I try as hard as I can to pronounce people’s names exactly as they do. I can sympathize with Asians who have trouble with your name, but in Sotomayor’s case I’m not sure that she should be encouraged to say publicly that So-to-MAY-er (or whatever) is okay too. One-on-one, you thank people for trying and cut them some slack, but frankly, I don’t think anyone should have to approve any pronunciation of their name (other than the one they prefer) on national media.

The whole “natural pronunciation” thing is completely bunk to me. For a nation of immigrants, we’re embarrasingly mono-cultural when it comes to language. It’s one thing to pronounce Dubois (a town in Wyoming) DU-boys rather than the proper French Du-BWAH or coyote CAH-yote rather than the Spanish cah-YOH-tay (people in the town actually pronounce it that way, so in my mind it’s correct, and coyote is essentially an English word, however changed it’s been from its roots), but everyone deserves to have others at least try to pronounce their name correctly. No exceptions.

Of course this is easy for me to say, having a simple name that’s easy for almost anyone to pronounce.

I don’t think anyone should have to, but I consider it courteous (particularly when asked about the pronunciation). Something like “I pronounce it SotomaYOR, but I respond to Sotomeyer as well.”

I consider there to be a substantive difference between Dubois, Coyote, and Sotomayor. Namely, once the pronunciation of the first two are outlined, they are not difficult to pronounce. For Dubois, Dew-Bwa is pretty easy. Placing the accent on the second syllable instead of the first for coyote isn’t tough since most people are not unaccostumed to accents falling on the second syllable. I don’t know anyone that pronounces Gonzales as GONzales, for instance. Accents falling after the second syllable are much more rare.

The whole “natural pronunciation” thing is completely bunk to me. For a nation of immigrants, we’re embarrasingly mono-cultural when it comes to language.

Though I would agree that it would assuredly be better if more Americans could speak foreign languages (and Spanish in particular, for that matter), English is our primary language and its syllablic patterns are what our tongues are used to. These patterns are not superior to others by any means, but there are words that fit naturally into its dynamic and words that don’t. The same is true of any language. It’s why people have accents (and, for that matter, one reason why I consider it tacky to criticize, heckle, or mock accents).

Anyway, we’re not really on opposite sides of this. I believe mostly in meeting people half-way. One person tries to get the pronunciation right and the other person is patient that some people can’t (or it’s more difficult than its worth to try).

This is why it is best for adults to learn to read non-Roman script before attempting to learn the language with any depth.

Then work on devloping the habit of listening rathern than parsing foreign names or words into written English in your head. English is not a soundpoor language. Your Japanese example is so because Japanese does not have certain sounds and phoneme combinations that are common in English, so their tongues literally are not practiced at the combination- it’s a lack of that particular fine motor skill.

In English we have a problem with certain combinations, but we do have almost all of the basic phonemes possible, largely because of the polyglot nature of English and our adoption of so many foreign influences.

As a former professional linguist, I’m rather pedantic about pronunciation when it’s merely a matter of laziness and attention to detail. Your attitude towards pronouncing difficult words and names is common in America, but I hate to see it. It is very grating to hear your name slaughtered without even a “best effort”. And you may not find it disrespectful, but most people do. It’s like someone who doesn’t mind slamming their door into your car, but it’s “no big deal” because it didn’t leave much of a mark. I wopuldn’t say the interpretation of disrespect is all on the side of the aggreived party, but too many people just think that disrespectful behaviour is just no big deal, and wonder why other peolpe get upset about it. The formality of giving overtly respectful forms of behaviour is a social lubricant that is necessary when dealing with people with whom we have no personal ties.

I was reading Hayek the other day and this conversation reminded me of a phrase that, while not directly applicable to this conversation, nonetheless strikes a chord, an elliptical similarity: We need principles which enable us “… to work with people whose moral values differ from his own for a political order in which both can obey their convictions. It is the recognition of such principles that permits the coexistence of different sets of values that makes it possible to build a peaceful society…”

To work with other people peacefully, we should adopt the highest standards of respectful behaviour, not the minimum. This is not to say that all people all the time deserve our overt respect. It is merely to say that overtly respectful behaviour should be the default position until proven otherwise.

Seems to me a question of perceived causality. People with unusual names believe that other people should make a good-faith effort to pronounce it. People trying to pronounce it expect that the oddly named should be used to people butchering the name and have a thick skin about it. Because people have a buffer zone of civility this usually works out; you usually have a problem only when one or the other is unusually testy .

I’ve equally given up any bother of “respect” for people who are so stuck up / egotistical that a mispronunciation of their name is somehow an “insult,” and even less so when the name in question uses phonemes (such as the rolled ‘l’ or ‘r’ sound, nasals, or accented/umlauted phonemes) that either do not exist at all in the speaker’s native tongue, or that “exist” but only as an approximation.

And yes, I’ve heard someone drone on a good 3-second rolled “r” onto Sotomayor’s name, as if that would be any more “respectful” (or probably, more to the point, emphasize her “ethnic heritage” since I would never guess, just by the face, what her “race” is).

I mean, if you’ve got some complicated name that English-speakers naturally have trouble pronouncing, you should be understanding and accepting of mispronunciations, right? Doesn’t work that way.

Peter,

I’ve noticed this as well. Further, it seems that the sense of outrage is generally directly proportional to how “separate” the speaker’s racial subculture wants itself to be and how strident the person is about their subcultural identity. For instance, while I’ve yet to see someone with an ethnically Indian or Asian name who took offense at a native English speaker tripping over a few vowels or consonantes, and I’ve met a small (but enough to remember a few) African-immigrant (e.g. non-US-born) and European-immigrants who reacted that way, the predominant presence of name pronunciation “outrage” seems to be a distinctly Latino/Mexican/etc thing.

In fact, it (along with the insistence of “you should all speak not just Spanish but Mexican Spanish in particular” prickliness in the Colosse area and the general southern American area taken as a whole) seems almost deliberately designed to emphasize the “otherness” of those who take outrage - a brash and intended-to-irritate statement of “you should conform to us, rather than our becoming part of you.”

South Park (the show) has also mocked this ruthlessly - they have several times made a point of going to “a reporter with a latino-sounding name”, who speaks perfect, unaccented english throughout the report, only to sign off with a name concocted of just about every phoneme that is present in Mexican Spanish but unused in American English.

The whole “natural pronunciation” thing is completely bunk to me. For a nation of immigrants, we’re embarrasingly mono-cultural when it comes to language.

Linus,

Like it or not, language is a singularly unifying cultural phenomenon. Further, a simple accent identifying origin of birth or having lived in an area of a country during one’s formative years (such as pronouncing the name of the 21st state as el-i-noi rather than il-i-noi or il-i-noiz, indicating the local Chicago area accent, somewhere else in the state, or outside the state entirely) can have this effect.

Then, too, prior to a certain point in recent American history, the preservation of “family names” was not nearly as big of a thing. Most families that came through Ellis Island, for instance, either had their name’s spelling changed (names like Wyss and Roos and Nüchter became “Weiss” and “Rose” and “Nichter”), the name itself shortened, possibly “locked in place” (if they came from a country that was still using patronymic naming), or even directly translated (from “Czar” or “Kar” to “King”, for instance).

Not just that, but many immigrants later changed their names after the fact - either to make life easier on themselves, their families, or to make their “break” with the old country cleaner. The name they picked might have nothing to do with anything, or be picked based on a favorite author, book character, movie character… very similar to how people (such as a certain friend of myself and Will’s) pick a changed last name today.

As a former professional linguist, I’m rather pedantic about pronunciation when it’s merely a matter of laziness and attention to detail. Your attitude towards pronouncing difficult words and names is common in America, but I hate to see it. It is very grating to hear your name slaughtered without even a “best effort”. And you may not find it disrespectful, but most people do. … The formality of giving overtly respectful forms of behaviour is a social lubricant that is necessary when dealing with people with whom we have no personal ties.

For some reason, this xkcd strip comes to mind. Also, the phrase “most people do” seems not to be the case.

To work with other people peacefully, we should adopt the highest standards of respectful behaviour, not the minimum. This is not to say that all people all the time deserve our overt respect. It is merely to say that overtly respectful behaviour should be the default position until proven otherwise.

Part of the problem there is that culturally, and even sub-culturally, a “token of respect” from one side is viewed as either disrespect or outright hostility in another. For example, making eye contact - in most of Europe, making eye contact is respectful when carrying on a conversation, but in many Asian cultures, it’s the very height of rudeness, particularly when not on an entirely socially equal footing (and in these cultures, usually and especially in a workplace setting, the idea of a “socially equal footing” is very hard to achieve regardless).

For many parts of the US, the idea of a mispronounced name is not even a plausibility of insult, unless very deliberately done (turning someone’s name round into a cussword or insult itself if they are unfortunate enough to have a twistable name, such as turning “Dunlap” into “Dunce-lap“, or a certain A&W root beer commercial). Again, this is what I pointed out above - it seems that this phenomenon, at least in my observation, is rather tightly limited as an “otherness-emphasizing” trait of a certain monolithic subculture.

One question I have is what, in your mind, constitutes “butchering” a name.

I work with a whole lot of Indians. I make an effort to get their names 100% right, figuring that effort will get me 75% there. Then I don’t sweat the other 25% unless I’m given a reason to. They, in return, pronounce my prototypically American name about 75% right.

If I were sent overseas to work in a country and was informed ahead of time that it was extremely important that I got it 100% right, I would put forth more effort and maybe get 100% right. Along those lines, if I knew a Sotomayor whose pronunciation of her name were extremely important to her because of the reason that Web gave, that it was a cultural tie to a heritage with which she does not bear a striking resemblence, I would go the extra mile there, too. But to me, that’s more in the territory of granting (and being requested to grant) extra consideration rather than avoiding disrespect. “That” being going from accenting the first syllable to accenting the last. Going from Sotomeyer, which I admit partially is just laziness along the lines of Scalia (which itself is as much about habit as laziness), to SOTOmayer with the more natural-to-me pronunciation is much easier and is arguably more about respect. I’d actually already have arrived at SOTOmayor if I weren’t trying to wrap my tongue around SotomaYOR.

It’s unavoidable that we will sometimes mis-pronounce a name or word. That doesn’t even take into account regional differences in accent or idiom. I don’t consider that “butchery”. There are many words that I regularly mis-pronounced as a younger person and most likely still do some of them. Dangers of being mostly self-educated and learning large parts of my vocabulary from reading obscure books beyond my grade level, and never hearing them spoken, while simultaneously being too involved in the story to get a dictionary.

However, I do find it somewhat irksome when someone has been repeatedly corrected or had something like this Sotomayor case break the level of consciousness and still doesn’t make the effort. (I don’t even like or respect her as a potential SCOTUS judge, but that’s another issue…) I do understand and acknowledge the power of habit and early conditioning. I understand that some people will not pick it up right away because for some reason they lack the fine distinction of a trained ear. What I don’t understand is knowing the difference and giving it a “meh”.

It’s much like calling someone by a nickname they dislike. I understand it may feel a bit unnatural to emphasize a pronunciation that is not native to you. It gets more natural with practice.

I was watching the Daily Show last night, and Stewart was talking about Ahmedinejad. For years these useful/less idiots made fun of Bush mangling the man’s name, and they still don’t say it properly. It is A(h)MED-neh-jahd. The “h” or “ch” between the first and second syllable is a soft glottal stop. The “hmed” is the emphatic syllable. The “i” exists merely as a pause on the way to the next consonent. Shi’ite Iraqis of my acquaintence who actually speak Farsi do not understand “ahmmuhDEENuhjahd” to be the man’s name. I would think if one were making fun of someone else mangling a name, one would make sure to have it correct oneself.

Webguy:

“For example, making eye contact - in most of Europe, making eye contact is respectful when carrying on a conversation, but in many Asian cultures, it’s the very height of rudeness”

Much more is made of this than I have ever been able to discern in reality. Outside of completely xenophobic shut-ins, most people understand that other cultures have different standards. Often it is easier to be accepted when one maintains distance. For example after 5.5 years of living in Korea, if I made a gaffe in using “bahn mal” or casual, disrespectful speech to someone of higher status (greater age) than I, it was much more serious than if someone who can barely speak the language were to do so. A foreigner who speaks with blunt broken sentences is “cute” for their efforts to fit in. My fluency indicated more knowledge and therefore greater culpability for disrespectful behaviour- quite simply, I should know better.

I am not disagreeing that many “white folks” don’t think it is a big deal to mangle a foreign person’s name. That’s kind of my point- too many people say something to the effect “I’ll never be able to say that. I’m going to call you Jimmy.” But this is a pretty disrespectful thing to do, objectively. You’re saying it is not important enough to get it right, and that this outlandish foolishness of foreign-sounding names is just better left outside our country. Many people with non-English names either find it annoying or bumpkin-ish that Americans don’t make the effort. Making the effort has always been rewarded, in my experience. Even foreigners who have given up on getting mainstream Americans to pronounce their name properly appreciate the individuals who do so. I once spent 3 drinks worth of time in a Georgetown bar learning to properly pronounce a beautiful Polish exchange student’s 4 names. She insisted, (in a cute, playful way) and it was worth my time.

I don’t think there would ever be a situation iun which pronouncing a person’s name correctly is rude as compared to mis-pronouncing. There are situations where it is rude to address a person directly but there’s no situation where mis-pronouncing it is equivalent to pronouncing correctly.

It’s not just that I don’t think it’s a big deal to get a pronunciation wrong when saying a foreigners name, I don’t consider care if they mispronounce my name, either. Even before inquiring and finding out why “Will” was so difficult for my former boss, my take was that I didn’t want him to trouble himself with it. I want people to be comfortable around me and if that means calling me Guillermo instead of William then I will add Guillermo with Will, Willie, Billy, Liam, Sherwood, Trumwill, and Wier on the list of names that I respond to.

In cases where it’s apparent that the pronunciation is important to them for one reason or another, I will of course make every effort to put them at ease. As in many other issues, I just think that more people should approach this issue as I do .

Regarding Sotomayor, I’ll probably get it eventually. At least to the point that I will be able to stop myself and say it right when I need to, as with Scalia.

I don’t think there would ever be a situation iun which pronouncing a person’s name correctly is rude as compared to mis-pronouncing. There are situations where it is rude to address a person directly but there’s no situation where mis-pronouncing it is equivalent to pronouncing correctly.

That’s interesting. In some ways it feels like trying to catch the intricacies and getting it wrong is worse than a more English-friendly variation in that sort of way that trying to be hip and getting that wrong is worse than not trying. Sort of condescending and posing.

You have a ton more international experience than I do, so I will defer to your experience in that regard. Particularly when overseas.

You’re probably right about causality. Perhaps part of the reason I take a laid back attitude towards such things is that my name is rarely mispronounced. Some of it is that I think American culture genuinely is less concerned about these things even amongst ourselves than at least some other cultures.

Thanks for the link to the video. Hilarious. In The World According to William, Jonathan would have just said somewhere early on “Call me Jon, if that’s easier for you.”

I’m not saying that every judge needs to be a Stevens or a Roberts, but I object to our government being taken over by Husseins and Sotomayors. I also object to the notion of a “nation of immigrants”. There was a time when immigrants came here to become American, not to shape America in their image. The first Americans, the colonists, were not “immigrants”. They were conquerers. It was the Age of Conquest, and they conquered all of North America and most of South America.

These two, Obama and Sotomayor, are SECOND GENERATION immigrants. People with the bare minimum attachment to American society required to be a citizen. And they are being elevated to the absolute highest positions in the land. I’m not a descendant of the Pilgrims or anything, but I see a huge danger in anchor-baby Presidents and Supreme Court Justices. It’s only one small step away from foreign rule.

Anyway, on to the more general point. We are constantly preaching tolerance. Shouldn’t that include tolerance, by foreigners, of Americans pronouncing their names wrong? Especially when, in so many cases, a name can be spelled the same but pronounced differently for two different families?

Personally, I have a common but mildly ethnic name. No one, and I literally mean no American pronounces it correctly. Especially non-white Americans. But I tolerate it. When doing simple things, like making a reservation, I just use a common Anglo name.

It’s not America’s fault that my name is fundamentally incompatible with the English language. It’s my parents’ fault for giving their American son a name with non-English phonemes. What’s in a name anyway? No matter how mangled the pronunciation, I always know who they’re referring to.

So in this sense, the minor controversy over Sotomayor’s name reflects a larger issue. If you showed up in China one day and started getting indignant about people pronouncing your name wrong, or someone else got indignant on your behalf, you would be engaging in intolerance and, in a sense, cultural imperialism. Here in the US, we are so caught up in embracing other cultures that we have become intolerant of our own.

Personally, I am more annoyed when people try to fake an accent to pronounce my name correctly. I am an American, exclusively, and I accept the Americanization. We would all be well served to encourage others to do the same.

As far as I know, every four-syllable word, no matter how you pronounce it, has a syllable with major stress and one with minor stress. Maybe it’s just not obvious to you because you think of it as natural. Probably you put the major stress on the first syllable and the minor stress on the third.

Something about the four syllables with the accent on the last syllable just ties my tongue in knots.

This is actually a fairly common pattern in English—it’s just that it almost always spans multiple words:

Blueberry pie.
Not anymore.
Going to bed.
Saturday night.
Kick in the head.

It’s interesting you should say that. As I’ve been thinking over the pronunciation and the easiest way for me to do it is to split it up into two words. If I am saying “Soto Mayor” it’s actually easier for me. The problem is that the name isn’t two words.

I have noticed the multiple stresses in four-syllable single-words, but I almost always put the major stress first and they’re one apart. Saying SoTOmaYOR (heavy accent on the latter) is possible (if not “natural”) but SOtomaYOR or sotomaYOR without the second accent) Much tougher.

The first half of your comment fails to steer clear of the intention of my lengthy note at the end of the post. How untrustworthy Sotomayor and Obama are is beside the point.

The fake accent irritating you is kind of what I was referring to in my comment to Bastidge about how it seems to me that trying and failing can actually be worse than just altering it to something that comes off your tongue a little easier.