A. secretary person heard some one call this person (name)-san, and thereafter assumed that was the formal and most respectful way of referring to person, unaware of the “speaking to” vs. “speaking of” difference.
B. Secretary person is concerned that they may not remember to use ‘san’ when person is present, so self enforces use all the time to make sure they remember.
IOW, while I agree w/the OP that the usage is apparently improper, it may not be due to pretension or similar issues.
I’ve known several secretary type persons who are acutely aware of their status in the business pecking order and bend over backwards to insure (in their minds) that they’re ‘not taking liberties’, and ‘demonstrating the proper level of respect’.
as in, Bob Smith calls you, leaves message ‘tell him Bob called’, she says “Mr. Robert Smith called you”.
Eh, it all depends. I daresay that because of the generally monolingual attitude in North America, pronouncing countries and cities properly is easier seen as “pretentious” than elsewhere in the world. Not an attack, mind you, just an observation.
Whether I speak Dutch or English, I pronounce “New York” the very same way (OK, I really want to call it Nieuw Amsterdam, but that’s beside the point :)). I will say Verenigde Staten rather than “United States”, because there’s a Dutch term for it. “Canada”, whilst identical in both languages, is pronounced the “Dutch” way: Cah-nah-dah. Why, I don’t know. It just depends on the word, I guess, but there are definitely instances when there’s no difference between pronouncing the word whilst speaking Dutch as opposed to English.
Places that I’d pronounce differently in English when compared to Dutch: Toronto, Montreal, Atlanta.
Places I’d pronounce in exactly the same way: Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, Vancouver, Calgary…
The list of places I’d pronounce the English way is definitely longer. Doesn’t make me pretentious, though.
Oh, one more for Matt. If I speak to you in English, and refer to your city as Montréal (pronounced the French way), would you think that’s pretentious? I’m curious how this works.
In my previous job, I dealt with Japanese people all the time. I only used the san suffix in writing, mostly e-mails. On the phone, both the Japanese guy and myself were switching to a language other than our own: English. As such, they became mr. Makita, and I became mr. Fire. I’ll second the notion that the Japanese are rather formal: whilst the Dutch will switch to first names quickly (though not as quick as Americans), the Japanese hang on to last name communications for a very long time.
It’s a bit similar to the German attitude, where (especially among the older generations) you just don’t refer to people in the workplace, clients and colleagues alike, by their first name. The younger generation is a lot more relaxed about this, but if you walk into an office with two 60 year old guys who’ve been sharing a room for 40 years, chances are they’re still calling each other Herr Gummistiefel and Herr Heckantrieb (and yes, those were the first two German names that came to mind :)).
When I joined up with my Japanese manager, he said, “My name is Akihiko Shibata. People call me Shibata-san, A.S. or even sometimes Aki.”
So I asked him how he preferred to be addressed. He replied, “Shibata-san.” And that is how I refer to him in e-mails, to his face, and to acquaintances about him. I am not trying to be pretentious or sophisticated, I am trying to be respectful.
On the other hand, our manager calls him Aki, and others have followed suit, which I find to be borderline DISrespectful. The manager’s name is Andrew, yet no one says, “Andy! How’s it going?”
And then there’s the guy from Germany named Thorsten. He has repeatedly corrected people by (calmly) saying, “The ‘h’ is silent.” yet some morons still call him THorsten, as opposed to Torsten.
Yes, when you’re in Rome, you should do what the Romans do. And I’ll bet the Romans referred to their guests by their preferred name.
