Re: CHAT: Pronunciation (Re: Whiteness?)

Yoon Ha Lee wrote:

> On Thu, 7 Sep 2000, Barry Garcia wrote:
>
> > My mother thinks i'm being pretentious whenever I repeat a word that she
> > should know how to say correctly. I am not rude about it, i just repeat
> > the word after she says it if she mispronounces it (she constantly
> > mispronounces sushi as /SuSi/, and i KNOW she can say /suSi/ because i've
> > heard her say it right many times). Now, don't get me wrong, I have a LOT
> > of patience for people's pronunciation of words (in a regular conversation
> > I try not to correct them, unless the word theyre saying is pronounced so
> > far off of the mark i can't understand them at all). But, i do give people
> > a chance. My mother, while she doesnt say Spanish words correctly most of
> > the time (i'm not talking of the ones that have been absorbed into English
> > like Barrio or Rodeo), does try and I give her props for that.
>
> <rueful look>  You should've seen my IB 20th Century history class.  We
> had *three* Germans, and when we got to the WWII section, well, they
> were vastly amused.
FWIW, without trying to make a generalization, this is my experience of a
lot of Germans, that kind of intellectual elitism.  When members of the
Bundeswehr (the German army) were visiting UT recently on an exchange
program, they took pains to point out that I was the only one who had
bothered to pronounce the word like the Germans do -- roughly,
[bUnd@svE:@].  I thought I was only trying to be respectful.

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Tom Wier   |     "Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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