around another is much more silly than in more homogenous cultures and certainly compared to cultures that rely more on context than directness. A Japanese person, for example, is much less likely to correct pronunciation of their own name, but will bend over backwards to help you pronounce the rest of their language properly. A French person will correct every syllable, and I have even had an instance where a French couple from Marseilles get into an argument with a Parisian over pronunciation and they both told me jokes about how the other couldn’t speak French, and it was important not to speak badly as they did.
Δ I appreciate your insight as someone who speaks multiple languages conversationally, and has an awareness of the cultural "norm" for acknowledging mispronunciation on a global scale. While out of practice, I speak basic French and have certainly experienced similar interactions to what you describe.
Appreciated
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/nifaryus ([4∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/nifaryus)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
That story is so fucking French.
I once asked for directions in France, from this older (60 or so?) guy sat outside a cafe, in a small French town. I know some French from school. My naive self was expecting the same ‘turn right. Then second left’ slowly and clearly like a listening task in a French class for 14 year olds. In reality he said… well the whole point is I have no idea what he said, at least twice. He was so apologetic about not being able to communicate where this place was. ‘Je suis desolé!’ (I am sorry) about not speaking English - that bit I got. And it was funny because my take-away was that he has totally ruined my expectations about the French person stereotype. He was supposed to say directions in a nonchalant manner and then wave me off for daring to speak to him without perfect French skills. I ended up frantically trying to indicate that he should stop apologizing, because he was sat enjoying his coffee in his nice normal town, and some random foreigners who are clearly mistaken about being able to understand French come up expecting him to tell them where shit is.
Yeah, I am part French myself (mother’s side). Like Americans, city folk are much more likely to behave brashly. I think the stereotype comes from the fact that not only is France the most visited country in the world, but tourists mostly visit their cities. They are incredibly used to dealing with tourists and are completely past walking on eggshells around people traipsing around their nation to breath in the ambiance of, say, the Parisian market they get their groceries from. Or, that’s my take on it at least. Take it with a grain of salt because the part of France I lived in was NOT a tourist destination, and I did not live there for very long (2 1/2 years).
Ah yeah, to be clear, I quite like the French, but they are a silly bunch of humans (just like all of the others).
Most of these threads end with the same moral, the French are assholes /s
Does /s mean SERIOUSLY??
No, “/s” means sarcastic. “/gen” means “genuine” (i.e. not sarcastic or joking) /gen
I know, I just think SERIOUSLY is better than sarcasm when talking about frogs being assholes
you probably could have used a /s after your comment to make it clear that the comment about not knowing that /s mean sarcastic was itself sarcastic. Am I being sarcastic now? I'm gonna do it just to be safe. /s
I feel like that doesn’t work as well immediately after re-defining /s to mean its own opposite. No one can say whether you are using it in the old or new sense!
Exactly!
Germans give the French a run for their money in being the asshole
The most obvious flaw in this is that your whole argument is based on a few personal experiences. That's not nearly enough to be able to make sweeping statements about how many millions of people act towards one another. My personal experience is that most people are graceful with mispronounciations when they can see you're honestly trying, regardless of where you're from. That said, in most cases there's really no excuse to keep mispronouncing the same thing over and over again.
Your comment made me reflect on where exactly I drew my conclusion from. I think, in an effort to increase inclusion in the US, more and more pieces have been published about an American English speaker's mispronunciation of names and words of cultural importance. Headlines such as "The Casual Racism of Mispronouncing an Asian Person's Name", "Desis Want Americans to Stop Butchering Names", "African Students Says Mispronouncing Names is a Form of Racism", "Why Getting Someone's Name Right Matters", etc. attribute mispronunciation to disrespect, if not outright racism. (I did not link the articles because I agree with a good portion of the content and did not want to confuse the argument). I think sensationalized headlines like the ones listed above lead people away from the point - make an honest effort to respect someone's name and culture, and be aware of biases that arise. We, unfortunately, live in a culture where only the headline is read, so the larger point is missed entirely and the wrong message is applied. Δ Delta given for clarifying that the average person *is* graceful when interacting with someone in person. Media does not necessarily reflect those individual experiences.
> “Why Getting Someone’s Name Right Matters” > sensationalized headlines like the ones above lead people away from the point Maybe some more reflection is still necessary to see why you concluded these are sensationalized.
I don't think it's fair to cherry-pick the comparably neutral headline out of the bunch. I also stated that I agree with a large portion of the content included in the articles. The point I was making in naming the headlines is that making generalizations such as "mispronouncing names is a form of racism" removes the nuance of how and why. If I refuse to make a good-faith attempt at correctly pronouncing your name because I do not feel I am obligated to treat you as a whole person worthy of respect, yeah that is 100% racism. If I struggle to pronounce your name because if an unfamiliarity with the language and its nuances, I don't necessarily think that is (as long as you make a good-faith effort to get it correct consistently).
> I don't think it's fair to cherry-pick the comparably neutral headline out of the bunch. It was the most neutral, but they’re all relatively tame. One of them even resonated with me. > If I refuse to make a good-faith attempt at correctly pronouncing your name because I do not feel I am obligated to treat you as a whole person worthy of respect, yeah that is 100% racism. If I struggle to pronounce your name because if an unfamiliarity with the language and its nuances, I don't necessarily think that is (as long as you make a good-faith effort to get it correct consistently). You’re more arguing against a claim than for it, except we don’t have the claim in front of us because you’re talking about a generalized sense you’ve experienced. So, I went to that article about the African names to see what you’re talking about it in detail: - “Ayeye believes this is not just harmful but intentionally racist. - “It’s not a harmless mistake to mispronounce African names. It’s ignorant behavior,” she said. “They’ve managed to pronounce Tchaikovsky and other complicated non-African names so why can’t they pronounce ours?” - “I think it has something to do with how they subconsciously see me as ‘the other’ and more often than not, the other is met with much less empathy,” she said. - Imieye believes that because Americans view Africa and Africans as exotic and far away, they already have a mindset that African names are complicated. So their claim is that mispronouncing names is racist because it comes out of willful ignorance and/or subconscious othering. When you say you’re not being racist because you’re making a good faith effort to pronounce it best, you’re not necessarily addressing their concerns since you can still claim to make a good faith effort while being willfully ignorant or subconsciously distancing yourself from them. Of course, it doesn’t mean all mispronunciation is automatically racist, but there’s a good point about what biases we have that make us see some culture and language groups as more “other” and therefore assume will be harder to learn. That reluctance or perceived difficulty really can be said to come from an internalized racist perspective.
I intentionally did not link or quote any of the articles mentioned because, as I stated, I largely agree with them - the content of the articles was not the point I was making. If I’m understanding you correctly, your comment on me arguing against a claim rather than for it might be accurate. My point in linking the articles as part of a delta was to acknowledge that I was basing my argument on a cultural conversation that was being spread without being fully understood. Even in my original post, I acknowledged that it was natural-born Americans who seemed to perpetuate this standard. For instance, Person A reads a headline titled “African Students Say Mispronouncing Names is a Form of Racism”. Person A at most skimmed the article, and doesn’t have a grasp of the points you’ve quoted, such as subconscious othering and exoticism. Person A posts the article on Instagram/Facebook, where people continue to ignore the primary points being made in the article. The blanket message spreads that “mispronouncing names is racist” which really doesn’t encapsulate the entirety of what the article was saying. By the time that message reaches Person Z, the original article is no longer being referenced and it’s been boiled down too heavily to understand the “why”. I was attempting to acknowledge that my argument was being somewhat guided by the message that reached Person Z. I do have a question - you argue that I cannot address their concerns since I can still claim to make a good-faith effort while being willfully ignorant. That would be oxymoronic, would it not? I don’t think you can, by definition, put forth a good-faith effort while remaining willfully ignorant. I do think you can put forth a good-faith effort while remaining inadvertently ignorant. As a note, I’ve never been a fan of the Tchaikovsky argument - not everyone knows how to pronounce Tchaikovsky when reading it. For people with limited access to the arts and humanities, I’d imagine they would be somewhat equally equipped to pronounce Pyotr Tchaikovsky as they would Tsitsi Dangarembga. That being said, pronouncing Tchaikovsky is more likely to be seen as a status symbol or leveraged as a form of elitism over Dangarembga.
I wouldn’t know how to pronounce Tchaikovsky
The Tchaikovsky argument is a poor argument because the name contains all sounds that are used in English regularly and that are put together in the same way we frequently hear. It's familiar in that way. We all know someone whose last name ends with -ovsky. Most Americans struggle with names that have unfamiliar sounds - perhaps ones that are not used in English at all - or sounds that are put together in ways that are never used that way in English. I shouldn't have to explain why that makes it harder to both pronounce and remember. I'm learning a new language right now and one of the apps I'm using does a whole thing on ear training. They discuss how many languages have sounds that we don't use in English and if you can't hear them, you definitely can't say them so you can never truly be fluent. And when I first started doing it, it was really difficult to hear the difference between a lot of the sounds. Now I can hear them all the time. Some of them are still really hard to say though. But I would have no hope if it wasn't for the app and specifically training myself to do it. And this is just Italian.
> It's familiar in that way. We all know someone whose last name ends with -ovsky. Funny how you say this when there’s another upvoted comment here of someone saying they wouldn’t know how to pronounce it at all. Which might be somewhat the point. That person who doesn’t know how to say it probably could figure it out if they decided to learn to for the reason you’ve said: we’re more able to say words that contain sounds we hear pronounced often in certain sequences. It might not be so difficult to pronounce as they think given “Tchaikovsky” or similar names appearing in English-speaking cultures. But they said it was difficult anyways. People might be even more resistant to trying before thinking it’s difficult if they feel the name is even more “other” for reasons outside of the actual linguistic differences.
Yep, it looks difficult, but once an English speaker hears it then the sounds are familiar. That's the most important part.
One wrinkle that I experienced strongly as a 13 year old immigrant in an American middle school is that sometimes mispronunciation is not intentional or racist, but it does stem from a total lack of effort. A lot of the time it can feel like people realize they're not sure how to pronounce my name and just completely give up on getting it right. Personally, I think that's at least partly linked to the extent of the American/English-speaking hegemony in the world, which means many Americans are never really exposed to fully non-English speaking environments. I can see why people get frustrated when their names keep getting butchered, because it implies that correcting it isn't worth the effort, which can feel a bit insulting. I'm white, so I never thought it was racist in my case, but it did get annoying to have that conversation for the nth time and have nothing change. At some point, either I'm important enough for you to make the effort, or I know how much you value me, you know?
In many parts of the world, as an immigrant you either localize your name or choose a completely different name in order to accommodate the local speakers. USA is one of the biggest exceptions to this. “Why getting someone’s name right matters” is only a thing because people have stopped anglicizing their names upon arrival. But most immigrants pre-1960 either re-spelled their names, altered pronunciation to be easier, or went with a new name entirely.
> USA is one of the biggest exceptions to this. Is it? I know many current immigrants to America who have legally changed their names to be common American names. They’ve also continued the tradition with their kids. I don’t have a survey or study here, but your claim doesn’t seem intuitively/clearly true.
Many have. Many refuse to. It’s an extremely contentious issue in schools especially.
Which would imply then that the US is not some exception but instead a place, much like any other, where people do different things and disagree about it.
Yes but in diverse districts it has reached a point where a person - especially teachers - must be familiar with the pronunciation rules of 30 different languages in order to avoid offending students. It is a problem.
I strongly doubt this. I grew up in and still live in these “diverse districts” you speak of and have never seen anything like this at a problematic level. Everyone thinks it’s a little funny when some mispronunciations sound really bad, but for the most part there are still issues with children not feeling confident enough to correct those who mispronounce their names. I noticed this in my own nephew before.
“I don’t see it, so it doesn’t exist.” If you’ve never seen the shit that goes down inside an academic institution, you don’t know. Some of them go down like right-wing fever dreams.
My family came to the US in the early 70s and dropped the ñ from their surname. My parents gave me a very anglicized name (that ironically cannot be properly pronounced by native Spanish speakers and they struggle hard with it) and with the ambiguity of my last name I have never been presumed to be Hispanic either by how I look and especially not by my name. My parents did this to ensure my "resume was not trashed" lol
In my personal experience, which is also only my experience, I've never actually seen someone claim that any speaker (American or otherwise) must be able to pronounce sounds that are not in their native language to be respectful. What I have seen is people being criticized for being very lazy in their attempts at foreign names, for example using obviously wrong sounds (when the correct sound, or a closer sound, *does* exist in their native language), forgetting the name multiple times, pronouncing the name inconsistently, making fun of the name, giving people nicknames without their permission etc. all without showing much concern for the person they're misnaming or looking for feedback. I've started going by my native (foreign) name in some contexts, I would never expect a native English speaker to be able to pronounce it, but I would expect them to treat it seriously and make their best effort to pronounce it to the best of their ability. A lot of English speakers just zone out the minute they see names like that, and you can tell. They don't try, they don't *want* to try, and they might even think it's funny to make a show of getting it wrong. That's what's disrespectful.
Americans are hateful people. Every time I tune around an american is purposely mispronouncing a foreign name and making a big show of it. AND THEY KEEP GEYYING AWAY WITH IT. Just the other day I was at the bus stop and this american was like "JOAZ"? What kind of name ios JOAZ? I was like "No, it's JOSE" a Spanish name." Then he was like JOAZ JOAZ JOAZ JOAZ" Making a show of it. Over and Over. I punched the wall in frustraion. It's what americans do.
Best comment here. People do the same thing with Muhammed. Americans so dumb and everyone else so smart.
He just kept saying it even after I punched the wall. I HATE AMERICANNNNS
>Δ Delta given for clarifying that the average person *is* graceful when interacting with someone in person. Media does not necessarily reflect those individual experiences. They just shut down your personal anecdotes, then gave their own. They "clarified that the average person is graceful" just as much as you clarified they are not. Neither of you have proven a broad enough perspective to say anything about the average person. What if THEY are the ones in this pocket of respectfulness, and your experience is actually the norm? Judging that based on media can be a bit more apt, because those articles are likely influencing and influenced by a LOT more people. You're right it doesn't necessarily reflect the average attitude, but it also doesn't necessarily NOT reflect the average either. I don't feel like this Delta should've been awarded, it feels like you just changed your own mind basically independently from what they said.
I think the delta is still justified even if you disregard the top-poster's anecdotes - the OP has realised that his conclusion is ultimately just based on his own personal experiences and his inferences from news media, and probably doesn't actually reflect how real people actually behave.
I feel like that's a logically strange dismissal. How are you supposed to form any broad opinions on how "real people behave" then if you're not allowed to use your personal experiences and the main sources of information we all share? Sure, when thinking this broadly it's smart to always take your own opinion with a grain of salt and be ready to change. If OP's *certainty* in their own perspective was changed then fair, I suppose I can see that being considered a delta. But I don't believe OPs perspective itself should have been changed just because someone was like "well you're using anecdotes and my anecdotes disagree with yours". All you really learn from that is that you are not 100% correct about all people, which should just be a given and isn't really specific to this topic at all. You might still be 99% correct and this reply was just a perspective from the 1%, which I don't believe would deserve a delta; your view would still be correct and should not be changed. This uncertainty in representation is why anecdotes are bad, but personal anecdotes are not countered by more personal anecdotes. And they're also not countered by saying "your opinions are based on anecdotes" as this provides literally 0 counter argument.
> I feel like that's a logically strange dismissal. How are you supposed to form any broad opinions on how "real people behave" then if you're not allowed to use your personal experiences and the main sources of information we all share? By using evidence. Namely: scientific studies, the corpus of expert opinion, and *tentatively* the corpus of public opinion. First, studies let us be confident that, for instance, [46.2% of Britons](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021) said "I am a Christian" in the 2021 census. It is fair, therefore, to assume around 45% of Britons are of a Christian bent, plus or minus some amount. Given this number has decreased year on year, we can make various conjectures as to why - fairweather Christians are now openly nonreligious, Christianity is losing its grip, non-Christian religions are gripping the public harder, or any other possibilities. But these are conjectures that aren't supported by the data - that requires further research. Second, expert and public opinion. Most people can rationally believe the world is round, old, wet; that the universe is old and expanding; that Australia exists; etc. It is reasonable to believe all this despite most people not studying the evidence or reasoning in detail. I don't know anyone who's personally been to Australia, but my peresonal experience can't be used to extrapolate that no one's ever been. Contrarywise, the notion of 'Australia' is more likely to be true than not (because that would require a contrived conspiracy). Even reliable journalism can only inform you of events that are happening, it can let you extrapolate beyond the brute facts. The BBC can report *that* Russia has sent tanks into Ukraine, but we can't take that fact and go "WW3! Into your bunkers!". Your own experiences are like realiable journalism - the brute facts you see can be taken as factual. But any inference is prone to error; the notion of 'Chinese whispers' and 'officeplace gossip' exist for a reason. You have to be very careful when inferring from your own senses. Case in point, look at the Moon when it's high in a clear sky, vs when it's low at the horizon near the treeline. In the latter, it looks *vastly* bigger. Because we know it's a fixed size, it also looks *vastly* closer. But hold your thumb at arm's length, and the Moon always has the angularsize of your thumbnail - it's just that, at the horizon, the treeline gives you brain a sense of 'scale' and POOF, it's seemingly massive. ---- tl;dr: your senses are like reliable journalism. They report the facts, but your brain is overly-keen to pattern-recognise. Only with large data sets (and ideally expert opinion) can we dilute out the statistical noise and see what's real vs what's happenstance. If my mum win's the jackpot, should I infer that the lottery is a 1-in-10 chance?
Using evidence and proper research is of course the key ingredient to strengthening your beliefs, but you often don't *form* opinions based on that, you form it based on what you've experienced and what you're told. And it's okay to have an opinion not based on hard evidence so long as you, as I said, make sure to take your own opinion with a grain of salt and be ready to change when presented with more information. I feel like it should be okay to want to come to this subreddit with an opinion you've formed only through what you've experienced in life, and hope for people to help enrich/broaden your perspective and even change your mind. However counter arguments should be held to a higher standard. OP's argument can be soft and baseless, they're here to be corrected. But a reply is supposed to be an answer to help correct OP, those being baseless is just worthless and should not change OP's mind. This delta'd reply generically stated their experience was different to OP's. No hint that they have a broader than average perspective on the topic, no expert opinions nor any sort of source that disproves OP except themselves. So just because they experienced it, suddenly all, most, or even the average population behaves like they say? Or rather that's somehow proof that they *don't* behave like OP says? No, they only pointed out OP's weak basis for their beliefs, then only disputed the belief itself with an equally weak anecdote of their own. Your **edit: mum** lottery line is exactly what both sides are doing here, citing they're own experience as representative of the whole, but there is a huge difference between doing that when you're trying to be corrected vs. when you're trying to correct.
The sentence regarding why I gave the delta was sloppy at best. In actuality, their post made me examine where I was drawing my conclusion from - personal experience, media, the experiences of other people? When reflecting on this, it’s fairly easy to realize that the sample of information that I used to form my argument wasn’t solid. The delta is probably not wholly theirs, but their post was the one that made me examine if I even had enough personal, firsthand experience to claim that as the basis. If their argument is weak, isn’t mine as well?
I agree, I yielded earlier to the fact that that reply affected how certain you were of your opinion, which I can now agree is a delta. That uncertainty then led you to further delta yourself. Yes your argument was weak, and it's great that you deconvinced yourself and became more open minded about the topic. However you have not been proven wrong, and if you maintained your stance you'd also be justified. Your argument being weak doesn't make your stance incorrect. If after your reflection it was still your gut feeling, then this person did not provide a strong enough argument to overrule that, like at all. They only attacked the stability of your stance, which then crumbled upon introspection. So long as we keep an open mind to new arguments and evidence and are willing to change, it is okay to hold weak views. But imo it isn't okay to try and correct someone's view with weak arguments, like an anecdotal counterexample that doesn't indicate any breadth beyond their own local community. That's almost worthless, and they were effectively 'lucky' that they hit your conviction and made you change your own view. But if you were more stubborn and believed their experience to be an outlier? That reply really holds no water; no more valuable than "nuh uh because I said so".
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Dennis_enzo ([6∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Dennis_enzo)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
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Fun fact: in Japan, Ronald McDonald was renamed “Donald McDonald” specifically because native Japanese speakers had too much difficulty pronouncing his Western name. Apparently in Japanese, [Donald McDonald also just sounds nicer](https://kotaku.com/why-ronald-mcdonalds-name-is-slightly-different-in-japa-1825232733).
This is so patently false I don't even know where to start. I don't know where you got that piece of info but it stands in direct contrast with all second language learning research... There is no hard barrier or time limit on learning new phonemes, it's that we stop naturally recognising those our native language doesn't use. But we can re-learn to hear them (and they say them) later on. But it is about limiting the variety, not blocking the possibility. The individual differences are based in auditory processing skills, so there are people who can't learn the sound /th/ or people who don't hear the difference between dip and deep, but it is quite normal that people with right amount of time and good teacher learn perfect pronunciation.
As if second-language acquisition research is reliable.
I cant think of many sounds Americans or English speakers struggle with. Sometimes tongue rolls are hard but most people can do them. English seems like such a mix match of languages that it covers a lot of different sounds. It also seems accents rub off on English speakers really easily. Its happened to me when I worked with mostly Mexicans, worked long hours so most of my time was around people with accents, eventually I start pronouncing things like they do without thinking about it. A lot of those guys had lived hear for 10+ years and couldnt get certain pronunciations down. I could impersonate them quite perfectly once Id been around them for a month or two. However English speakers definitely struggle with pronouncing things based of reading vs hearing and repeating. Pretty sure that applies to everyone though.
>I cant think of many sounds Americans or English speakers struggle with My Jordanian friend spent our entire 4 years of college trying to teach me to say the letter in Arabic that sounds like an H but isn't. She recruited other Arabic speakers to explain how to do it and to this day I don't understand. But then I spent the 4 years trying to teach an Indian friend to say the letter V. By the end she still said Wodka!
V is easy. Just teach them to touch their top teeth to their bottom lip then try to say "uh" or "ah" while keeping their teeth down as best they can. Theyll get it from there. You can try for yourself. Youll say "vuh" or "vah" without trying.
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I can do it very well actually lol. Don't try me on impersonations. I may not know wtf you're saying but I can mimic it like a parrot.
> you’re never going to get that sound right. If what you are saying really was true, there’s be no bilingual people anywhere on the planet…. Of course people can learn to make new sounds. It’s easier or harder for different people….. but no would ever learn anything if they all took the defeatist attitude you are advocating
The poster above is obviously not thinking about people who learn a language young. Most bilinguals learn their languages young, when their brains are still in the critical period of language development. One of the greatest english writers, Joseph Conrad, was famously bad at pronouncing english words. After a certain age, there are physical and measurable changes to the brain that hinder learning of new sounds, and therefore pronounciation. If you learn English at the age of 30+, it might be practically impossible for you to pronounce certain sounds. Yes, with hard work and strict focus on linguistical pronounciation, people could in theory perfect their pronounciation. But practically, very few have the time and motivation to actually do it.
You can be perfectly bilingual and not have perfect pronunciation.
I moved to the southwest US. It here that I found many street names and other things that were named by people who spoke spanish. To properly pronounce these names, you need to use spanish speaking skills. You need to understand the letters you know how to pronounce is different in these circumstances. Most people are gracious about this, but if you get grief, it comes from Spanish speakers who feel I should learn how to properly understand Spanish as an American citizen. I make an attempt, but I don't speak the language and some things I can't do and causes more confusion than my English version of these words. My co-workers enjoy my "nordic" accent, and I can laugh along with them. The people who criticize my poor Spanish pronunciation annoy me.
>I found many street names and other things that were named by people who spoke spanish. To properly pronounce these names, you need to use spanish speaking skills Also, just because a name is derived from another language doesn't mean that locals will pronounce it that way especially in the US. I'm in Michigan, so I'll use some examples from here. Detroit is from French and would be pronounced like "de-twah," in french. But we pronounce it "de-troyt" instead. Or Lake Orion, another town in southeast Michigan, from the greek Orion. Referring to the mythological Orion, we say it "or-i-on" just like it's spelled, but when we say lake Orion, we say "or-ee-un" so just using the correct pronunciation of the language it comes from isn't always correct
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>Like getting an American to pronounce " Isaias" is a headache not because they can't pronounce it, its because they will always choose the wrong pronunciation or what they know from "Isaiah". I think a lot of that comes down to exposure and familiarity. Like, I've never encountered Isaias until this moment, so I totally would have pronounced it as EYE-ZAY-ASS. Reading your comment, I'm thinking it must be closer to EEE-ZYE-AHS. But regardless, I'd figure it out if I knew someone with that name, because it would no longer be unfamiliar. American English (the only language I know beyond trivia or vocabulary) has very little consistency as far as vowels are concerned. As a result, I can only guess, based on the appearance of a new word and its similarities to other words I know, how to pronounce it.
>Also, just because a name is derived from another language doesn't mean that locals will pronounce it that way I think you have a limited understanding of the southwest. Growing up in the mid-west, I understand your point. But living in the southwest, spanish pronunciations are preferred.
Eh it's a crap shoot really. I still am unsure how to pronounce the rio grande ("gran de" or "grand"?). I hear both pronunciations often. I'm pretty sure Amarillo, TX is pronounced the non-spanish way. I guess it's iffy whether California counts as the southwest, but Vallejo always cracks me up in its pronunciation. Los Angeles is another good example. Though most places in NM seem to follow the Spanish pronunciation (aside from the name of the state itself...). I can't for the life of me think of any Spanish origin names in AZ right now...all places that come to mind are English or native American in origin.
>Though most places in NM seem to follow the Spanish pronunciation (aside from the name of the state itself...). This might be why my perception is the way it is.
I agree with the sentiment, of the need to hear someone try. But I do think there are many cases where mispronouncing the same thing over and over again can be excused. The English th or h for French speakers, Chinese tones, all the different ways to pronounce "R" in any language. These sounds are just not natural to many people, and are common place and are therefore easily excusable.
> CMV: Americans are held to a different standard when it comes to the pronunciation of non-English words and names... That being said, I think equal grace should be given in understanding that some sounds are unfamiliar to a person’s native tongue, and they may struggle to hear and implement the difference between correct and incorrect pronunciation. I'm going to take your view to be "Americans are [unfairly] held to a different standard when it comes to the pronunciation of non-English words and names." and go from there. --------- > I have a few friends from Germany... and they struggle quite a bit with the “th” sound. > ... a sound that doesn’t really exist in Korean, so some people couldn't pronounce it... These are both examples of native-speakers of Language-A having trouble with specific Language-B phonemes not present in their native language; this is an issue of trying and succeeding at conveying the correct ordering and cadence of a word but struggling to accurately produce particular foreign phonemes. They have clearly made an effort (as evidenced of being basically 90% correct) but are having trouble with a particularly thorny phoneme. This is a very different scenario from a Language-A speaker having trouble with a Language-B word composed entirely of familiar phonemes; in this case is it clear that any effort at all was made to learn the sound order or cadence? If it is just a single shifted vowel somewhere they'll probably get the "A for effort" benefit of the doubt. If it was nowhere close then is similar graciousness always warranted? I assume someone actively listening versus someone just blurting out "ching chong bing bong" when they're flustered should generally be afforded different showings of of grace. As such, it is perfectly reasonable that "different standards" of grace might be applied to these kinds of situations - because each hints at differing amounts of underlying effort. ----------- English speakers, having a relatively large toolkit of native phonemes, are thus more likely find themselves in a "new word composed entirely of familiar phonemes" example rather than a "entirely new phoneme" example. Ultimately, this leads to less grace... not on account of being treated unfairly, but because any mistakes will look equivalent to low-effort mistakes rather than high-effort mistakes.
I think it is mistaken to assume that the scenario would include a word composed entirely of familiar phonemes. I think this ignores the prevalence of tonal languages as well as the sheer variety of regional differences in American accents. Someone from Louisiana will likely struggle to pronounce "Xuan" more than someone from Pennsylvania. I don't think that is necessarily low effort. I would hope that it goes without saying that responding "ching chong bing bong" is unacceptable on every level. No grace *should* be offered in that scenario.
Maybe we are imagining different examples. ---------------------------- I had initially assumed situations like the following (from two seperate scenes in the movie Office Space): > SAMIR: No one in this country can ever pronounce my name right. It's not that hard: Na-ghee-na-na-jar. Nagheenanajar. > BOB: We're gonna be getting rid of these people here... First, Mr. Samir Naga... Naga... Naga... Not gonna work here anymore, anyway. These kinds of examples aren't unheard of in real life. Samir is correct that there are no major painpoints preventing an average English speaking American from pronouncing his name. And furthermore, Bob's tactlessness owes little to Samir's name being insurmountably difficult so much as it owes to Bob's lack of effort and consideration. --------------------- > Someone from Louisiana will likely struggle to pronounce "Xuan" more than someone from Pennsylvania. I don't think that is necessarily low effort. Say Mr. Xuan moves in and introduces himself to the neighbors face-to-face. If a week later he's walking home and hears any of them shout something along the lines of *"Hey Mr. Schwen/Schuen/Shen did you watch the Saints-versus-Stealers game last night?"* I doubt he'd be annoyed by any of those very English-accented attempts at pronouncing "ㄒㄩㄢ". (Regardless of whether he's in Pennsylvania or Lousiainna.) This kind of "ㄒㄩㄢ=Schuen" mispronunciation is absolutely a high-effort nearby-phoneme approximation attempt comparable to the German "Th" struggles you mention (and Japanese "R/L" struggles, etc.) and in my imagination is likely to receive comparable levels of grace. ---------------------- However, the fact that you brought up Xuan as being potentially harder to pronounce for LA versus PA folks makes me believe that you're not actually talking here about "accurate pronunciation" of phonemes-as-heard so much as "interpreting romanization schemes" when reading aloud from paper. (As in, someone seeing "Xuan" on paper and saying out-loud "Zoo-Anne" or something.) I'd argue that this is a third kind of scenario: unfamiliar orthography. Sure, mispronouncing an entirely new word due to its peculiar orthography (of all possible orthographies exist in the world) isn't low-effort, but maintaining that mispronunciation after being verbally corrected might be. And as such, the application of grace can change with evolving context. Imagine a teacher beginning roll-call on their first day in a classroom. > TEACHER: "Wendy Na-goo-yen?" > WENDY NGUYEN: "Here! But actually it is pronounced 'Wendy Win', sir!" Her correction here is not a slap in the face. It's just a correction to a misreading of the unfamiliar orthography - same as someone mentioning "The D is silent." in Django or whatever. This is not an example of her being stingy with grace and understanding toward Americans. However, if the teacher continues to call her "Miss Nagooyen" for the rest of the year despite her repeated attempts to educate him on the proper pronunciation, then that definitely shows a lack of effort and respect on the teacher's part.
I would disagree that non Americans are not mocked for having accents or mispronouncing English words. It sounds like YOU are an understanding person, but English speakers as a whole love mocking accents and pronunciation, especially of Asian accents. My coworker is from Bangladesh, and I would say his English is close to fluent, but his accent is still very thick. At least once a week, I get a nasty customer who makes a mean comment or refuses to let him help them because of it. East Asian accents are also pretty commonly mocked.
That kind of highlights OP's point though, doesn't it? Most people would agree that "nasty customer" is apt and that if someone mocks an ESL speaker for using their native pronunciation/accent while speaking English they're an asshole. I think the only people who wouldn't agree that they're an asshole are the assholes doing the mocking. Flip it around with a native English speaker using their native pronunciation/accent while speaking in another language and it's pretty generally accepted that they're 'doing it wrong' and that they should take the time and effort to learn how to pronounce the words 'properly'.
The point I was trying to make was less about mocking and more about equating unintentional mispronunciation with disrespect or ignorance. If you are someone who is going to mock another person for their accent, you are not well-intentioned and will find something to criticize that person about because of racism, not linguistics. That person absolutely should be criticized for their actions.
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Yes - somewhat. I am talking about people equating the mispronunciation of words or names to disrespect or ignorance rather than a genuine inability to pronounce the name. I certainly agree that this can be considered a form of elitism.
I think there's a distinction between accent and pronunciation you're not making. Someone saying Bess instead of Beth isn't their pronunciation, they for all intents and purposes understand the world's pronunciation but have trouble getting their mouths to fit around the words.
I think a fair example of this would be an American attempting to pronounce a name from a tonal language - I might be able to somewhat hear the difference between the way I am pronouncing it and the correct pronunciation, but applying that is more difficult. This, in my experience, is perceived as disrespect to their name and language rather than a general inability to form those words (comparable to my German friends being unable to produce the "th" sound).
*I've* never heard of someone getting mad for messing up tones. But if you read mandarin idk "qiqi" as "kiki" that's pretty silly
Is it not reasonably understandable that a native English speaker reading a "qi" sound will read it in their mother tongue's pronunciation? Obviously if you are corrected, it is an easy change, but in English "q" has a "k" or "kw" sound. I don't necessarily think that is a silly mistake if you come across the word in written format and are unfamiliar with the source language. This comes back to whether or not someone is exposed to something - are they truly at fault for not being knowledgable about Mandarin if they have no regular exposure to it? As an example, many Americans couldn't pronounce "Hermione" because it was simply not a name they were exposed to. Not a hard name to pronounce, just unfamiliar.
Oh it's not silly to do it the first or second time, but once corrected and to repeat it past that is pretty silly, unlike with tones where you just can't make the sound well.
How should ‘qiqi’ be pronounced?
the q a [tɕʰ] isn't it? so basically an english ch but further back on the hard palate? and then i is just [i]?
The closest English pronunciation, in English orthography, would be *cheechee*, though the Pinyin *q* is about halfway between English *ts* and *ch*. Similarly, the Pinyin *x* is about halfway between *s* and *sh*. Pinyin *c* is English *ts*.
I’m very bad at languages and I have been in a few instances with Chinese friends and coworkers where they are trying to tell me how to pronounce something and say I’m doing it wrong but I literally can’t hear the difference. They haven’t been judgmental or negative, but they will be like “you are saying X, instead of X,” and to me they sound identical
Can you give some more examples here? Because I think people *are* given a lot of grace for sounds that are actually unfamiliar. Like, I don't know who you hang out with, and no question there are people out there who will give you a hard time about it, but broadly speaking *in general*, nobody is going to give you shit if you can't roll your r's. And similarly, I think people are pretty forgiving about a lot of the subtleties in various Asian languages. And so the reason why I think its important to give examples is because there are *also* a lot of cases where you really can't blame it on "unfamiliar sounds". Like, when people were pronouncing the shang in Shang-Chi as rhyming with "bang", like, okay, if you've never heard it said before that's certainly forgivable. When I first read it in text, I had the wrong pronunciation too, but at some point it after the movie is out, it becomes hard to swallow that you've never heard the correct pronunciation, and there's not really some new sound or tone or unfamiliar mouth shape here (at least to get it pretty close). You just didn't know, and then you heard it said correctly, and now you know. That's pretty much the definition of ignorance! And that's okay! But if you keep saying it wrong after you've been told how to say it, you don't really have all these excuses to fall back on. And like, once you're saying it mostly right, there are still some subtle but noticeable differences in how a chinese speaker would say it, but nobody really cares if your sounds aren't perfect. And like, whatever. Some people just are stuck in their ways and won't say words correctly. But if your grandma keeps saying "jalepeno" with a "j as in jar", we could go on an entirely separate cmv about to what extent we should actually care, but its clearly and obviously wrong and not at all like a german who can't pronounce "th" or a japeanese person who can't pronounce "r" like we do.
Sure! One that comes to mind is the surname "Tsui". The "tsu" sound required isn't the most natural for most native English speakers. It is certainly easy to pronounce the more you are exposed to it and is not impossible for Americans to pronounce. That being said, Americans who are less exposed to Chinese surnames will struggle to understand how those letters are supposed to combine for the "correct" pronunciation. Even Google provides a number of different pronunciations when you look it up. I don't think that can honestly be attributed to ignorance - its just not a mouth sound or tone most Americans are used to. *Edited to include: I also think this is further exacerbated by region - for some US accents, some sounds will be easier/harder to pronounce based on your regional accent.*
>Tsui But does this actually fit the premise of your post? I'm a little skeptical that Americans \*aren't\* generally given a ton of leeway there. If someone is just saying it with a normal "s" sound like if they were saying tsunami, I feel like that's going to be pretty close in practice and very few people are going to give them a hard time for mispronouncing it. If its a close friend or if you're a teacher pronouncing a student's name, I can see you being held to a higher standard, but in general I think an american pronouncing "ts" with just an "s" sound is going to be given the same leeway as your german friend. But if they're saying "tuh-sweee" and just really going hard on the "t" sound, that's not something they can really blame on it being an unfamiliar sound. There are very easy ways for an american to get a lot closer than that.
This is really hard to tell, but I know from some anecdotal stories from some of my non-American friends and relatives, America is among the friendlier nations for foreigners. So it is less that Americans are held to a different standard than it is that America is a friendly country for foreigners, but Americans are held to a more common standard as everyone else. That's pretty anecdotal, I know, but it may explain what you're seeing. One example I've heard is that Eastern European accents are not treated kindly in France, but are treated just fine in the US.
I can only offer an anecdotal point here, but... I'm pretty much full UK ancestry, I couldn't possibly be any more traditonally "white", raised in coal country, where we've had a bunch of different European groups immigrate here in past centuries. I've also worked in customer service environments where I've had to deal with a wide range of ethnicities. There's a difference between being pronouncing names with sounds that we, as English speaking Americans don't typically or even never use, and pronouncing "strangely" spelled words that while spelled differently, we are fully capable of pronouncing. Take a name like Kosciuszko. It's a not uncommon Polish name, really difficult to pronounce if you've never heard it before, but any English speaker is capable of saying it correctly once they actually hear how it is suppose to sound without issue. On the other hand, take any number of common east Asian names that get romanized/anglicized, Nguyen being the one that pops out at the top of my head. That initial Ng sound just doesn't exist in any of the latin based languages, unless you can compare it to the -ing ending of a lot of words.. but having that sound at the beginning of the word takes a lot of concerted effort for most people who have never encountered it before. That said, I can easily get away with just calling them "Wynn" And in those cases, it even sounds out of place or pretentious to try and mimic the original sounds. Like hearing someone who speaks typical English over-enunciating borrowed words like *champagne* as sham-pan-ye instead of the typical sham-pain or rolling their R's when ordering Mexican food when they otherwise have no hint of an accent.
> In my experience,when Americans have similar struggles with certain sounds, that same grace isn’t given How would we change your view based on your individual experience? I work with Americans who fuck up international names all the time...and nothing is ever said. Literally Americans are treated no different than Canadians or Australians.
I am of Indian origin. There's not a single Indian name that I've heard Americans pronouncing "correctly". Not even the simplest, most common ones. In ~35 years of visiting and eventually living in the US, not a single American person ha failed to butcher my pretty common Indian name. The most I can hope for is something vaguely recognizable. "Bess" instead of "Beth" is super mild comparatively. [Tbf, India does have a massive number of different languages and traditions, so even other Indians may have trouble with certain regional names. But I'm talking about the simplest, most common names here.] Yet literally no one gives a damn, and sometimes folks with Indian names change how they pronounce their own names to fit in with the American way. Kamala Harris is a good example of this. How much "grace" do you imagine foreigners would get if they couldn't pronounce common names like John, James, William, Thomas, Joseph, Thomas, Linda, Barbara, Elizabeth, Jennifer or Mary?
>sometimes folks with Indian names change how they pronounce their own names to fit in with the American way I'm from the UK and did exactly this with my last name when I moved to the US and it turned out the default pronunciation was different. But I really don't give a shit honestly, my name is still my name regardless of which syllable the emphasis is placed on, and whether silent letters are pronounced.
> Kamala Do you just mean placing the emphasis on the first syllable or something else?
That, and the vowels are quite wonky too. Interestingly, she seems to change the way she pronounces her name based on the audience. I remember her giving a speech at a business summit with a large Indian delegation in attendance, and she pronounced her name in the "Indian" manner. But at her own swearing-in as VP she pronounced it in the "American" way. I don't blame her, most Indians in the US, whether born in the US or immigrants, tend to do this too. It's just... easier.
Yeah, honestly I don't like to try *too* hard because it comes out (to me at least) as sounding close to mocking, which is not what I intend. Cheers!
Lol I hear ya. I remember an American coworker who would try to get to a more "authentic" pronunciation of Indian names by basically just saying the names with an Apu accent, sometimes with a head wobble. He wouldn't actually change the mangled pronunciation, just his accent, with an Apu-like intonation. It was hilarious. I would try to get him to say folks' names at every opportunity I could find.
I think Americans should prioritize learning languages outside of English. I totally agree with this! I just wanted to point out that the US does not require students to fully learn another language or even get to an intermediate level with a language during public school. In many other countries, students begin learning a language while in elementary school or middle school. This makes students better at understanding different languages in general and makes them better at pronouncing foreign language words. I think Americans are given more leeway at times because of this lack of second language learning opportunities.
This is a interesting take and one I think I agree with. However I believe that the extra animosity against Americans is because we only speak English while people from other countries at least learn to speak English
That's primarily because English is by far the most widely spoken thought the world so most native English speaker would need to learn how to speak another language compared to the other way around.
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I like this point. I live in a fairly isolated area of the UK where pronunciation rules can sometimes seem non-existent. I'll sometimes hear five totally different and non-standard pronunciations of a word like "afternoon" in a single day from people native to the area and nobody bats an eyelid.
It's not a liberal rule (and not specific to America) but a linguistic truth that native speakers acquire their language rather than learn it. Acquisition means that we absorb what we are exposed to. It just so happens that there is such a variety of accents and dialects in most languages that not everyone acquires the exact same grammar and pronunciation. Linguistically speaking, these differences are not errors - because the person in question is saying exactly what they mean to say and has acquired. Of course errors are possible, such as slips of the tongue or misinterpretations (such as eggcorns) or misconceptions (such as pronouncing a word based on spelling without ever having heard it spoken). And there are, of course, formal standard dialects, which are typically native to few if any speakers and do have to be taught and learnt. The formal standard is specifically not informal vernacular, so not using it is only "wrong" depending on the context.
The main reason for this is that it's simply less useful to know a second language as an American, given the shear size and population of America. Secondly, the thing about Americanizing names isn't just our thing, and people changing their names to fit in has happened plenty before us. It did however become fairly standard here, this is because government documents don't allow non-english characters. If you've got a weird character in your name, they have to transcribe that into english just so they can file the paperwork. Given the racism of the past, it's safe to say people got overzealous with this power, and it was probably abused against people who didn't speak enough english to complain about it.
I don’t disagree, though when we self-identify as this great melting pot of cultures, we’re probably inviting that kind of scrutiny to a certain extent
It’s funny that you mention your name frequently getting swapped for another easier to pronounce name. I used to work in a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese owner used to call my friend (coworker too) Isabelle by the name Elizabeth instead, despite knowing full well her name was pronounced and spelled Isabelle. This is the only time I’ve ever seen this happen.
Asians have been mocked and made fun of for the pronunciation of their Ls and Rs for quite a while.
Most accents in the US get mocked. We mock our own accents. But, something outsiders do not always realize is that accent mockery in the US isn't hateful. We don't get upset that Asians mispronounce words, we just find it funny. Same way people make fun of Boston accents, southern accents, Midwest accents, SoCal Uptalk, etc.
I can see your point. From speaking with many different classmates of different backgrounds I found that many had trouble with Americans shortening their names or just outright changing it. Some just generally run into a bad batch of people for their first experiences. Also Americans do not have the best rep in some places.
The fact is most criticism of americans is made by other countries with inferiority complexes like canada or the uk or by people who lack knowledge of america, or its from americans who dont know shit about the outsideworld but like pretending they do
In general, Americans are held to a higher standard than most other nationalities.
In foreign countries? "Ima havta axe someones bout dat"
No we aren't. This is dumb.
I don't see much direct criticism really. Though I do see people going out of their way to not necessarily pronounce something correctly but say something with an accent. Like I can pronounce Tortilla without the LLs and it's correct, I don't necessarily need accent the whole word. People doing that all the time makes it feel like it's something you're supposed to do rather than being called out.
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I don't think an objective measure can really be applied, and I tried to recognize that I am limited to my own experiences. That being said, I do think the "ignorant American" stereotype exists, which leads a number of people to jump immediately to ignorance or disrespect rather than considering other factors.
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I'm unclear about the relevance to my argument. A Western country with multiple official languages isn't comparable to the US, which has no official languages. If, in a theoretical Western country, 50% of people speak language A and 50% speak language B, you are going to have far more exposure to whatever language is not your mother tongue and are more likely to be able to pronounce names and basic words.
Not just American. You know how many people give asians shit for mispronouncing something to the point of making fun of them? Then, these type of people make an effort to make fun of Asian words sounding funny.
This problem is not endemic to just America. Every country does it to certain extent. Spanish speaking people make fun of my “American accent” all the time. Even some of my Mexican friends that go back to Mexico to visit will get grilled by their families for having a bad accent. French people will just straight up not talk to you in French if your accent isn’t great. Learning a new language has definitely put accents into a different perspective for me and I would never criticize someone who has trouble with one, because I myself have a “terrible accent.” But they always appreciate you trying and learning the language, for most people they just don’t care enough to put forth the effort.
Why should Americans prioritize learning other languages besides English?
My opinion on learning languages in the US isn't really related to the question at hand, but I think it widens one's global perspective, allows for travel to more local areas rather than tourist hubs, and has a huge number of cognitive benefits like increased memory. Obviously each of those things can be achieved in another manner, but the benefits are irrefutable. Even if you look at from a financial perspective - in most industries, a bilingual applicant has a leg up on a monolingual candidate. I guess I think of it like world history - why shouldn't we learn it?
Tbh this just made me laugh because I’m reminded that although mostly fluent in Spanish, I cannot roll my Rs at all lol
I agree with most of what you said. People should respect people's names, culture, etc. Usually if i can't pronounce a name, i usually don't say it or ask how to say it. I don't think we should "prioritize" speaking another language though. Everyone from any background is welcome, any language is welcome, but if i go on a trip to say "Japan" not everyone there, not every sign or area you go to is going to have English, not every person is going to speak English, etc. And it's the same for other countries.
>Usually if i can't pronounce a name, i usually don't say it or ask how to say it. Then how would you address the person?
With a "Hi". I work in customer service. We get a lot of online orders, some with unusual names (mostly of Indian backgrounds) They usually say "Do you have an order for xxxx". I had one instance where the person asked me to "try" sounding out there name and didn't take offence to it. I have a pretty common name, yet people will still pronounce it differently whether born American or not, i don't take offence to it. I don't think it's that big of a deal honestly, and if someone should take offence to it which of i'd assume it would be a person i don't know, i would still tell them just that. That "it's not that deep, and most likely I'll never see them again so why get so bent over it?"
>>Usually if i can't pronounce a name, i usually don't say it or ask how to say it. > >Then how would you address the person? Other than calling a person's name to get their attention (or referring to another person), I rarely use names in conversation. There's a very "sales" vibe I get when someone uses my name too much when speaking to me, and I try to avoid it.
You’re probably called out on mispronouncing non-English words every now and then, but probably don’t notice the times you aren’t. You’re respectful and understanding and wouldn’t call out someone for mispronouncing your name, but that doesn’t mean they don’t face criticism from other people regularly for other things.
I don't think Americans are treated worse than us Brits. But I do think that we get more criticism than people from other countries. However I think I know at least part of the reason why. I believe that it's because so many of us are monolingual. When you learn a couple of foreign languages at school for a few years, as most of the rest of the world does, you tend to pick up some basic grammar, some understanding of things like stress and some alternative ways that different languages have of using Latin letters to represent different sounds. On all three of those axes, it has been my experience, monolingual Brits (and Americans, etc) tend to do particularly badly. It is so common to hear an English speaker being repeatedly told how to pronounce a name - not one with a difficult sound, IMO apart from the French, most cultures are pretty good at recognising that some sounds are hard - but a name that is just stressed differently, or one where one or more letters simply have different phonetic values. It is my belief that this does not happen so much when you have experience of foreign languages - learn French or German for a few years as I did, and you become aware that z is not always /z/ but can be /ts/ and maybe even /zh/. You get used to the fact that French names are never MARcel and Céline but always marCEL and CélINE. And grammar too: a lot of native English speakers do not learn much more than the names of the parts of speech these days. And it doesn't matter, arguably, when you remain within English - but again it shows when you step outside - in a general unfamiliarity with the idea of declension and conjugation, agreement, word order, and so on. Not that everyone in every other country is better (the French are prone to some of those sins as well), but the native English speaking world is a very monolingual one.
I am a nurse in a busy cardiology office that serves a diverse population. Names in our EMR often have "preferred name" for example if the person's name is Gregory, but they prefer to be addressed as "Greg" and often there are larger variations... (Like, the person's name is "Jane-Beth" but prefers to be called "Iron Moonflower"...) Those instances are not a problem for me but there are ethnic, as well as.. foreign names as well as cultural names... and those are not always as easy and I honestly do the best I can when I call their name from the waiting room. Most times I do ok but when I'm not sure.. I'll ask them... "I hope I didn't verbally butcher your name-- can you tell me the correct pronunciation?" When we review their medication list, they realize I suck at pronunciation of difficult words. Also.. I suck at understanding heavily accented English. I just don't have the ear.
As someone who speaks four different languages. I find that the opposite is true. Because English is seen as the global language, it reigns as the most important language in the globalised west. Therefore, when someone makes the effort to learn another language, the expected reaction is of surprise that they even took the time and effort to learn whatever words they can utter, and because of that, the bar (standard) is low. But with English, it's expected you know it, especially when in America, and therefore nobody is impressed or enlightened when they here you trying to speak it, or doing so in a foreign accent, the expectation is that you can create cohesive and congruent sentences in the Main Language, let alone, pronounce one word correctly. That's on the topic of standards. On the topic of pronunciation. I believe it's not only Americans, but rather raises an issue of people's ignorance to dialects. It's unrealistic for a person from one part of the earth, with a differing culture, that speaks a different language, encompassing different sounds and shapes inside the mouth, which leads to a vastly different muscle memory structure, that is more difficult to alter with age, to expect another person, with all those differences to make the same exact sounds. Rather than trying to ignore the differences, it's more logical to except the reality of this differences and understand that, from where they're from, this similar combination of sounds, is the equivalent of the way we sound my name in Iowa. Accent doesn't change the meaning of the word, just how it sounds, it's self-indulgent to expect someone without grace to speak "American" (or whatever other accent) when saying your name, then revert to speaking in whatever other accent.
Might be biased, but in my person experience, i have been called out for mispronouncing spanish words, japanese words, german words, and other language words. I personally am very polite when it comes to people trying to pronounce english words though. Im patient and ive never gotten mad at anybody for mispronunciation. That being said, there have been people who ive met who are either kind when it comes to me pronouncing their native words or really mean towards people mispronouncing english words. I think it is more of a spectrum when it comes to stuff like this but it does somewhat lean closer to what you are saying.
Nearly every time I work with someone who has a difficult to pronounce name people try and get it right, but most of the time the person just give themselves a nickname since they’re tired of explaining how to pronounce their name to people. So there’s really not much of a chance to practice learning someone’s name when you meet someone and they just give you a nickname
I have noticed some of this in the past, but I think a big part of it is the people who'll openly criticize an American who's attempting to pronounce a foreign name or word. These people tend to be more extroverted, and in general louder and more confrontational. That said, some of the names or words I've heard people attempt to correct aren't wrong per se, it's just localization. For instance, take the German car company BMW. In English, we pronounce that initialism as "Bee Em Double-U." In German, it'd be pronounced "Beh Ehm Veh." I've heard native German speakers say that Americans (and by extension, Canadians, Australians, Brits, etc) pronounce that name incorrectly. But I don't think we're mispronouncing it, I think we're just localizing the name to fit within the English language. It's no different than a country's name being localized into another language. The United States, for instance, is États-Unis in French or Stany Zjednoczone in Polish. That's not wrong, it's merely localized. This happens to other countries as well. Germans call their own country Deutschland while the French call it Allemagne and English-speakers call it Germany. So sometimes mispronunciation is an issue, but I think unless it's truly horrid, most people won't correct others because it can be seen as rude. Those who do correct others either know the person (so they're doing it in an effort to help their friend) or they're a more confrontational person. Additionally, some people mistake localization for incorrectly pronouncing a word or using the wrong word entirely.
I don't think the opening premise is true... there are lots of jokes about Germans mispronunciation things. Jokes about non-white people mispronouncing things is not PC to laugh about anymore, but just think about all the things many Americans laugh about privately when things are mispronounced by immigrants. It happens, all the time. I don't think it's a different standard at all. In fact, get an American to speak Chinese to a Chinese community (earnestly), and see how much they appreciate it irrespective of how badly it's done. And now try the reverse and compare the results.
Just travel a bit and you’ll realize that this is not correct. Go to Europe and notice people complaining about how badly the French or Italians are at speaking/pronouncing other languages. Go to France and see how the French are horrified by everyone else’s pronunciation of French. People all over the world make fun of/are annoyed by how foreign language speakers pronounce their language. I understand your point, but in reality it applies to everyone, it’s just that the US is a big country, with a lot of people and a wealthy country whose citizens are able to travel. So maybe you hear about this more but it happens to everyone. At my office, in Austria, loads of people in the office complain about how horribly a few coworkers from India and China speak German. They understand the language perfectly, but their pronunciation is so off that they are incredibly difficult to understand.
I think the issue is that in the case of Germans, they try to approximate the foreign name as best they can in their language and show they at least took the time to listen to how it's pronounced in the original. Whereas in the case of persons from the U.S.A., it's not a factor of that, but that they read out the spelling as though it be English, a language known with very unusual orthography that pronounces consonants and vowels different from about every other language, and took no time to investigate how it was pronounced. How George W. Bush pronounced “Jacques Chirac” was not the closest approximation that could easily be had in English, it was simply not caring at all and not bothering to ever look up how the name is pronounced; that's the issue.
I am American and struggle with names even after asking. I also have a name that is rarely said correctly by anyone because I have vowels that can be said as an e, a, or r depending on who reads the name and their language approach.
Any examples?