Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

> [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On Behalf Of Mark J. Reed
> On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 8:28 AM, Lars Finsen
> <lars.finsen@...> wrote:
> > At least, what's wrong with trying to imitate a reasonably correct
> > pronunciation of Milano and Torino for example?
>
> Well, that's a case where the names are older than the language
> currently spoken there.  Milan and Turin come down to us from Latin,
> having been established in English before there was such a thing as
> "Italian".  It is, as you say, "just" tradition, but tradition is a
> powerful force, not easily diverted.
Yes, in a lot of cases, it's just a matter of how and when the name entered into
English. Maybe periodic adjustments needed to be made, but we should have done
that with the orthography too.



> > If a Hispanic TV presenter
> > actually is bilingual, I think it must feel the most
> natural for him to
> > pronounce his name the way it was given to him, and if he
> does it for any
> > conscious reason at all, it's for a matter of ethnic pride,
> not to raise
> > laughs, for sure.
>
> If they were raised in a bilingual environment, they probably feel
> equally natural with both pronunciations of their name and
> automatically use the appropriate one in context; in that case,
> failing to do so is a conscious affectation.  If they acquired English
> later in life than that, that's different.
You're right. They speak perfectly clear English, with the very obvious exception of
the names. Acquiring English later in life would generally leave them with an
accent that would usually make them unemployable as news anchors.


> > But it is noticeable that Britons tend to do better with European
> > names than Americans do, and the other way around with
> Asian names for
> > example.
>
> Proximity would seem to explain the former.  I don't know what's up
> with the latter.
I'm not even sure that's true. I've heard both sides butcher pronunciations of all
types. How many different ways are there to pronounce the name "Nguyen?"

> ... ...
> > So it's just the attitude, then?
>
> I wouldn't say attitude - not more than that, at this point, because
> you can acquire the tendencies just by growing up here, even if you
> don't inherit the attitude along with them.   It's a feature of the
> culture.
>
> But even disregarding that, I don't think the sound set of English is
> the problem so much as the lack of exposure to sounds outside that
> set.  Europeans hear a lot more languages than we do in everyday life,
> I'd wager.  Without such exposure at a young age, you lose the ability
> to hear and make distinctions that aren't in your L1, and the end
> result is that no matter how open-minded and sincerely interested in
> learning you are, you may not be able to sound much better than Peggy
> Hill's Spanish (PH is a character on "King of the Hill", who speaks
> fluent Spanish, but with a terrible Texas accent.  [bweInoUs 'dij@s]!
> [k_hoUmoU Es'ta ustejEd]?)
Again, true. Europeans are more likely to be multilingual, and generally have more
opportunities to use their second or third languages. We can travel from one
coast to the other using nothing but our native English.