OK, I can see how a consistent, heinous butchering of a word would get on your nerves, but what if the mispronouncing person in question said “Yerusalem” rather than trying for the “R” that so many people have trouble with? Why is it condescending or undignified to try to say the word as it is called by the people who live there? If a foreigner could say it correctly, would that be OK, or is it always pretentious to try to say the word as natives say it if you’re a non-native?
Because you’re fucking it up and you look like an overreaching buffoon.
Because ‘Yerushlem’ is equally wrong.
I don’t mind people speaking with an accent - after all, my parents have been here for 30 years and they still sound like New Jersey. What bothers me is people who don’t speak the language trying to speak specific words and inserting them in English sentances. You can’t cherry-pick. Either you speak the language, or you don’t, and the fact that you think you can pronounce a word an a manner vaguely similar to that of a native speaker while at the same time being utterly incapable of uttering a single coherent sentance in the language, doesn’t impress anyone.
In other words, yes, it is always pretentious to try to say the word as natives say it if you don’t actually speak the language.
It’s Hasenpfeffer Season. He doesn’t have to shoot you now.
Um, I answered this question, twice, in posts above. RTFT.
Yeah, I RTFT and no, you didn’t answer the question. I don’t understand your hostility, esp. when I’m agreeing with you overall.
My name is Josh. English speakers - such as my parents - say it in the standard American style: “Jaash”. Hebrew speakers, when speaking Hebrew, pronounce it with the Hebrew equivalent of the letter “O”, which puts it somewhere between “Joshe”, “Jawsh” and “Jush”. Occasionally, a Hebrew speaker will attempt to say it American style - “Jaaash”.
I hate that. That’s not my name in Hebrew (it’s not my Hebrew name, either; that’s “Yehoshua”, which I never use). Don’t say “Jaaash” unless you want to piss me off.
So, yes. That’s my answer to your question.
Well, I know I’m considered linguistically abnormal by all and sundry (as evidenced by “You’re not from around here, are you?” being the first thing said by many people who meet me for the first time), but I pronounce Iraq as Eyerahk, and Kabul as Kahbull.
Similarly, geographic conversations with me will often end up involving:
Loss Anjahleeze (Los Angeles)
Brizzbin (Brisbane)
Orkland (Auckland, not a place in Middle Earth)
MossCo (Moscow)
Huhwaiyee (Hawaii)
Rayjzarvick (Reykjavic)
Kairow (Cairo)
You get the idea… I maintain it’s because I pronounce the “A” in many things as “Ah”, and am generally well-spoken, although other insist it’s because I spent too much time overseas and my accent is messed up… 
No particular hostility: “RTT” seemed too cryptic, and “RTFT” was kind of a riff on “RTFM,” which doesn’t seem particularly hostile to me.
And I did, in fact, discuss “traditional” mispronunciations in two different posts above, which seem to me to be disregarded by your question that comes after: “What about country names like Italy/Italia, etc.? It has always struck me as odd that we stick to these Anglicized pronunciations. Is it a form of English-centric chauvanism? Or is there another reason for it of which I am unaware?”
The questions in your post seem to totally disregard the points I made above.
Yup. Like Alessan, my name is pronounced one way by speakers of one language, and another way by speakers of German. But, as with ee-RAHK and eye-RAHK, there are a few different English pronunciations that will work, and I generally prefer the one that’s closer to the original.
I used to get all snotty and correct people when they used one of the pronunciations I didn’t like. Even people like receptionists who would probably never ever say my name again in their lives. If someone repeatedly got it wrong, I repeatedly corrected them. I thought poorly of people who got it “wrong,” even though, not knowing German, there was no earthly reason why they should know. I really let it get under my skin.
Then I turned thirteen.
I mean, seriously.
I know who I am, they know who I am, and there are more interesting things to talk about. Now if people pronounce it wrong, I don’t say anything, unless they’re really floundering, or they ask for help, or they mangle it so badly that it’s really unrecognizable. Life’s too damn short. If someone gets it “right,” I appreciate it, but chalk it up to having a good ear, or knowing a little German, not to being a better person.
And, fer crissakes, if someone who isn’t a native English speaker or a native German speaker mangles it, how big of an asshole would I take offense!?
And like Alessan, it pissed me off when people incongrously use the German pronunciation in English—especially when they try rolling the r’s and shit, which is actually wrong, because my family is from northern Germany, where the r is uvular, not rolled. But boy oh boy, don’t they think they’re Smary McSmartenstein, because they pronounce my name all fancy.
To give MHO to answer Rubystreak’s question, you [general you, not you in particular] do sound pretentious when you make a big deal about using foreign pronunciations, because it’s not about being sensitive to other cultures, it’s about making you sound like the smartest person in the room. Pay close attention to who uses foreign pronunciations and who uses the English versions. In general, fluent non-native English speakers do the latter, and Americans who have spent a year abroad, and want everyone to know about it, do the former.
Ever seen the SNL skits where the newscasters order Mexican food? Yeah.
And when I’m in Germany, I tell people who don’t speak much English that I’m from “EE-oh’-vah, in der nähe von Tschikago.” And they say, “Ah, Tschikago!” and we’re golden.
This certainly isn’t restricted to English speakers. Just to throw out a couple of examples, in German, France is Francreich, while the French call it la France Czecoslovakia is die Tschechoslowakei, while in Czech it’s Československo and in Slovak, Česko-Slovensko
I mean, usually, it’s a safe assumption that Americans are especially and unusually bigotted, insensitive and culturo-centric, and in general total pricks, but in this case we’re in good company.
Okay, well for the record my name is a pretty simple name that is easy to pronounce (kind of like, er, Iraq) and is likely to come up quite often for anyone with an interest in the United States. If anyone massively fails to say my name- turning short vowels in to long ones, mangling the emphasis, etc. and knows better than that, eventually I am going to teach them the right way to say it and expect them to use that. If my name becomes literally daily news and Al Jeezera decides to pronounce it some gnarly way, I’m going to assume they are being disrespectful asses.
Just so you are warned.
This thread got hijacked long ago. It’s the Pit.
I believe there was a thread some time ago (maybe in GQ?) about place names and why the English-speaking world doesn’t pronounce them like the natives do. It’s probably just because it’s become common usage. The ear of one language group can’t always pick up nuances from another language, so sounds are approximated (I still can’t figure out how the Tejo River in Portugal became the Tagus River in english). Mapmakers from long ago wrote down what they heard, as did historians and geographers. Thus, it’s not a big leap to go from pronouncing Wien as ‘veen’ to pronouncing it phonetically as ‘vee-en’, and onward to ‘vienna’. Once it gets into the lexicon, there’s little chance of turning back, other than in the extraordinary case of Beijing.
As someone said, it’s not just Americans or other english-speakers who do this. France’s word for Germany (other than an obscenity) is ‘Allemagne’, and London becomes ‘Londres’.
And a warning right back atcha: I strongly recommend that you avoid international fame, for the sake of your own blood pressure, because not everyone is going to pronounce your name the way Americans do. You can either accept it as part of the world’s wondrous diversity, or you can have a bug up your ass about it.
I should have added that if you ever intend to travel in the world (perhaps you have), it’s a very good idea to learn what the natives DO call their cities. Trying to figure out where your flight or train is can be a total mystery otherwise; listings like Munchen, Praha, Wien, Mockba, Den Haag, Warshava, Koln, etc. leave most tourists scratching their heads (sorry, purists, I don’t know how to make umlauts, etc.).
It’s spelled Kabul, but it’s pronounced Throat-Warbler Mangrove.
I believe that one should at least try to call individual people by the name that they themselves prefer. With geographic names, however, it gets rather murky. Who decides which “locals” get to choose the name?
Case in point: Turin / Torino:
It’s called “Turin” in English because that was – and still is – its name in Piedmontese, the local language (although the Italians refer to it officially as a “dialect”). Turin was an important trading center long before Italy existed as a country and the Italian language dominated the area around Turin. Nowadays, of course, it’s called “Torino” by the majority of people who live there, and so:
Also, apparently NBC’s Dick Ebersol liked the sound of “Torino” for the US TV coverage.
Tagus is the latin form: Iberia was part of the Roman Empire, and the name stuck in English. Again, a case of historical precedence, not a matter of silly English people “getting it wrong”. [There’s a related matter of Latinized names being used long after the fall of the Roman Empire, as in the case of Columbus, but Tagus doesn’t fall into this category].
If one does decide to use “local names only”, what are we Anglophones supposed to call the Tagus, anyway? The river rises in Spain, where it’s the Tajo, and reaches the Atlantic (oops, sorry, I mean Atlantico) near Lisbon / Lisboa, at which point it’s called the Tejo. The Spanish and Portuguese pronunciations are markedly different.
Still in Iberia: my friends in Madrid, when speaking Spanish, pronounce “Barcelona” as “Barthelona”. Since Barcelona is in Spain, should we all pronounce it as “Barthelona”? Even if the pronunciation in Catalan (the local language) is closer to the English than to the Castilian Spanish?
When I was a teenager and learning German, everything was München this and Wien that. Podkayne would have recognized me all too well! Nowadays, I stick to “Munich” and “Vienna” when speaking English, except if I’m traveling in the area with a fellow Anglophone and discussing travel plans (when you’re thumbing through the Thomas Cook European Timetable, aka the CookBook, it takes an active effort to think of all of the English-language names of places!).
Bonus question for strict “local name only” folks: how should a French TV News station spell and pronounce the USA’s 50th state? Do you always follow local practice?
Well, I’ve been to 18 countries and I’m about to switch continents soon. Oddly, in all my travels, I’ve never had anyone grossly mispronounce my name. I’m not talking about saying it with an accent or struggling over some of the harder syllables. I’m talking about grossly distorting the name- like saying bear-bear-AAY for Barbara or something. Something along the lines of what we are doing with Iraq.
However. around here my extremely simple but somewhat rare last name closely resembles in sound and meaning a popular Spanish last name. I get called that a lot. And anyone I’m close to that keep calling me the Spanish last name will eventually get a polite correction. If for some reason Mexican television decided to say the Spanish version instead of the English version (it’s a common English word), I’d consider them incompetent at best.
I lived in France for four years, and almost all of my francophone friends call me by a slightly different first name than everyone else does. My given name is a Scottish variant of a common English name, and is easily pronounced by everyone in the UK and most Americans. It doesn’t fit easily into French conversation, however, and a lot of my colleagues were stumbling over it. My solution was to go by a slightly different name, a Breton variant of a common French name (the Scottish, Breton, English and French are all variations of the same name in this case). This Breton “nickname” was a lot easier for the French to pronounce, and I rarely had to spell it out over the phone so it has saved me a lot of time over the years. Since the Bretons and the Scots are both Celtic folk, use of the nickname actually made cultural sense as well as easing pronunciation. I’d always explain the situation when going beyond casual acquaintanceship, and I never found anyone to be offended when they learned that the name that they’d first heard for me was not my given name.
I did not accept variants on my last name, nor usage of anything other than my correct given name in a professional context (conferences, publications, etc. – which occasionally caused problems with redaction).
The British and American friends whom I met during my time in France still generally call me by the Breton name, even when speaking or e-mailing in English. It just seems to fit as a reminder of the time and place of our first meeting, and has something of a romantic quality to it. [“Many are my names in many countries…”]
Note that in my case it was my own choice to take on a name variant, so the situation was different from when Rajiv is told by his boss at the call center in Bangalore that he is to answer the phone as “Bob”.
It’s not just “dumb Americans” or English-speakers in general who do this. What about “Los Estados Unidos” or “Les Etats-Unis”? For that matter, if the Italians are sticking with “Stati Uniti”, why should we bother with Torino, instead of Turin?
Those would be translations, not different names (los=the; estados=states; unidos=united). Sort of like us saying ‘Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’, which was a translation of the Soviet name for their country. Or ‘OTAN’ being the French version of ‘NATO’. Florence, on the other hand (for example), is the english version of Firenze, not a translation.