Comment by thomashabets2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thomashabets2 | Hacker News Reader

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Not quite what I said.

In this case you would understand me if I pronounced "ABBA" the Swedish way, so the IKEA scenario doesn't happen.

Not that I do say it that way when speaking English, just like I don't say my own name in the Swedish way.

But if "ABBA" had been named "ÄBBA"[1] (to be clear, that's not "A with an accent", that's a completely different letter) then I would pronounce it "ÄBBA". And it would be annoying. But at least other music fans are not employed by ABBA, so shrug, Mötley Crüe.

I would imagine that a Chinese person would be annoyed if they had to refer to their president as "Eks Eye" when speaking English.

Or do you mean the accents in the ABBA songs?

[1] which would be confusing, all else equal, because it would be pronounced like Ebba in Ebba Grön, another band.

I mean the errors and awkward grammar / pronunciation in songs by ABBA.

Comes with the territory, no?

"If I was a rich man", "I feel good", "we don't need no education", the repetition of "and their bombs" in Zombie, "Me and Bobby McGee", the weird "this" pronunciation in "Sweet Dreams", making people mishear it as "these", etc… (just off the top of my head)

The (deliberate) almost nonsense in Nirvana songs, too.

It is funny (heh) that the "funny" in ABBA's "Money, Money, Money" and "Does Your Mother Know" is a misuse of the word that my mum makes all the time when speaking English.

Other than that, non-native English speakers having an accent is not really something to have an opinion about. I think most Swedes probably don't hear it, and think that the Skarsgårds don't have a Swedish accent, whereas I can almost always spot a Swedish accent immediately.

What would you say would set ABBA apart, here?

I simply assumed that if someone gets annoyed when local employees cannot speak the primary language of their foreign parent company (a company decision btw), that same person would also be bothered when foreign singers sing or speak in unnatural, non-native English.

> local employees cannot speak the primary language of their foreign parent company

No, I said they don't recognize the names of their own product when spoken correctly. I did not say they need to be able to say it correctly, and absolutely not that they speak another language.

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