Re: Butchered Foreign Names

On Tue, 5 Sep 2000, Steg Belsky wrote:

> On Tue, 5 Sep 2000 09:23:54 -0400 Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...> writes:
> > ObConLang: Do y'all deal with butchered foreigners' names in your
> > conlangs?  :-)  By some strange coincidence, my name is entirely
> > pronounceable in Chevraqis.  My boyfriend's name is a nightmare (but
> > then, his last name is Betzwieser, which is a nightmare in Korean,
> > too).
>
> Rokbeigalmki generally picks the closest phoneme to the strange foreign
> one and uses that.  Since it has a large phonemic inventory that isn't
> always necessary, though.
Makes sense.  Chevraqis-speakers would probably truncate or abbreviate
the name if it got much past 4 syllables, though.  Let's see how I'd
render Betzwieser:

Betusuviser -> Betusu

Said boyfriend's mom is an earth science teacher and her students call
her "Mrs. B," so I figure there's precedent.

In Korean Betzwieser might be mutilated into Baessubiseoru, assuming a
Korean would even bother.  Likewise, France becomes Buranso, Germany
becomes Doichi...and the U.S., for a reason I can't remember, is Miguk.
('Course, Hanguk is Korea in English, but I know that one comes from the
Koryo dynasty.)

Mutilated names become important and even humorous when you're figuring
out what your conlang's speakers call the speakers of other conlangs.
:-)  (Including insults, I suppose.  An expression I remember from French
class is "parler français comme une vache espagnole," to speak French
like a Spanish cow, and I remember wondering if Spanish had an analogous
expression about the French.  Anyone know?)

YHL