NO. 17
Saying It Right
Caveat: This essay might work better, especially if you disagree with me, if you go in knowing that I can comfortably speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese (the Brazilian version). Also, I am mostly writing about English-speaking Americans.
* * *
I.
One afternoon on a sweaty bus ride home from elementary school, a dark-haired girl who I think was named Chloe said, “Carter, you’ve got to hear my friend Chris teach you how to pronounce dulce de leche.”
The Chris in question turned from the seat next to us and said, “everyone here says dulsay-day-lechay, but it’s really dulce de leche.”
In fairness, it sounded pretty damn cool.
You might reasonably imagine that this tendency goes away: that as people grow up and become adults they learn about the nuances of language and communication, about accents, about how it’s not super cool to ‘well actually’ people about the way they are speaking. They do not.
For example...
In recent years, I’ve met a number of non-Spanish-speaking Americans who pronounce Chile, the country, in the “authentic way”. I’ve heard people correct English-speaking pronunciation about foods, city names, human names, and more. Just recently I saw a trailer for a new HBO show, Conan O’Brien Must Go, in which Conan gets told that it’s not ‘tango’ with an ‘a’ like in ‘aphids’ it’s tango with an ‘a’ like in ‘mall’.
(That was surprisingly hard to write.)
I’m interested in exploring two things: first, why the idea I described above makes genuinely no sense. Second, and more interesting to me, is why do people do this in the first place? Third, I want to cover a few notable exceptions and extrapolations of the ideas here.
None of this really matters. It’s a silly essay. But I feel strongly about it, and I’ve thought about it enough to consider this worth publishing.
II.
To be clear: the argument we’re debunking is that words should always be pronounced the way they are pronounced in their language of origin.
When someone tells you that Chile “isn’t pronounced Chill-ee, it’s Chee-lay”, they are espousing the argument above.
This idea becomes silly at an alarming rate if we follow it to its natural conclusion. Imagine Americans, having a conversation in English, pronouncing the words Mexico, Brasil, or Paris in the way that Spanish, Portuguese, and French speakers would pronounce those things.
But why, exactly, is it so silly to imagine an English-speaking American saying “Me-hi-co” when talking about Mexico?
Because lots of the sounds a Spanish speaker uses to say the word Mexico don’t exist in everyday English, and the ones that do exist in English mostly aren’t assigned to the same letters and letter combinations as they are in Spanish.
There is a way to say Mexico in English, and it is not “Me-hi-co”. It’s Mexico. I don’t even have to spell out the pronunciation for you—because the English language (and its sounds) provides a very obvious way to read and say this. In English.
What is weird, though, is to make a half-baked attempt at porting over a bunch of unfamiliar sounds for the sole purpose of saying a single word, and then reverting back to normal.
Another weird thing, and this is more of a footnote than anything, is that most of the time when people attempt to pronounce things “correctly”, or correct your pronunciation, they are still—by their own standards—saying it wrong. An English speaker saying Chile the ‘correct’ way is usually changing one vowel sound, maybe two at most, but are still worlds away from how a Chilean would say the word.
III.
Why do people do this?
The most empathetic interpretation—and probably the true one for a plurality or majority of people—is that people are scared. Americans in particular are often told that they’re culturally-unaware, that they don’t get the rest of the world, that they themselves lack culture.
And when you tell someone this, the cost of getting a pronunciation ‘wrong’ is a lot higher. It plays into all the steretoypes people might have about you. Even disregarding the stereotypes, getting a pronunciation wrong at minimum feels embarrassing—like you’re part of the out-group.
There’s another theme here too, though, which is that a lot of people want to feel special, and being special in a culturally-aware way is a particularly attractive way to be special. There’s some amount satisfaction to correcting a bunch of people about their pronunciation: not only does it make you look smart, it makes you look like a real global citizen—someone who’s been around the block.
These reasons are not good ones. There is a good reason, though, which is my main exception to this entire essay.
III.
Not everyone who pronounces things the “correct” way (while speaking in another language) is doing it for the reasons above—some of them are doing it because that’s how they originally learned to say the word, and it’s more comfortable for them to say it that way.
If you grew up in Mexico and learned English as a second-language, it’s natural you will say Mexican words the way you learned them.
Or take a more basic example: I briefly lived in Buenos Aires. I had never (in my recollection) actually said that city name out loud in my entire life, before arriving. I learned how to say it in the way that people there say it. Now, in English, I say it that way because that’s how I learned it—it would be forced and awkward to say it another way.
The bottom line here is really that you should say things the way you are most comfortable saying them—the way that doesn’t require any additional learning or practice.
That’s all folks.
P.S.
There are a few more things I want to say, before I wrap this up:
1. Yes, this applies to names, and for the exact same reasons I wrote about above. You should not expect people to pronounce your name correctly in a language they do not know, using sounds they do not know. The correct pronunciation of your name changes based on what language you are speaking in and the person you are speaking to.
2. This also applies to accents. Often you’ll hear stories (possibly made up) about stereotypically-rude French people refusing to engage with French-speaking Americans who have an accent. These hypothetical French people are wrong. As long as a person’s accent does not noticeably reduce listening comprehension of their target audience in their target language, there is no reason to say there is something ‘wrong’ with their accent. However, if an American wants to speak French in France and people genuinely cannot understand what the American is saying because of their accent, then yes, it is on the American to fix that.
Caveat: This essay might work better, especially if you disagree with me, if you go in knowing that I can comfortably speak English, Spanish, and Portuguese (the Brazilian version). Also, I am mostly writing about English-speaking Americans.
* * *
I.
One afternoon on a sweaty bus ride home from elementary school, a dark-haired girl who I think was named Chloe said, “Carter, you’ve got to hear my friend Chris teach you how to pronounce dulce de leche.”
The Chris in question turned from the seat next to us and said, “everyone here says dulsay-day-lechay, but it’s really dulce de leche.”
In fairness, it sounded pretty damn cool.
You might reasonably imagine that this tendency goes away: that as people grow up and become adults they learn about the nuances of language and communication, about accents, about how it’s not super cool to ‘well actually’ people about the way they are speaking. They do not.
For example...
In recent years, I’ve met a number of non-Spanish-speaking Americans who pronounce Chile, the country, in the “authentic way”. I’ve heard people correct English-speaking pronunciation about foods, city names, human names, and more. Just recently I saw a trailer for a new HBO show, Conan O’Brien Must Go, in which Conan gets told that it’s not ‘tango’ with an ‘a’ like in ‘aphids’ it’s tango with an ‘a’ like in ‘mall’.
(That was surprisingly hard to write.)
I’m interested in exploring two things: first, why the idea I described above makes genuinely no sense. Second, and more interesting to me, is why do people do this in the first place? Third, I want to cover a few notable exceptions and extrapolations of the ideas here.
None of this really matters. It’s a silly essay. But I feel strongly about it, and I’ve thought about it enough to consider this worth publishing.
II.
To be clear: the argument we’re debunking is that words should always be pronounced the way they are pronounced in their language of origin.
When someone tells you that Chile “isn’t pronounced Chill-ee, it’s Chee-lay”, they are espousing the argument above.
This idea becomes silly at an alarming rate if we follow it to its natural conclusion. Imagine Americans, having a conversation in English, pronouncing the words Mexico, Brasil, or Paris in the way that Spanish, Portuguese, and French speakers would pronounce those things.
But why, exactly, is it so silly to imagine an English-speaking American saying “Me-hi-co” when talking about Mexico?
Because lots of the sounds a Spanish speaker uses to say the word Mexico don’t exist in everyday English, and the ones that do exist in English mostly aren’t assigned to the same letters and letter combinations as they are in Spanish.
There is a way to say Mexico in English, and it is not “Me-hi-co”. It’s Mexico. I don’t even have to spell out the pronunciation for you—because the English language (and its sounds) provides a very obvious way to read and say this. In English.
What is weird, though, is to make a half-baked attempt at porting over a bunch of unfamiliar sounds for the sole purpose of saying a single word, and then reverting back to normal.
Another weird thing, and this is more of a footnote than anything, is that most of the time when people attempt to pronounce things “correctly”, or correct your pronunciation, they are still—by their own standards—saying it wrong. An English speaker saying Chile the ‘correct’ way is usually changing one vowel sound, maybe two at most, but are still worlds away from how a Chilean would say the word.
III.
Why do people do this?
The most empathetic interpretation—and probably the true one for a plurality or majority of people—is that people are scared. Americans in particular are often told that they’re culturally-unaware, that they don’t get the rest of the world, that they themselves lack culture.
And when you tell someone this, the cost of getting a pronunciation ‘wrong’ is a lot higher. It plays into all the steretoypes people might have about you. Even disregarding the stereotypes, getting a pronunciation wrong at minimum feels embarrassing—like you’re part of the out-group.
There’s another theme here too, though, which is that a lot of people want to feel special, and being special in a culturally-aware way is a particularly attractive way to be special. There’s some amount satisfaction to correcting a bunch of people about their pronunciation: not only does it make you look smart, it makes you look like a real global citizen—someone who’s been around the block.
These reasons are not good ones. There is a good reason, though, which is my main exception to this entire essay.
III.
Not everyone who pronounces things the “correct” way (while speaking in another language) is doing it for the reasons above—some of them are doing it because that’s how they originally learned to say the word, and it’s more comfortable for them to say it that way.
If you grew up in Mexico and learned English as a second-language, it’s natural you will say Mexican words the way you learned them.
Or take a more basic example: I briefly lived in Buenos Aires. I had never (in my recollection) actually said that city name out loud in my entire life, before arriving. I learned how to say it in the way that people there say it. Now, in English, I say it that way because that’s how I learned it—it would be forced and awkward to say it another way.
The bottom line here is really that you should say things the way you are most comfortable saying them—the way that doesn’t require any additional learning or practice.
That’s all folks.
P.S.
There are a few more things I want to say, before I wrap this up:
1. Yes, this applies to names, and for the exact same reasons I wrote about above. You should not expect people to pronounce your name correctly in a language they do not know, using sounds they do not know. The correct pronunciation of your name changes based on what language you are speaking in and the person you are speaking to.
2. This also applies to accents. Often you’ll hear stories (possibly made up) about stereotypically-rude French people refusing to engage with French-speaking Americans who have an accent. These hypothetical French people are wrong. As long as a person’s accent does not noticeably reduce listening comprehension of their target audience in their target language, there is no reason to say there is something ‘wrong’ with their accent. However, if an American wants to speak French in France and people genuinely cannot understand what the American is saying because of their accent, then yes, it is on the American to fix that.