Hi, Robert. I think a lot of it has to do with whether we feel such mispronunciations have marked people out as belonging to a different sociocultural ‘group’ from us, whether in our language culture we have defined a ‘right’ (and educated) way to say a foreign term, and a ‘wrong’ (uneducated) way.
And yet with merlot, say, the ‘right’ way in English, ‘mur-loh’, isn’t really ‘right’ at all, as with ‘champagne’. One vowel sound is completely off, the other a vague approximation, the ‘r’ is wrong… All we do is indicate ‘I know it’s a silent ‘t’', therefore I’m not a pleb.’
I think we all show unhelpful double standards with the issue of foreign words, and those of us who studied languages are probably the worst, and have the most self-teaching and tongue-biting to do!
Every time I do a culinary translation (as I am doing right now) I have to play this guessing game with my speech recognition software as to how I think it expects me to mispronounce paella and other untranslatable terms (gazpacho, sofrito, etc.). It’s set to British English, but was programmed in the US, so it has a mid-Atlantic mishmash way of butchering Spanish.
I aim to think of a received pronunciation Brit trying to imitate a Yank pronouncing frijoles as ‘free-HOLE-aize’.
It’s quicker just to use a random placeholder word and correct later, of course, but it’s so satisfying when I manage to con it into understanding me through a pronunciation double bluff.
Ha, Matthew against the Machines. Apparently my accent in Spanish is either "encantador" or "atroz" depending on who is doing the listening. No middle ground! Obviously the people who think I have a cute accent are lovely and the others need to learn some manners. But speech recognition often doesn't understand me in English. Can't win.
I wince when I hear a native English speaker prononce the T in merlot but apparently I'm fine when the Spanish or Italians do it.
Is that double standards or what?
Hi, Robert. I think a lot of it has to do with whether we feel such mispronunciations have marked people out as belonging to a different sociocultural ‘group’ from us, whether in our language culture we have defined a ‘right’ (and educated) way to say a foreign term, and a ‘wrong’ (uneducated) way.
And yet with merlot, say, the ‘right’ way in English, ‘mur-loh’, isn’t really ‘right’ at all, as with ‘champagne’. One vowel sound is completely off, the other a vague approximation, the ‘r’ is wrong… All we do is indicate ‘I know it’s a silent ‘t’', therefore I’m not a pleb.’
I think we all show unhelpful double standards with the issue of foreign words, and those of us who studied languages are probably the worst, and have the most self-teaching and tongue-biting to do!
I can't bear hearing Sevilla pronounced Seville. And don't even get me started on paella.
Every time I do a culinary translation (as I am doing right now) I have to play this guessing game with my speech recognition software as to how I think it expects me to mispronounce paella and other untranslatable terms (gazpacho, sofrito, etc.). It’s set to British English, but was programmed in the US, so it has a mid-Atlantic mishmash way of butchering Spanish.
I aim to think of a received pronunciation Brit trying to imitate a Yank pronouncing frijoles as ‘free-HOLE-aize’.
It’s quicker just to use a random placeholder word and correct later, of course, but it’s so satisfying when I manage to con it into understanding me through a pronunciation double bluff.
Ha, Matthew against the Machines. Apparently my accent in Spanish is either "encantador" or "atroz" depending on who is doing the listening. No middle ground! Obviously the people who think I have a cute accent are lovely and the others need to learn some manners. But speech recognition often doesn't understand me in English. Can't win.