"Incorrect" pronunciations you have had to learn

[linguoboy]

Sort of a counterpoint to the other thread.

We're, if not all polyglots, than at least more linguistically sophisticated than the populace at large, which can be an obstacle to understanding at times. With foreign proper names, for instance, I'm always wrestling with how much to anglicise them according to my audience. Sometimes it's not enough just to know their linguistic background since even, say, a Spanish placename can be unintelligible to a Spanish-speaker when it occurs in a stream of non-Spanish from someone they don't expect codeswitching from.

Two recent examples:

At a street café in the former German neighbourhood of Chicago yesterday, my ex tried to order an Austrian wine. We'd recently been speaking German so it was natural that he pronounced Grüner Veltliner exactly as a German would. But our waitress wasn't a German-speaker so he had to partially anglicise the name (e.g. rhotic, dark l) for her to understand it.

In a library group I belong to, someone posted an instructional video on pronouncing author names. Some of the commentators pointed out that if they approximated the Norwegian pronunciations of "Jo Nesbø", almost no one would know who they were talking about.

[Soap]

People always tell me I have a good speaking voice, and Ive noticed through school and other social groups where reading is involved that if I pronounce an unfamiliar name, more often than not everyone else assumes my pronunciation is correct whether it is or not. e.g. the Chinese name Xie I decided to pronounce /ʒi:/, even though I knew that was wrong, because I didnt know the correct pronunciation and I was comfortable with the one I made up. The other person in my group mumbled something like "zhee? okay" and changed his pronunciation (which Im sure had also been wrong) thereafter. There was one Chinese person in the group who likely knew better, but his part didnt involve talking about Dr Xie, and he was polite enough to not interrupt me during my turn. I dont think Ive ever caused someone whose pronunciation was originally correct to change it, though, perhaps because if they know the correct pronunciation they also know that it's correct and aren't likely to be swayed by a speaker with a more enthusiastic reading voice.

I cant think of any time in which Ive been on the "losing" side of the divide, since I would say that anyone with a surname they pronounce wrong on purpose is within their right to do so, so if your surname is "bleau" and you dont wanna be called "Blow" I can understand that and will go along. Mostly its people with Polish and Italian surnames that do this, and I'd say that theyre simply Americanizing their names rather than pronouncing them "wrong". Polish-Americans in particular, at least around here, seem to have very little knowledge of the Polish language and Italian-Americans often know Spanish better than they know Italian.

I suppose you could say Im a descriptivist, since Im sure that in both of the situations you described above I would give the words a very American pronunciation that would likely be understood by novice and expert alike. I know in high school I always said the name Euler /'ju.lər/ and not /'oj.lər/, although I honestly thought at the time that I was right and that the girl who led the class was hyperforeignizing it, "because he was Swiss, not German, only German has /oi/ for eu".

[linguoboy]

I suppose you could say Im a descriptivist, since Im sure that in both of the situations you described above I would give the words a very American pronunciation that would likely be understood by novice and expert alike.

Easier said than done. I know there's been times when I've honestly misunderstood who or what someone was talking about because they used a pronunciation so anglicised that I couldn't match it up to the spelling I knew. Like when someones pronounces a Chinese surname /ˈʒuː/, they could potentially mean Zhou, Zhu, or Ju--and now, in light of your example, I might have to add Xiu or Xu to the list!

There's also the issue of regional and national differences. If you can remember when John Boehner was Speaker of the House, I remember hearing snide comments about the "made-up" pronunciation with /eː/. But I'm from a town where Spoede is pronounced /ˈspeːdiː/ and Schoendienst /ˈʃeːndːnst/. So what's a "very American pronunciation" in these circumstances? My instincts and the instincts of someone from the Northeast or Northern California could be totally different.

[Travis B.]

I suppose you could say Im a descriptivist, since Im sure that in both of the situations you described above I would give the words a very American pronunciation that would likely be understood by novice and expert alike.

Easier said than done. I know there's been times when I've honestly misunderstood who or what someone was talking about because they used a pronunciation so anglicised that I couldn't match it up to the spelling I knew. Like when someones pronounces a Chinese surname /ˈʒuː/, they could potentially mean Zhou, Zhu, or Ju--and now, in light of your example, I might have to add Xiu or Xu to the list!

This is complicated at my work because there are many Chinese people who actually are from China there, and we tend to use pronunciations at least marginally closer to standard Mandarin pronunciation than the usual American anglicizations; e.g. zh is pronounced /dʒ/ and x is pronounced /ʃ/.

here's also the issue of regional and national differences. If you can remember when John Boehner was Speaker of the House, I remember hearing snide comments about the "made-up" pronunciation with /eː/. But I'm from a town where Spoede is pronounced /ˈspeːdiː/ and Schoendienst /ˈʃeːndːnst/. So what's a "very American pronunciation" in these circumstances? My instincts and the instincts of someone from the Northeast or Northern California could be totally different.

Same thought here - here there are pretty specific ways in which German names are anglicized, and pronouncing <oe> as /ɛ/ or /eɪ/ depending on whether it would be short or long in Standard German is one of them, as is pronouncing final <e> as /i/.