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Comment by unit91 | Hacker News Reader

I always feel weird correctly mispronouncing (?) words I know are imported, for example "Einstein" instead of "Einshtein".

While you could get away with "Einshtein", though most folks would think you're pedantic, you really can't for words with less well-known origins. For example most people pronounce "hagiography" with a "hay" sound instead of a "haw" sound, as in Greek ἁγία (hágia). But if you said "hawgiography" people would think you don't know English.

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It gets worse. A decade ago, Obama actually got political heat for pronouncing the names of countries, the same way their inhabitants do.

Language has evolved far far beyond its original roots as a medium for communication, and has now become a symbol of political identity. "If you pronounce words differently, well, you must clearly not share our values."

https://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/09/barack_obama

It seems like half of his pronunciations are how natives might say it, and the other half as 'over-educated faux authenticity'.

Which one did he get political heat for?

Also, language has been about politics for thousands of years...see the shibboleth story in the Judges(old testament, ~3400 years ago).

Which is correct is a difficult line to draw though to some extent. Whilst altering the pronunciation of Pakistan makes some sense (because it's the same word), pronouncing a country the same way as the inhabitants is not necessary correct in English -- you'd probably get some sideways glances if you starting insisting on Nippon for Japan or Deutschland for Germany (or even México for Mexico to some extent).

I'd also say that language as a political/shared identity is not a new phenomenon.

Or, conversely imagine Chinese saying "The United States of America" rather than "mei guo" (美国 - mĕiguó), or Mexicans saying "The United States of America" instead of "Los rstados unidos", etc., etc.

It's ridiculous to think you should pronounce the name of any geographic entity by the way the people native to the area do.

I agree with your word-choice examples - I was referring specifically to pronunciation only. My general instinct is to pronounce people's names the same way they themselves do, as opposed to the way I think it should be pronounced. I try to extend that same principle to countries as well, if the natives unanimously pronounce their country in a certain way when talking in English.

> a symbol of political identity

> Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth

I get heat for pronouncing Iran and Iraq anywhere near correctly, people tell me I sound like a redneck for it.

Rule of thumb: if all the other words in your sentence are in French, then pronounce the word "France" the way French-speaking people say it. If the other words are English, pronounce it the way English-speaking people say it. Switching accents in the middle of a sentence sounds ridiculous.

To illustrate, there's a scene from "Better Off Dead" where the mother repeatedly says "Frawnch" in place of "French" trying to affect an authentic pronounciation, with predictably disastrous results https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhW7rpFhr2k

Language is primarily for communication, not correctness or history. We're not talking about a person's name here.

What do you communicate when you say 'Budapesht' rather than 'Budapest' to a bunch of North Americans after your first visit there?

You're showing them their ease of comprehension is less important to you than pedantry or your desire to demonstrate correctness. Easily rude, likely pedantic, at worst pretentious.

Strive to speak in the language of your audience.

Thank you for explaining so clearly why I dislike people doing that. I feel the same way about correcting spelling mistakes too.

Except when you're not sure what the word is pronounced like. The more obscure word, the easier just to switch to the native pronounciation and hope that it's more comprehensible to the audience than the inevitably botched "correct" version.

This may apply to English more than other languages - in some languages it's pretty easy to guess how to pronounce complicated words after seeing them in writing.

This can be true even for well-known words, like Bruschetta (common Italian antipasto of bread topped with tomatoes). Most everyone in the US pronounces this with a soft 'ch', but it actually should be a hard 'k'. But whenever I pronounce it this way, people always think I'm wrong.

Maybe that's the pedantic part.

Strangely, everybody gets Pinocchio right.

> Strangely, everybody gets Pinocchio right.

The two 'c's followed by an 'h', which is unusual in English, is probably a factor (as opposed to the single 'c' of 'bruschetta', which looks familiar).

And I've also seen the opposite with prosciutto.

I got some pickled vegetables recently at a semi-fancy restaurant and was amused when they introduced the "chee-oh-gee-uh" beets. It's chioggia, so it should be "kyo-ja" or at least "key-oh-juh".

Same with pret-a-manger in London. Everyone pronounces 'pret' to rhyme with 'let', although most people know the correct pronunciation (more like pray). No-one even attempts the 'manger' part.

Apparently in Germany it's just the opposite: they go out of their way to pronounce things the 'correct' way, as they're pronounced in the native language.

Regarding “prêt.” You are correct when the word is isolated. However, in the locution “prêt à manger,” the word is followed by a vowel sound, so the “t” is indeed pronounced, a phenomenon known as enchaînement. This gives some logic to the common English pronunciation of the fast food chain.

The pronunciation of the "t" in this case is a result of liaison, not enchaînement. Enchaînement has to do with the syllabification of French phrases, e.g. "seize heures" is pronounced like "sê zeur," "moving" the word-final "z" to the start of the following vowel-inital word.

Actually, in proper French you're suppose to "link" the words ("faire la liaison"), so it's perfectly correct to make the "t" heard.

The correct pronunciation of "prêt" is nowhere near that of "pray" (there's no y-like sound at the end).

Just own it, dude - I knew someone who'd pronounce "Puerto Rico" the "authentic" way and make you feel like the philistine if you dared correct her

So, I'm currently re-reading the 1632 books, and one thing that's frustrating me is how to read the various German and other non-English names in the book (I cannot read without subvocalizing the dialogue). On one hand, I know how most of these words should be pronounced. On the other hand, there's no way that most of the uptimer characters are going to not speak German with a heavy American accent (and it doesn't help that the authors anglicize a lot of place names, such as Thüringen -> Thuringia). So part of me wants to subvocalize the dialogue the way the words are supposed to be pronounced, and another part of me wants to subvocalize the dialogue the way the uptimers would actually pronounce them.

There's nothing wrong with pronouncing borrowed words with commonly accepted sound. That's the way with Jesus, Rome, Ptolemy, Confucius, and everything else. Even the names of native Britons don't stay faithful to the original sound: I'm pretty sure King Arthur or William Shakespeare did not pronounce their own names the same way we do now.

> William Shakespeare

Presumably, later in life he went by "Bill".

It gets worse when speaking/learning more than one language. Since starting to learn Japanese, pronouncing "karaoke" the English way just feels wrong, and conversely the English loan words in Japanese feel like I'm butchering my mother tongue (at times).

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