Actually… something I’ve always wondered is why it seems to be a rule to drop the “ce” in “cester”, but pronounce the whole “chester” or “caster”. All derive from the Latin “castra” or camp.
So Gloucester is “gloster”, but Winchester is “Win-chest-er”.
Feel free to stop in on Sundays during Lent.
Well, then, I guess you have to go learn Chinese now, since you can’t say that it’s too complicated for you to learn.
Seriously, your objection makes no sense. That other language pronunciation systems are complicated is pretty much the reason people don’t learn them. It’s just a factual statement. The same goes for why we don’t learn a lot of things.
You seem to be taking something that cannot reasonably interpreted as an insult as an insult. It’s really hard for me to want to accommodate that sort of thing.
She didn’t even mention your culture. But, even if she had, how is that bad? The vast majority of other cultures in the world I will never understand, for they are too complicated.
I really don’t get it.
Whether or not I ever learn Chinese, if I meet a Chinese person, I am never going to say “Wow, I’m not even going to try to pronounce your name.”
And whether or not I have any interest or motivation to learn Chinese I’m never going to say “I’m going to keep Sino-Tibetan languages at a respectful distance, and not try to understand them.” That would be a profoundly ignorant and insulting thing to say to a Chinese person.
That is what is rude. It’s not the fact that I don’t know how to pronounce Chinese properly. Not knowing how to pronounce something or not being able to pronounce something is not rude.
What’s rude is saying to someone’s face (or to someone’s metaphorical face) in so many words—“Your language/culture/name is unreasonably alien and difficult and I will avoid engaging it.” What did I say or do at motivates you or invites to say such an alienating thing? Merely exist? Merely have the name that I have?
It is an insult. It’s alienating. It’s rejecting you as a member of human society who is worth interacting with in the same manner as every other person you encounter.
You don’t get it, because you don’t understand what I said. Try again. And again read the part where is said “Pronouncing someone’s name wrong isn’t rude. What is rude is saying ‘I’m not even going to try pronouncing your name.’”
This happens to me on a semi-regular basis. And it is insulting.
I am not sure that’s particularly insulting. Pinyin is extremely complex and not very intuitive. (In fact, it could be said to be counter-intuitive since the roman letters are used almost arbitrarily to represent Chinese-language sounds.) If a person with a Chinese name insists on literally “spelling it to the letter” of that system, rather than using a simplified spelling a Westerner might understand, I’d say it’s more polite to ask how their name is pronounced or admit you don’t understand the transliteration well enough to try than it would be to call them some dorky (and potentially offensive) mis-pronoun-ciation.
And you’re going to say “Wow, I’m not even going to try pronouncing your name” (or a similar sentiment) as the way to get a Chinese person to pronounce his or her Pinyin-spelled name for you?
Because you are, you’re being rude and insulting.
Or are you going to say something like, “Sorry if I mispronounce your name, but is it Mr. Zhao?” or “May I ask you how to pronounce your name, because my Chinese isn’t very good?”
As I said, getting a pronunciation wrong isn’t rude. It can happen even when you think you know how to pronounce it.
Like Ray Davies of the Kinks. I pronounced his name wrong for years (Day-veez instead of like “Davis”). It didn’t even occur to me that “Davies” could possibly have a second pronunciation, much less that some people pronounce “Davies” and “Davis” exactly the same.
Had I met him and mispronounced his name, I would have been wrong and he might have corrected me, but I wouldn’t have been insulting him.
Okay. I’d still say that within Western languages, a fair attempt is polite. But especially with transliterations from Chinese, Japanese, Hindi - I see nothing rude about admitting unfamiliarity with the pronunciation and asking for it. Even names from Arabic and Russian, which tend to be phonetic - I can’t see any US visitor or immigrant being offended at being asked.
I guess if you’re going to limit it to “Wow, yer name is just too fraggin’ complicated for me, dude” you have a point - but not otherwise.
Have you been reading what I have been actually saying? Have I said one word that can be reasonably interpreted as “It is insulting and rude to politely ask for help pronouncing an unfamiliar word or name?”
You GUESS I have a point? Can you be more grudging with something that should be rather blatantly obvious?
My nomination for this is “Saint-Saens.” Hearing it I confused it with “Soissons”. Plus it has like 40% silent letters! In the same arena but in the opposite manner, I was sure that “Shostakovich” wasn’t really spelled the way it sounded, yet it is.
fiery
my dyslexia kept seeing fire-y for years and sometimes it still pulls that trick.
I used to work on the phone with a guy from the deep south who had the drawl to match his location. I kept spelling his name as LeCasey because that’s what I heard. Nope. Turns out it was Lucchesi.
It’s… not? How do you pronounce it if not fire-y?
Eta: Ok now I’m confused. Dictionary.com says it is pronounced fire-y and their audio sample agrees.
fier·y
ˈfī(ə)rē/
You’re overthinking this. Carnut knew the word as “firey” and couldn’t get used to the correct spelling “fiery.”
My personal experience is that you are in a quite small minority there. Most of the foreign types I deal with hate it when some one takes a wild swing at their name and butchers it. They much prefer someone to say “I’m not even going to try that one” to a clumsy attempt for the 800th time.
It’s not rude. It’s standard and expected. Pronouncing someone’s name wrong out of being afraid to admit you can’t say it right is somewhat rude.
Yeah, I’m gonna go with this. My spouse’s last name is of Czech-German origin and a bitch to pronounce (well, honestly it really isn’t if you look at it and engage your brain, but a lot of people just can’t handle it). I don’t use it, but all the stupid spam phone-callers insist on trying to call me “Mrs. <hislastname>.”
And they get it wrong.
Every. Damn. Time.
I would much rather they just said, “I’m not going to try that. Can you tell me how to pronounce it?” than to make a stab and mangle it. I find the latter far more insulting.
As I said, there’s a huge difference between, “I’m sorry, may I ask how you pronounce your name?” and “I’m not even going to try pronouncing your name.” There’s a huge difference in undertone.
If you don’t hear it, then I suggest that you take what I’m saying as a lesson. It might not sound insulting to you, but it behoove a you to think twice about the words you use and whether the words you are using mean only “I am unsure his you pronounce your name” or can even remotely be heard as carrying the additional message “Your name is unreasonably strange.”
My name contains a sound not used in many languages (Samantha - it’s the th that’s the problem) and I have had people in/from other countries say to me that they’re not going to try to get it right, and can they say Sam instead. I actually don’t mind at all if they say Samanta, or Sam, or Sammy, or whatever as long as I can tell it’s me, but people usually want to not get name pronunciations wrong and feel bad if they do.
With Chinese names there’s a different problem, in that even if you get the sounds right you probably won’t, as a speaker of a non-tonal language, get the tone right every time, so it is quite reasonable to give up rather than consistently mispronounce a name. This is one reason why a lot of Chinese people (as in from China, rather than of Chinese ethnicity but born elsewhere) choose Western names as well as their own names. We just can’t get it right even when we try.
Surnames get changed less often partly because of cultural prohibitions against changing family names (this is true in the Western world as we as China - apart from marriage and stage/pen names it’s more unusual to change your surname than your given name) and partly because they’re not used as often in everyday conversation.
Anyway, the person you’re arguing with never said he wouldn’t try to pronounce someone’s name the way they say it, just that he’s given up on trying to figure it out from the spelling.
Even at that you’re being silly. I could see it if they were actually from far western Czech Republic or eastern Germany and mispronounced it, or even if they lived somewhere like West, Caldwell or Snook in Texas and mispronounced it, but your average American? They’re going to pronounce it using English phonetic rules and like you said, get it wrong every time. For example, how would you pronounce the Czech last name “Hrncir”? Should someone get torqued out of shape if you mispronounce it?
As a substitute teacher, I often find myself saying names I’ve never encountered before. I always apologize in advance if I get any names wrong, and then take my best stab at it. This sometimes results in students (usually other students, not the bearer of the name) laughing at my pronunciation, and sometimes results in amazement that I’m the first person to ever get it right.
See, that’s the thing, though–it’s quite completely pronounceable using normal English phonetic rules. That’s why I said it’s not that odd. I’ll give you a similar example. Suppose the name was “Raschke.” (It isn’t, but it’s similar). The person will invariably pronounce it “Rash-ek.” “Is this Mrs…Rasch…ek?” It’s always tentative like that, as if they’re trying to get it right. But if they’d just look at it, they’d either arrive at “Rash-key” (which is right) or “Raschk” (which is wrong but understandable). They almost never do either of these.
So you can see how it might get a bit annoying.
Since neither the “Mrs.” nor the name is correct, my response is always, “Close enough.” And then if they’re spammers or telemarketers I politely tell them to hose off and hang up on them. But I’d do that if they got my name right, too. 
The name ‘Farquharson’ can lead to some merry mistakes.
For some verbal twisting you could try reading The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité and, either aloud or in your head, try to pronounce every word correctly.