They call me girl, they call me Stacy

[venta]

I have just spent several minutes looking at a (work) email from someone I will meet on Tuesday, wondering how on earth to even begin to think about attempting to pronounce their name. I was just coming to the conclusion that the only sensible thing was going to be to admit defeat and ask them, when I noticed the email sig.

Next to the name, it has a handy phonetic guide.

What a sensible, helpful thing to do. Hurrah.

Comments

[sammason.livejournal.com]

Good for per! It can be a real problem at work, can't it? I've had particular difficulties with some East Asian people. Sometimes I've been told the person's whole name, a series of syllables all of which are unfamiliar to me, and it's proved impossible to find out which bit is the given name and which is the family name. When I've asked what I should say when talking to the person, I've just got told the whole name again. Or they've told me their 'English name' which is fine except that it's completely different from the real name. With one person, I shared a lab for 2 years and every time I asked for help with her name, she just told me that it was 'difficult to say' and then told me the whole of it again. Eventually I overheard the shortened name to which phe was willing to answer.

In contrast, one Hungarian called Emese arrived to work in our lab. Emese isn't hard to say ('Emmeshie', or 'Meshie' for short) but this lady had worked in the States for a while. So as soon as we met, she said 'Call me Em.'

[venta.livejournal.com]

It's actually never been a problem I've had at work before (they don't let me out much), though it has occasionally been a problem socially. It sounds like you've had it much worse!

(I said a friend's name wrongly throughout her entire time at university. I really did try, but just couldn't hear the difference between my saying it and her saying it. She obviously could, though :( )

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

There's quite an interesting finding that if you're not exposed to the differences between similar sounds as a child, most people find it impossible to pick them up in later life. So "No, it's pronounced [flibble]" / "But that's how I'm saying it!" is not uncommon or unreasonable, if [flibble] is from a foreign phoneme collection.

I have this problem with my Indian family's names. According to them, I'm not even saying my own surname properly, thanks to Dad having 'Anglicized' the pronunciation long before I was born.

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

If you learn Pinyin proounciaton the world will open up before your eyes.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

That's useful feedback. Sometimes I do that and worry it's annoying.

Quite often people get confused or panic when I do it though, or act as though something like: "it's pronounced as it's spelt, with the second syllable emphasized" is the most difficult, complex, confusing instruction they've ever been given; or I'm the most fussy, unreasonable person in the world for making a distinction between two really very different sets of sounds.

Because I hate my own name being mispronounced so much, I usually just ask about other peoples' if I have any doubt at all. And I'm always really pleased when someone asks me, so you shouldn't be shy about doing this.

When people ask whether they can call me Cat, I say they can, though I slightly resent it, because my name really isn't difficult to pronounce, and although I like cats, I don't want to call myself after one, and I identify as more of a 'dog person' than a 'cat person'. Nowadays, this seems to have resulted in me generally being called Cat at work. Probably a good thing all in all, because it's reduced instances of Cat-ri-OH-na rage.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I think I've been saying your name wrong :( CaTRIəna, like the Irish pronuncitation?



For me, I often let it slide, especially if I think someone's not going to have to say my name often, but I really dislike it. It's when I say my name, and they get it, but as soon as they see it written it's gone again that annoys me most.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

No, that's perfect!

I had a theory that the reason why people thought it was so complicated is that they got really hung up on how precisely the third syllable ought to be pronounced, when in fact it doesn't really matter to me, because if you're saying it right, the third syllable is so short and light and unemphasized.

I also thought that perhaps the fact that people worried so much about the third syllable made them emphasize it, when the only thing that is important to me is that you don't do that.

And that peoples' perception that I'm really fussy and difficult about my name could come from their own anxiety about the perfect way to pronounce the third syllable.

Finally, in writing "it's CaTRIəna" can confuse people because they don't know what a "ə" is, and/or think it's something weird and exotic and difficult.

That's why I changed my advice from "it's CaTRIəna" to "it's pronounced as it's spelt - but make sure you emphasize the second syllable, not the third".

[venta.livejournal.com]

That's why I changed my advice from "it's CaTRIəna" to "it's pronounced as it's spelt - but make sure you emphasize the second syllable, not the third".

I do find advice on how to pronounce things quite difficult. Although, for some reason, I always remember what a ə is, in general I find the phonetic alphabet quite bewildering and quite inexplicably difficult to figure out. Sentences like "make sure you emphasize the second syllable, not the third" I do also find quite challenging, as it sounds far more complicated than it actually is. Although (I hope!) I'd put the effort into working it out if someone gave me such instruction, I could imagine some people dismissing it as too technical. (Or maybe I'm just pushing my own issues on to others, there!)

I guess in an ideal world you'd embed a tiny little soundbite in your email sig, so there could be a little clickable logo and people could hear you saying your own name :)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Having grown up in Essex, "ə" was the only vowel I had for the first 18 years of my life.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

I'd been saying 'Catrina' before. I shall stop that forthwith.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Um, I'm confused now! I thought there was only one way to say your name, and that's how it was written (which may mean I say it wrongly...)

Can you explicate? I don't know if your name is attached to your LJ anywhere, so feel free to ignore if you don't want to mention it!

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh... unless... is it a s/sh thing?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

It's Keer-sten, not Cur-sten (for me). I have no objection to the Norwegian pronunciation, which is more like Shishten (excpet the shs are different).

(Also fish not goatee, but I think you knew that.)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Hmm. This has got me thinking :)

I guess I would have thought it odd to get an email with pronounciation notes from you (well, except for the one I asked for a few years ago ;)

I guess I distinguish between "name which is so unfamiliar to an English speaker they couldn't even start" and "name which is familiar, but you may choose the wrong pronounciation".

So, all other things being equal, I'd default to CatriOHna, because I was at school with a CatriOHna. I assume that when I met you, I'd say "Hello, CatriOHna", and you'd say "Actually, it's CaTRIona" and it'd all be fine from then on. Meeting this person with (I'm guessing) an African name, I'd have had to say "Hello On... Ong... Oon... Er....?"

I don't have a readily-mispronounceable name, so I don't know how annoying it is to have that sort of one-off mistake on meeting someone. I can see it'd get annoying if people persistently mis-pronounced it!

[feanelwa.livejournal.com]

I did meet somebody at a conference with an African name that had a click in the middle and the chair didn't even bother to try to say her name, even though she was up third and the chair would only have had to remember two words for about half an hour. The chair instead said "Next we have...I'm not even going to try to say that...with [title]" which I thought was a little bit rude. I mean, she was sitting right there as we were waiting for the session to start (I was up just before her) and there was plenty of time to ask.

[exspelunca.livejournal.com]

You and I do have a regularly mispronounced surname - think of how Skip used to say it - and it sets my teeth on edge, like having my maiden name pronounced with stress on the second syllable instead of equally on both.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think I've been lucky enough to escape that - it was regularly mispronounced by Skip, but I don't think I've had anyone else say that. It was all just part of his, er, charm. (And part of his complete reluctance to realise he was wrong about anything, despite evidence ;)