(no subject)

[bluegenedream.livejournal.com]

I have a last name pronunciation question. I have an awful tendency to pronounce any French name I see with a French accent. (I used to confuse some people so badly when I said 'New Orleans') How would you pronounce Foucault or Feucault (the person has awful handwriting) correctly in English?
Would you pronounce it the French way? Fu-Ko (Foucault). Or Feu-Ko (Feucault). I don't even really know how to correctly write out the French pronunciation for "feu" in English but yeah... Any help?

And another more, what do you think, type of question.

Does a name own a person or does a person own a name?


Ok, that wasn't terribly eloquent so I'll try to elaborate.

Of course a person isn't always defined by their name but I was wondering how much you guys let your impression of a name affect your impression of a person. Like, you know, when you hear things like "She just doesn't look like a Jennifer, she looks like an Evelyn instead." Does it take a while for your preconceptions of a name to settle with a person? Are there some names that you feel need a certain personality or flair for someone to "own" it properly?

And then of course, on the other spectrum is a person who owns a name so completely that you can't ever think of it without that person. Like...for me it'd probably be...Ariel. I always think of The Little Mermaid. No questions asked. And when I finally met an Ariel, who was not little mermaid-like in any way, (he was actually a boy) I couldn't stop imagining him with flowing red hair and a tail. What are some names that are already so owned by a person you can never shake off the connotations?

Basically, I thought it'd be interesting to hear some of your thoughts. What sort of names etc...etc

Comments

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

I've never understood why anglophone people (generally) pronounce foreign names in such an English way. Why? I'm not talking about an English accent...I probably have an accent when I speak English as well (I'm Dutch). I'm talking about messing up a -for example- French name entirely, pronouncing it as if it were English. It just doesn't make sense. That said...Foucault should be pronounced Foo-KO.

And I love the name Ariel! Haha. It always reminded me of the little mermaid as well, until I started watching the show 'Medium' and there's this beautiful little girl called Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva). Now it reminds me of her.

I think people own a name more than the other way around...I used to hate the name Amanda until I met 2 nice Amanda's, for example.

[aquilinum.livejournal.com]

I've never understood why anglophone people (generally) pronounce foreign names in such an English way.

Because most English speakers don't have to learn French. Americans, for example, are FAAAAAAR more likely to learn Spanish. Remember that people living on the European continental landmass are, by necessity, going to come in contact with each other by staggeringly higher rates than somebody living in, say, Kansas, who could travel for literally thousands of miles before arriving in an area that didn't speak exclusively English.

Britons live on an island, of course, which also has obvious language segregation results.

Finally, remember that English has in many ways become the pop culture language of Western civilization. The internet, movies, songs — all are certainly available in whatever local languages apply, but English speakers will encounter non-English media exponentially less than those of other European or Latin American areas will encounter English media.

Americans and Britons have a reputation (more often stereotype, really) for being unable to think outside the English box. It's somewhat deserved, but I refuse to accept that they should be vilified for this somewhat obvious result of the way language and culture has spread across the globe.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry if I came across as vilifying anglophone people, I didn't mean to.

Your arguments make a lot of sense. Of course Americans are less likely than Europeans to encounter other languages/cultures. Still -this might also be stereotypical- it sometimes seems to me as if English speaking people just don't care that they pronounce things incredibly wrong. I'm really not saying that everything should always be pronounced correctly - I screw up English words or names sometimes as well.

One of the replies to this post was from someone who said only pretentious people care about pronouncing a French name (in this case Foucault) in the right way (I replied to that). I guess that's what I was getting at when I posted my comment...I sometimes feel that some Anglophone people don't care if they pronounce it rightly or not.
I realize now that's in large a pretty stereotypical image, so thanks for making me see that.

[krosp.livejournal.com]

I have noticed amongst some people I know, they just freak out and can't cope when faced with a word that is spelled in foreign way, and inevitably pronounce it in a really terrible way, whether they try to get it right or not. I don't have that problem as much, and I think it's because I learned other languages since I was a child. What I have learned when I studied linguistics and psychology, was that there is a critical age of language development (one for learning any language at all, and then a later one for learning second languages). If you don't learn any other languages before that age, then your brain develops in such a way that you can actually not hear sounds that don't exist in your own language. So even if people say "no, say it like this..." they'll really struggle and not be able to do it, and they'd take a really long time to be able to master a new set of sounds from a foreign language. Plus, some people are just naturally better with sounds and language than others, which would be a factor in this. It may be like how some people have a really good ear for music and others just don't. So, I think that when people aren't exposed to other languages from a young age, they may completely lose the ability to hear how it "should" sound in the other language (without heaps and heaps of exposure and teaching). So, to cut a long story short, I agree with aquilinum on why English speakers can't pronounce other languages correctly :p

As I said before, I learned other languages from a young age and find this somewhat easier than other people I know. But my husband is Chinese, and I was only exposed to a lot of Chinese in the last 5 years or so. Interestingly, although I am not too bad at producing the actual sounds (phonemes) that exist in Chinese but not English, I absolutely CANNOT hear or produce the correct tones. I was not exposed to any tonal languages when I was young, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to do it without a really long time of total immersion in China or something.

[0o-faerie.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. I believe someone told me something similar before (I believe it was about Chinese people being unable to pronounce the 'r' correctly...in Dutch, at least, I'm not sure about the English 'r'). I had completely forgotten about that. Thanks!