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

[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.