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Re: CHAT: Pronunciation (Re: Whiteness?)

From:Barry Garcia <barry_garcia@...>
Date:Thursday, September 7, 2000, 8:28
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"