Re: CHAT: Pronunciation (Re: Whiteness?)

CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
> Normally instead of correcting people,
>I simply repeat the phrase or word in question in the next statement I
>make somewhere,
>so as to let them know, hopefully somewhat subtly.
This is what I usually do. I wait for a chance to say the word as it
should be said, instead of saying "no, it should be said this way...".

>  I find it obnoxious that people
>sometimes take this to be pretension:  I see it as honoring and
>respecting people who
>speak a different language than I do by showing interest in them in this
>way, not as
>being somehow "correct" in my pronunciation, since there is no objective
>meaning
>to that word anyways. And when I hear someone else trying, but failing,
>to pronounce
>the name or phrase according to the normal foreign usage, I still feel
>they have done
>the right thing.

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.

_____________________________________

"Courtesy is the KY Jelly of social intercourse"