I’ll admit I was rather ignorant growing up and the first time I had a conversation with someone and I pronounced Iran as “I ran” everyone roasted the shit outta me and shut me down, which like fair whatever. But my point is the pronunciation is secondary if you get the concept; that’s kinda the point of language and accents in general. If we have to pronounce every country or place as its residents call it then we should roast and ignore every English speaker that says “Germany” instead of Deutschland.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    3·
    21 days ago

    Good post!

    I tend to expand the concept further.

    No pronunciation of a foreign word or name being said by a non native speaker is a problem. Doesn’t matter what the source language is, or the secondary. If a German says New York in a different way than a noo yawkah, who cares? It’s not a big fucking deal.

    We all have an accent. And, we all have to encounter words as we find them. Iran, following the various us accents I’m familiar with could be pronounced a dozen ways, and just like I wouldn’t be bothered by some feriner mangling the name of my town, I ain’t all het up over my molasses drawl neighbor mangling their country/city name either. I mean, French and Spanish have their own way of saying London that ain’t very close to the English, and so what?

    I’m not fucking french, and I’m not going to waste my time trying to honk out the French pronunciation of croissant. Ain’t gonna expect a Parisian to know the difference between grits and gree-its or gray-its either.

    Now, if I’m trying to learn a language to speak it, rather than just using words as they drift across English, that’s a different thing. I’m going to work on my pronunciation as best I can, and likely apologize for mangling it. In that regard, I hold myself to a higher standard than others, because I tend to be happy when folks are learning English and keep their accents. I think it’s beautiful, and US English in particular is enhanced by a myriad of accents being used with it.

    So, yeah, I agree with you. Once things are close enough that everyone involved knows what’s being discussed, worrying about exact pronunciations is a waste of time. That’s partly because of my ramble above, and partly because I know damn good and well that most countries are big enough that not everyone native to them says it exactly the same anyway.

    There are exceptions though! When a given generic pronunciation in English follows a history of oppression, it’s a damn good thing to put in the effort to avoid that version. The most topical example I can think of is kiev vs kyiv. What with the fuckery going on over there, I tend to go with the Ukrainian spelling and as close to the pronunciation as I can get, as a token of support. I know I mangle the fuck out of it, but that’s beside the point.