Pronouncing a name in someone’s own language

[Brightun]

There’s an issue in my team. One member’s name is the same spelling as an English name but the pronunciation in their language is markedly different. Some team members are struggling with this and say they feel stupid/pretentious putting on an accent to say the name. I think they should make the effort and get over it. They are refusing. Team member is saying they feel discriminated. Who is BU?

We had the same situation but everyone pronounced it correctly.

@Naunet, Ruth is from the bible, and the french say it differently, but not wrongly. The same goes for Abraham, Gabriel, Paul, David and Simon etc

Have members of your team watched Game of Thrones? Show them a picture of the woman with the dragons and ask them to say who it is.

Your team are totally unreasonable.

It's got very little to do with accents and you don't need to put on an over the top fake accent to say someone's name the way they prefer it to be said!

I work with a number of clients from other parts of the world, and always ask if I am pronouncing their name correctly, and encourage them to correct me if I am not. It's really not hard.

I'm a bastard and would start mispronouncing the dickhead person's name on purpose, just to drive home the point that everyone's name is important, you know so they know how it feels.

@dreamingbohemian , did they mean Hugo Lloris?

I have no patience for this. Unless they physically cannot pronounce certain sounds they make the effort to say the person's name properly.

I have a non-English name. All the sounds in it exist in English, in the same order in certain words. It is not a difficult name for English-speakers to pronounce. Yet some apparently can't, and claim that I'm unreasonable to expect them to do so.

Can't - or won't?

So rude. Sometimes I respond by saying their name in my mother-tongue, or by mangling it.

One place I worked, a person slightly senior to me complained to management about my attitude. He was told to call me by my name, properly.

Know someone with the Dutch name Gilles. Lets everyone say the anglicised Giles as few people can or want to try the throaty, phlegmy Hhhhillus that it should be. I went inbetween and said Hillus without growling it up too much.

Is there a happy medium like that, OP?

As an aside, my name is well known and 'English' though actually Biblical and Hebrew and 1 in 100 pronounce it correctly. Most people add letters and sounds that arent even there. I dont get offended. Just sometimes stupified at the disparity between them looking at it written down and saying it. Think Belinda being pronounced Baylunda.

Your team need to make the effort to pronounce each other names as they are said, not as the spelling would indicate for English. This is basic politeness in a multicultural space. Allowances should be made for not quite perfect pronunciation (eg not being able to do a French ´r’ sound) but not for making no effort whatsoever.
Is it doubly problematic because the name is associated with the opposite sex in English? I’m thinking like the man’s name ´Jan’ in Dutch which is pronounced ´yan’ - not hard to say at all. ‘Jan’ pronounced like ´Janet’ would likely be presumed to be a women in the UK.

Yes! It's not the easiest name maybe but Louise isn't even close

Going back to the OP, the fact that the team are saying they feel pretentious using the preferred pronunciation makes me think it's a French name?

Something like David or Robert that looks the same as in English, and so they feel stupid saying it the French way because to them that's 'putting on an accent'

My workplace adopted the #MyNameIs campaign to encourage people to provide a phonetic guide to their name as part of their email signatures. It has helped enormously.

www.raceequalitymatters.com/my-name-is/

@dreamingbohemian , I have no idea how to say Lloris - is it like L'yorees (2 syllables)? Not seen a french word starting with Ll before.

Did you know that babies are born physically capable of making all of the sounds that exist in all of the langauges? But as we grow and learn our native language, we lose the ability to make other sounds. I think it's sad!

I think it can be taught though. We had a French teacher at school who would explain precisely how to make certain sounds, like the "en" sound, where you have to put your tongue right down behind your bottom teeth at the front.

And I still have a good German accent, apparently, which would be great if only I could remember more than a tiny portion of German grammer and vocab.

I never knew that was a difficult sound. Soften and widen your lower lip and you say it, it may help?
When I was learning new sounds I used a mirror a lot, so I could see I was mimicking the lip/ tongue position of the speaker. Watch a video and focus on the mouth.
Its excellent for ‘th’, say it in front of a candle. ‘F’ moves the flames, ‘th’ doesn’t. Also you can watch your tongue come forward.
I learnt ‘h’ this way (awful awful word starting sound 😜)

Is your colleague Peel and Key's substitute teacher?

They should be trying to pronounce it as the person does themself. They might not get it right, but they should try, and refusing to try is discriminatory.

We have a new colleague Michal from an Eastern European country. To date, I've only dealt with him by mail. I don't yet know if it's a Mih- My- Muh- sound, nor -shal -chal -kal -khal. Pretty sure it's not the same as English Michael, though. I shall ask when it comes up in a call.

I would like us to stop employing versions of Andre, Andrii, Ondrej, etc. There may be subtle differences in pronunciation, but it can get confusing on calls. It would be rude to start calling them Andre1, Andre2, etc, but fortunately, they have surnames.

It turns out my parents were very sensible in naming me Emma, as that works across most languages.

To be honest some British people butcher Beth into Beff and it drives me mad. Makes a pretty name sound awful!

*id be very surprised if an English speaker could not manage such a simple name as Marie to a French person

it’s very simple*

No because an English speaker says their R very differently.

I have a non-English name. All the sounds in it exist in English

That's the key!

Many sounds do not exist in English! Or vice versa.

This is much more useful than pronouns, but I assume not everyone knows the IPA, so how do they determine how to describe each sound that makes sense to speakers of other languages.

(I was quite excited when I realised that Dutch colleague Galid was pronounced as English Khalid - but how would you put that on a signature so that people would understand they sound the same?)

I think it can be taught though. We had a French teacher at school who would explain precisely how to make certain sounds, like the "en" sound, where you have to put your tongue right down behind your bottom teeth at the front.

Unless you learn the sounds as a baby/toddler, you will never be able to say them perfectly like a native speaker. You will come close, but native speakers can generally hear that it's not quite right.

In my workplace, a consistent refusal to attempt a proper pronunciation would be considered a microaggression, and result in informal disciplinary action if continued after explaining it's not acceptable

www.forbes.com/sites/danabrownlee/2020/12/02/if-youre-not-sure-what-workplace-microaggressions-look-like-here-are-7-examples/

I have work colleagues with Persian names pronounced in a way that was initially very unfamiliar for me to say correctly, in the same way as rolling Rs is, and I must admit I had to practise a lot (not in front of them, obviously!) to get it right. Also my default southern pronunciation of another name changes to the northern pronunciation, because that's how my colleague says it herself.

It's fairly common for me to tell people my name and for them to get it wrong seconds later, almost as if they're correcting me! It's often misspelled in emails and adapted to a more familiar version (e.g. Jean vs Jeanne). It spreads like wildfire too, one person says it incorrectly in a meeting and others, who said it the right way before, start getting it wrong.