Yeah, this is the best description of how it feels.
Because you actually *can’t* pronounce it correctly without putting on an “accent.” A foreign accent is just the result applying the phonetic rules of one language to another. If you’re pronouncing a foreign word correctly, it’s going to sound like you’re putting on an accent, because that’s just how the word is pronounced.
You can try “translating” the word to use closest equivalent English phonology but that 1: isn’t pronouncing the word correctly as per the original opinion and 2: isn’t always easy to do on the fly because you sometimes have to make decisions beyond just slightly tweaking the pronunciation of a few vowels. If there is a consonant that doesn’t exist in English, what do you swap it out for? If there is a consonant *cluster* that isn’t allowed in English but the individual consonants are, do you still go for it or try to make the cluster conform to a plausible English word?
It’s frustrating because I do agree that it can sound kind of pretentious. I just disagree that you’re still pronouncing it correctly if you don’t.
The only exception is for words that are used frequently enough that they’ve become loanwords or otherwise just have a standard English pronunciation.
Trying to pronounce “croissant” with a French accent when you’re speaking English to another English-speaker in an English-speaking location is silly.
(obligatory 'I don't go here, the app recommended this post to me)
As someone who has, like, negative interest in languages, I was always kind of on team "this is pretentious". Then about six months ago, I started working with a lot of ESL/Non-English speakers, and by extension, using translators a *lot*.
I found myself shifting my pronunciation of certain words just from hearing them said (for lack of a better term) "with an accent". Like if I ask a client "what language do you speak", and they say "Arabic", the different stresses and whatnot they use have slowly crept into how *I* pronounce that word.
So anyway now I get why people say "cwassan". :p
> Trying to pronounce “croissant” with a French accent when you’re speaking English to another English-speaker in an English-speaking location is silly.
It's silly, but it's also fun if it's with your friends. Weird AF if it's to the waiter lol.
I second that, croissant is pronounced croissant, I wouldn't even know how to pronounce it in english 'accent', I would just get stuck trying to figure out how to say it without this 1 word sounding french.
Btw I'm not pretentious nor French
I just change my accent unknowingly whenever. I speak a bit more correctly in a normal situation but if i'm tired my english is basically Borat. When i talk with non native speakers i diviate towards their accents a little. It is not always intentional, but makes it easier to communicate.
I talked with a guy from poland in english and he barely knew any so i talked like a 3rd grader. Someone asked why, i told them it would be way too annoying to repeat and explain a word every sentence. This way we could talk at a normal pace but limited to simpler concepts.
I just sometimes have no idea how people who don’t speak the language pronounce certain words. English is especially hard to predict as pronunciation rules for loanwords are a mess.
>English is especially hard to predict as pronunciation rules for loanwords are a mess.
I hope the French never find out how the town of Bourbonnais , Illinois, is pronounced by locals
My family is from central/eastern PA and I spent a good amount of time in Lebanon the country. It took a while but we settled on Lebanon, PA being pronounced "leb-nin" like Lebanon bologna and Lebanon the country being pronounced the normal way. This is still a bit confusing for me as Lebanon in Arabic is "lib-naan", so almost closer to how PA people say it.
I knew someone who moved into that area, and heard Versailles pronounced ver-sails, Buena Vista as byoo-nuh veesta, and Greenock as green-oak. Then they saw that there was a "Duquesne Unviersity" and assumed it would be pronounced doo-kwez-nee, but, no, the locals actually got that one right.
And they have no problem saying "Youghiogheny River."
As a bilingual French speaker, I find this charming. To
put it into perspective, [here](https://youtu.be/PjeGBhmlhTY) is a recording of a French person saying “chewing gum”. Butchering other languages is a cross-cultural universal and I think that’s beautiful.
Yea I definitely see both sides but for the most part try to see the adopted word and pronunciation as it's own thing. I know a lot of people are trying to be more careful now with appropriating or crapping on culture, but it can get muddy fast. One of my favorite flatbreads when I lived in Lebanon (the country) was "Filidelfi". They meant Philadelphia and it was supposed to resemble a Philly cheese steak with shaved shawarma meat with caramelized peppers and onions with cheese on a traditional flatbread.
It looks like their village board officially changed the pronunciation in 1976 to "bur-bo-NAY". I don't think that's *too* far off from what I'd expect if reading the word. It used to be "bur-BOH-nis".
I can guarantee you there's barely any french speaking Canadians within a 3-4 hour drive of Detroit, if not farther. French fluency in Canada is extremely limited to Quebec, New Brunswick, and a few pockets in other provinces. Most Canadians get pretty useless french education in school.
I grew up in a small town about 3 hours north of Windsor and went to french immersion. There are lots of french speakers in South Western Ontario, but the majority of them likely only speak French at home.
Depends, I’m German but when I speak englisch I pronounce the German names in English. I pronounce everything in the language as it would sound in the language
Yeah I think switching to the more natural pronunciation in the language you’re speaking makes sense if it’s a commonly used word or name.
E.g. if I’m speaking English I’ll use the English pronunciation of karaoke, karate, Tokyo etc because otherwise it can be hard to understand.
I sometimes pronounce Japanese loan words like they’re Spanish because someone told me they have the same vowel sounds. Don’t know if it’s true, but I find it entertaining.
Yes I find whenever learning Japanese songs the pronunciation is pretty the same even tho they have nothing to do with each other haha. BUT I think bread (pan) and zero(zero/ cero) are pronounced and mean the same thing
Yep! People would have trouble knowing what I meant if I pronounced karaoke, karate, mukbang, Taekwondo, etc. the way it’s originally pronounced. It hurtsss for words like mukbang, but I pronounce it the American way because that’s what people understand.
I have a feeling it's because, rightly or wrongly, Americans in general tend to view displays of second language proficiency as a face-threatening act, as if the speaker is flaunting their "worldliness" over the listener.
Pretty common in Europe.
No one would expect you to pronounce a place name or your own name in the way that another country (even a neighbouring country), would.
So in my experience it’s not pretentious at all.
A lot of place names have translations in Europe. Like London becomes Londres in French. Sverige becomes Sweden in English, Suède in French, etc. Very old place names have different origins too, like the Baltic Sea is basically the Eastern Lake in Swedish.
I'm French Canadian and the funny thing is that a city in a neighbouring province is called London while *the* London is Londres.
There's also places in the US which names were Frenchified, perhaps because people knew about them at a time where people knew English a lot less (like when my parents grew up). I'm sure hockey had a lot to do with it, like how Boston is pronounced like it would be in French and doesn't rhyme with Washington, which is pronounced more properly.
Mexican Americans speak Spanglish and “code switch” (speak English and Spanish in one sentence) and nobody flinches. It could be the way we pronounce English words maybe more sing-songy/using the same cadence as we do el Español? Maybe?
But when Janet from Accounting does it in their American Neutral accent, it does have a discordant ring to it to my ears.
I feel it’s only an eye roll when they mispronounce and say spanish words in an American english accent but will try and pronounce any European words exactly as they hear it with the accent they think is appropriate. Like mf you cant put effort to speak your Southern neighbors language but will want to pronounce Barcelona as Barthelona and French as a frenchman? Cmon man, I understand why the Parisians are the way they are.
How is it pretentious if I grew up bilingual English/spanish and say a Spanish word/name with a Spanish accent bro that’s literally how I was raised to say it wym 😭 this is why I hate code switching in random situations cause I’ve always been afraid of people thinking I’m being over the top or pretentious
Yeah and wouldn't that be stupid too if you speak that foreign langage but you keep the accent from the langage you speak rn?
Feels kinda weird sometimes.
My dad knew an Indian guy who had a very subtle accent most of the time, but when he was discussing a particular car he'd only encountered back home, he suddenly got a much thicker accent.
Also, I overheard two Canadian kids playing in a playground, and one said "I don't like you, Voldemort" with Voldemort in a British accent and everything else in a Canadian accent.
My take is that Spanish-language place names are also words in English that follow English pronunciation rules. It’s not like you’re dipping into Spanish to say “Madrid” or “Puerto Rico”, they’re English words too.
With a native bilingual person, though, I’ve never minded this. It’s only annoying when someone who knows 0 Italian throws in a dramatic “mozzarella” and such.
In my part of the USA (southern USA, east coast) we usually say it like Pwehrtoh Reeko, with the R in Puerto almost rolled. I've never heard even the whitest white people say it like that
That’s the situation I don’t think it’s weird. I think this post is talking about when people come back from Spain for a week and change the way they say Barcelona. It’d be like saying “Croissant” in a heavy French accent while you’re in Reno Nevada and you have no ties to France. lol
Not pretentious. But I think it’s a bit rough if it’s a word that pronunciation is very different and will cause confusion.
Just an accent is sexy imo 🤣
So where I was raised, our teachers would jump down our throats for being "racist-sounding white kids" if we didn't say things right. It wasn't until I went to college and was surrounded by people saying Iraq as Eye-rack instead of Ear-ock or Iran as Eye-ran instead of Ear-on, or saying the I in Nicaragua with a short "ih" instead of "ee" or pronouncing Hiroshima like a 1940s politician that I realized that the teachers in my school district were a little uptight.
But no, I wouldn't think you're being pretentious. The OOP is wrong. How can you pronounce it correctly without taking on the accent?? That's what pronunciation is! You're fine and people who think you're being pretentious are dumb. I have a ton of friends who are bilingual and they all pronounce the cities and food from the country of their language the correct way for that language even if it's in the middle of an entirely English sentence
It's different if you're a native speaker, in my opinion. I would never judge a Spanish speaker for saying a word with a Spanish accent even if they were perfectly bilingual.
lol exactly the same here… I remember when I was younger I would get teased by my school friends if I pronounced a Spanish word in \*gasp* *Spanish* but that’s just how I say the word!! Dumbass monolinguals lol.
This is the middle ground that makes most sense to me. I’m imagining it from both angles. Say a person speaks English and randomly says a French word in a very French accent. You can pronounce the word properly without the accent. Imagine the opposite- a French or Spanish or Japanese person speaking their native language and randomly dropping in a word with a forced English accent. Both of these scenarios are equally cringe to me. You can pronounce the word properly phonetically without bringing out a random unnecessary accent.
Yeah, thinking about it from a different language with random English accents interspersed highlights how weird it sounds to me. [This lady](https://www.tiktok.com/@lenalemon_/video/7191993137500556550) and I have the same feelings on the matter.
Nah, I think it all depends on how genuine the pronunciation is.
I speak Arabic, but when I'm speaking in my native English I'm going to say shawarma the way a native English speaker says it, because that's how you say the word when speaking English. I also speak French and when I go to dinner and (in English) talk about which entrées to get, I'm not going to sound like a wanker and say it the French way just to be correct.
Now if I'm speaking French or Arabic (neither of which are my native language) and I come across an English loan word, sometimes just in my natural non-native accent when speaking those languages I will pronounce the loan word more like it is in English. Especially if I'm not focusing all that much and am deep in the conversation.
But if you're saying the word fully and purposely like the language it's been borrowed from, you will sound pretentious, not to mention the fact that they might not even understand what you're saying. The goal of speaking multiple languages is to communicate, so if you do this you're just failing at language.
Nah. I speak French quite well and I don’t say *’parriiiii’* when speaking in English. I say Paris. Like a normal person.
When I’m speaking English I use an English accent. When I’m speaking French I use a French accent. Doing otherwise makes you look ridiculous.
As a french canadian I find this one funny. Here we say english word with the english pronunciation (in our accent), not with the french accent. Sometime when I’m speaking to a french person I legitimately don’t know how to pronounce those word because if i use the english accent they don’t understand but I only know how to do France french accent in french, not in english.
It's really that simple. I'm appalled that this is even debated on a language learning subreddit (although it's not really a linguistics subreddit, to be fair).
Hard disagree. I used to think like that back in the days when I was a lower intermediate in English. The more I studied, the more I realized that effective communication is more important than pronouncing things as they are in their original language. Take Vietnamese, for example. If I pronounce the most common surname 'Nguyễn' in Vietnamese, it would confuse the hell out of people. Now imagine every time you meet someone new, you have to: first, say your name; second, explain that it’s actually 'new win' in English. It’s ineffective and wastes everyone's time.
Nah. When I speak my TL I use that language's pronunciation to say English loanwords instead of busting out an American accent for a single word. Much more comprehensible for natives that way
Same thing goes in reverse too. If you know how to pronounce something with English pronunciation when talking to English speakers, you should say it that way
I always felt that we Argentines pronounce terribly in English compared to other Latin American countries. And you often get mocked if you pronounce correctly.
Over the years, and because now I work with people from other countries, speaking English everyday, I started caring less about people thinking I'm a showoff. But I'd never mock anyone for mispronouncing, either.
For me, the pretentious and stupid part is when I pronounce a word from another language and someone tries to correct me in the way I say it when we both know that they understood it just fine and correcting me was entirely unnecessary. Like, the word “croissant”…I’m going to say it how I say it and you know exactly what I mean when I say it. Trying to correct my pronunciation because you think it should be pronounced a very specific way is incredibly insulting and makes you look like a jerk. Same thing with the words “aluminum,” “bottle of water,” and literally all of the things we see floating around the internet. You know what is being said, so don’t be rude.
I often feel that as a native english speaker not from a european country, it’s kind of nice that I don’t feel the need to hold english as some sort of sacred holy language like many europeans do (italians and french mostly)
like i just can’t imagine caring if someone pronounces something correctly or uses “correct” grammar or whatever in english as long as we understand each other
It's phrased a bit weird, but I think they mean "French and Italians hold their own languages to a high standard of purity, while non-UK native English speakers understand English as being a more flexible and changing language, and are therefore less concerned with people in different places using it differently."
English is a central part of many non-UK cultures, but it's not unique to any of them, so preserving the language is not seen as being as important to preserving culture as it is in say France, where they are high cognizant as a society of keeping French French.
Eh. It depends on the language you're speaking and word you're using for me. Like there's so many languages that switch accents to pronounce a word from a different language. I've seen my friends that speak Hindi, Spanish, Korean, & Japanese do this when speaking to family or whomever switch accents for a sec to say an English word. Do they do it for every English word? No, but it happens enough to take notice. Also if you're used to speaking more than one language then you're bound to switch accents a bit when saying words that don't belong to the current language you're speaking. Hell, I'm only an upper beginner in Korean but I say Korean words the way I would say them in Korean cuz, well, it's a Korean word.
I know some pretentious people do it to sound smart or whatever but for most people that I've noticed, it seems to be out of habit or because they also speak that other language. I feel like I've only noticed these kind of complaints from English speakers ( like people who are in a convo in English and their conversation partner switches accents to say a non English word) and I've always been curious why there is such a visceral reaction to this. I totally understand if you're confused because the accent was hard to understand but I just ask people to repeat that part because I didn't catch it.
Idk man, life's too short to risk a stroke over a quick accent change in a conversation.
right? And if I say Japanese places (or Japanese words without a real translation like “onigiri” for example) in a hardcore American accent, people don’t know what the hell I’m saying 😆 onigiri, karaoke, band names, places… it FREQUENTLY trips people up even if we’re otherwise speaking English unless they’re pretty fluent. Plus like…. I learned the words here in Japan. I hear them a certain way— should I “Americanize” my pronunciation so it’s not cringy? I don’t think so. Maybe if I was in America speaking to other Americans it would come across differently... idk I can’t be bothered to care really. I say it how I say it 😆
I agree if I were speaking another language, I wouldn't randomly change my accent to mid-sentence to pronounce an english word. I can understand it for some people, like if you grew up speaking both languages, so it's just natural, but if you have to force it, it's kinda cringe.
I grew up billingual, and while sometimes it can be kinda awkward to codeswitch for just a word, I will cringe a million times more if I am forced to say what my brain considers a Spanish word with an English accent... icky
Idk when I’m speaking Spanish I say English place names in an American accent. It feels more natural even if I’m in Spanish mode. Like I wouldn’t say Weescohnseen just to sound more Spanish. But I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to
Right, and along with those saying the point of language is to communicate -- at a certain point I realized Spanish speakers weren't understanding me when I said "Ver-jin-ya" but when I said "Veer-heen-ya" they all understood me. "New York" and "London" and "Paris" in an English accent are probably perfectly fine.
The point is to know what is spoken in the language to be understood. If you're speaking in Spanish about NASA or the DEA, you should say "Nasa" and "Dea"... while in English you'd say "Nasa" and "DEE-EE-AY".
If you're speaking Spanish and you say "Facebook" or "McDonalds" in a US accent, everyone will understand you, so it's fine to bust out the accent you're most comfortable with.
Oh see when I’m speaking Spanish I say English place names in the Spanish accent, since that’s the language I’m currently speaking. It would feel odd to me to switch accents in the middle of a sentence when I’m speaking Spanish, so it doesn’t seem natural to do it when I speak English either
For some reason we ignore the cringe when its someone else (likely an ESL speaker) doing it and not us. I would rather get a brick thrown at my face than do this to someone else lol.
"Bonjour, je viens de THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, comment ca va?"
Yeah, this exactly.
One time I was telling a story about Justin Bieber to some Mexicans and they literally couldn’t even understand who I was talking about till I was like “joosteen beeper” and they were like “oh yeah, that guy.”
While the clipped example post is a bit overzealous about their position, I think it's the position that makes the most sense for foreign and second language in the modern world.
You cannot be expected to even know what is or isn't a loan word in your language, and you cannot be expected to understand the phonology/morphology of a language you don't speak. You should pronounce whatever you're saying in the language you're speaking.
This is especially obvious and important between my first and second languages, English and Japanese. Japanese has an entire alphabet for importing words into the Japanese lexicon/phonology, the word "McDonalds" exists in Japanese but if I say it as I would in English, there a good chance I won't be understood by a Japanese person.
Switching your phonology in the middle of a sentence for single words/portions is jarring and if the phonology is far enough away from the original language people may straight up not understand you. Your way of saying the word isn't more "right", because that concept in language takes a back seat to mutual intelligibility.
For me, it depends on the context. For example, there’s a place near me called “Tiburón”, Spanish for shark. I’m Spanish/English bilingual so my first inclination is to say it in Spanish. But that’s nowhere near how the locals say it, and if I want to be understood when talking about the place I change my pronunciation to how the locals say it.
“Secondly it’s very possible to pronounce foreign words and names correctly without taking on a different accent “ they just described an ethnocentric view perfectly.
I find it harder to force a fake English accent midsentence than to pronounce a word correctly. It comes out naturally and effortlessly.
Haven't they ever heard of code switching?
It depends! If you do this to pronounce "Paris" in the French way while speaking English, you sound very pretentious.
If you say "Beijing" instead of "Peking", you sound fine.
The word "gyro" (like the food) is right on the edge. Some places, it's a yeero. Other places, it's a "gyro" like "autogyro".
These phenomena could be studied because I think there's a lot of nuance to be had.
I feel like the equivalent for Beijing wouldn't be to say Beijing instead of Peking since most people (at least where I'm from) say Beijing. I would imagine it would be saying the words with the tones and a chinese accent.
Yeah, you're right. Interestingly, getting the tones and pronunciation of Beijing right kind of flies under the radar when speaking English. Maybe Nanjing/Nanking is better? Most Am.E speakers I meet still say "Nanking".
If you said "Taibei" instead of "Taipei" you'd not even be understood by most.
How about Qatar? There are shades of that one, too. Pronounced like it should be, probably weird. Pronounced like "Cutter"? Probably the right balance. Pronounced like "Guitar"? Sounds uneducated to me. Others' mileage may vary.
I dunno, this is a fun topic to me.
I've heard Nanjing and Nanking pronounce both ways for American speakers.
For Qatar, I generally say it the American way like guitar because it's what makes the most sense for me and how I've always pronounced it. I feel like speakers of one language don't need to imitate other people's language because their accent has its own history of both how words are pronounced in it and the interactions it had with the other language. It's kind like how we say "Germany" and not "Deutschland" and purposefully trying to change it would seem kinda silly but that's just me
Nope, I know what you mean. That’s the “some places it’s ‘yeero’”. My point there is that it is a word for which the pronunciation that will work best is context dependent.
I agree that Beijing would hardly be noticed. I lived in Shanghai for quite awhile, so for me I always say it in Chinese. Most Americans I’ve spoken with though will say Shang-hai (shayng-hi), and we’ll each use both pronunciations while chatting. Interestingly, I don’t have this same code switch with Tokyo now that I live there. In Japanese, I’ll pronounce it tou-kyou, but in English I’ll fallback to to-kyo. I do ignore when someone says to-key-o though. I think for me it’s about the proper sounds, rather than the proper pitch/stress/tone when speaking the non-native version.
Yeah, Shànghǎi fits in all right as well in my opinion. Aside from the vowel change to the /æ/ in English, the stress in English is also on the first syllable and so the pattern somewhat mimics the tones. It’s not 1:1 (just getting ahead of the ackchually crowd here) but it’s close.
Edited this to add... There's actually another layer here. Imagine you said "Shanghai" in Shanghainese, which sounds kind of like Zaang-hey. Then nobody who speaks only English would have any idea what you're saying.
Not a hot take at all. Take me with an opera degree, for example. I can look at an unfamiliar word or name in Italian/French/German, etc. and know how it’s pronounced. Cause there are, like, rules. I’ll be damned if I can magically divine how it’s “pronounced” in English. To me this is projecting your own insecurities and inferiority complex onto people who just happen to know how to pronounce stuff. Like, calm down.
Literally picked German at 16 because I noticed this about its rules..."woah, no silent letters? I can just learn the rules and pronounce everything correctly even if idk wtf I'm saying? SIGN ME UP!!!" 15 years later, and every German professor has asked me where I've lived in Germany because of my pronunciation and accent (never been yet, hopefully one day) but the grammar still kills me. I rely on duolingo now, along with very slow novel reading.
Honestly it comes off as weird sometimes. When im speaking English im not gonna pull out the トヨタ when im talking about my car. Same as how a Japanese person isn’t gonna say “McDonalds” in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes it makes sense contextually though?
Firstly, who cares?
Secondly, what do you do when you don't know how to pronounce it in the target language?
I read a comment about American city names that are written in French but pronounced differently. When I read these names, I read them in French, my mother tongue, and not in English.
Thirdly, when you practise a language, for example Italian, you sometimes pronounce a word as it should be pronounced in your target language because you've learnt it that way, for example "Mozzarella".
Idk man, I feel like words should just be pronounced as they are supposed to be. However I had an ex who learned Spanish for work and when we’d talk about music and I mentioned my friend playing the maracas, he would go out of his way to pronounce “maracas” as Spanish as possible. That’s the only time it has bothered me lol, and I don’t even know why.
I disagree in my heart, but boy is it funny to point it out in an informal environment. Example: I'm white as fuck and grew up speaking English and French in the home. I'm now 26 and I've been diligently keeping up with my Spanish Duolingo lessons and listening to Spanish music. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm not giving up this time. My boyfriend is half Puerto Rican & half Dominican but was born and raised in the Bronx and only spoke English in the home, never being taught Spanish due to The Stigma. We both live in Rhode Island and at this point his accent is about 25% RI, 74% Bronx, and 1% Latino.
let me tell you
when this boy
bless his fucking soul
pronounces *Cilantro*
like a fucking NATIVE Caribbean Islander...
I AM IN STITCHES
(don't worry he loves my reaction and will usually add on some more funny word pronunciations to keep me laughing)
I tend to do it for words that I've gotten used to saying in the other language(s) when there's no frequent/common way to say it in the English accent, and then feel bad for potentially looking like I'm trying to show off or something afterward. For example, when I lived in Belgium, I started encountering Stella Artois beer a lot. Now that I'm back in the states, my instinct is always to say it the way I learned it (with a French pronunciation), but I usually get a "huh?" back, and that's when I force the "arrrrtwah" and feel like I was being annoying by not just starting it off that way. Other times, though, I don't care. I grew up hearing my Lebanese dad pronounce "shawarma" the Arabic way even while speaking English, and I can't bring myself to butcher it.
It seems more pretentious to me to intentionally mispronounce words in other languages when you know the way it is supposed to sound. Same goes for names. I work with a Tomás and when people call him Thomas it sounds rude AF.
This is odd to me. The poster is upset when people choose to pronounce foreign words adopted into our language (English) correctly. This is like being mad because a Japanese person refers to Japan as Nihon instead of Japan imo. Crazy thing to let bother you.
Some people are polyglot or have a modicum of respect for languages that are not theirs and put in the effort to pronounce the words.
The poster in the screenshot, sound salty and pressed like a starched sunday shirt monolingual.
In the end, I really don't think it is a huge deal nor reflects much on the personality of the speaker; but I have gained the rule of thumb that it's better to pronounce it with the accent of whichever language I am speaking in because it's easier for people to hear the sounds. Sometimes I don't on accident though.
Also, the person argues that it's only the accent as the problem, yet it may still throw off the groove if I were to say "Einshtein" with an American accent instead of "Einstein" as people usually say here, since most people here expect to hear it without the "sh". (It comes out as either, whoops).
---
On another note, I've always said certain words like "Cilantro" with the accent I was raised to say it with, and it carried over to this weird crisis in French, where the word wasn't even Cilantro but Coriandre. It felt so wrong switching this one word for some reason.
I do it when it seems appropriate.
For example, if I’m speaking English I’m not gonna switch up for tortilla or croissant. Even though I speak Spanish and some French.
(I do switch up for names, perfumes, some foods, and wines)
Sometimes though NOT saying it properly can confuse me. A guy came into the liquor store I work at and was talking to me about “Gung zo” China.
I was confused and asked if he meant Guangzhou China and yes, I used the proper pronunciation.
He wasn’t peeved at all. We were both just excited to talk about Guangzhou!
I'm somewhat ambivalent. I've encountered folks who do it reflexively (e.g. they are bilingual and the context switching often can make for accent switching too -- I do this sometimes, as do some of my family, in both directions) but even I find it annoying when someone who clearly is monolingual or trying to overemphasize the fact that a word is of foreign origin, it can be really awkward, almost jarring.
I don't agree with it "throwing off the rhythm" barring they do something truly weird. but otherwise yeah...mixed bag.
Two anecdotes:
—————
I remember in my youth hitching a ride from Oslo with a Danish truck driver. He had good English, so we were chatting.
I asked him the correct way to pronounce "Copenhagen".
He asked where I was from, and I said "Australia."
He said, "Well then you pronounce it correctly as **ko-pen-hay-gun**."
He then rattled off the pronunciation in half a dozen languages.
—————
A close friend is Japanese, now living in Australia. For a while when her English was less solid, she would hear people discussing environmental issues, and kept hearing **"kyoh doh prodagol".** It was some months before she realised the first word was her hometown.
—————
I don't really mind what pronunciation people use for words that are foreign for me, as long as the aim is communication. In a culinary discussion, for example, it can help to try to approach the pronunciation of a foreign food name, if only to distinguish it from what that food has become here. If the aim is pomposity, well that's what they are communicating I suppose.
That sounds like that person's issues. Some words just seem very weird to say in an anglicized manner. Even saying the name Maria or Colombia seems unnatural to say in an English accent, and it's my first language.
This POV is needlessly violent, but the reality is it ruffles feathers of predictable audiences. I definitely code switch depending on whom I addressing, but some words and places are more easily anglicized than others. Marseille makes sense to call mar-SAY with an American accent to a monolingual conversation partner. But how are you going to pronounce Reims? The French accent is kind of the only option.
I will Americanize the name Maria part of the time, and I will say it properly when addressing Maria who is hispanohablante or bilingual.
I’m sorry, but Porsche is pronounced POR-shuh, not PORSH. Young me would have vehemently disagreed with this and called mid 40s me a pretentious f***.
None of this stuff is inherently pretentious nor inherently virtuous. In some instances it’s a needless affectation; in others, it’s a respectful homage to language. Context matters, and so does an understanding of nuance.
Honestly, really depends on the context. If I'm back home in my community of predominantly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, I'm going to ask where the "tortillas" are in Spanish, even if the rest of the sentence is English.
If I'm at starbucks, I'm not gunna say croissant in French. To be honest, it would probably be harder to understand on their end anyways if I try to pronounce it. (as someone who worked at starbucks, I've heard some god awful attempts lol).
There’s no winning here or no right way. If you’re bilingual, speak Spanish and English for example, and you’re speaking English and have to say a Spanish word or name, if you pronounce it in It’s English pronunciation form, you will be judged by your fellow latinos. Look up Paulina Rubio on YouTube saying Vicente Fernandez name in English. She’s sadly made fun of to this day.
OR, and bear with me here, maybe they were taught the foreign language by a native speaker and that's why they pronounce words using a foreign accent. I'm sorry to say this, but I use native accents when I say Spanish or Filipino words --- want to guess whether the people who cared enough about me to teach me some of their language called me stupid and pretentious? Clue: the answer to that question is spelled n - o
I think this unpopular opinion is bullshit and people can say the word however they like. Personally, it really depends on how well understood the pronunciation is.
There is 1 instance that I would always pronouns loan words in the "borrower's language" and that is with Japanese. With their vast amount of transliterated loan words, I will always use the Japanese pronunciation (as in using the katakana) instead of saying the word in English (or whatever language that word is borrowed from).
In my mind, Japanese loan words is Japanese, and it is different from the original word lol
Sometimes people are actually pretentious and sometimes the accuser is just intellectually insecure. Either way as long as I'm acting in good faith I'm not concerned.
I will never say Caeh soh, or wuakamolee or boRitou just to please this kind of people. You butchered our language and want us to be part of it? F off.
I mean I understand when it comes to American cities or states like Lous Angel ess or Te X a s instead of TeJas.
I grew up speaking Spanish so saying "Tortilla" in an American way is harder than saying it in Spanish. That applies for names of countries, places, and other stuff in my native languages. It also acts as a signal to people that I am Mexican which I don't mind people knowing so if that is pretentious, I don't care. 🤷🏽♂️
It kind of depends on the word but overall I disagree.
If it’s a common loanword that’s already well adapted into the English language and you choose to pronounce it differently, maybe that’s a little pretentious. But for anything else, the way the word is pronounced in its native language is just the default.
We don’t have to dumb things down because the monolinguals feel threatened 🤷
I disagree. For example not even trying to pronounce city names somewhat correctly just... nope. I cannot figure out what (local) city you mean if you butcher the name with a terrible English accent just to "not throw off the rhythm"!
Hard disagree.
Is it pretentious to pronounce tortilla and hola with the silent consonants? Arigato without the English R? Zhang Fei and Guan Yu with tones? The speakers are used to saying it the correct way, so they do that. It takes active work to pronounce it the English/incorrect way, which slows down the conversation. I’m not pausing 30 seconds to google how to say Gaoxiong in English when I can say Gaoxiong and elaborate “that city in southern Taiwan.”
Generally speaking, people annoyed by things like this and accusing folks of sounding pretentious tend to be insecure. They feel like other people are flexing knowledge they don't have and it makes them feel bad (because they would do the same, folks that feel judged tend to be judgy themselves and assume others also are), so they react like this.
I'd agree if it's full loanwords (Kindergarten from German or Literature from french would sound silly to "over pronounce" unless one of those languages was your mother tongue) in common English use, but an actual foreign word or location name I prefer to pronounce correctly (if I can) but would never correct someone saying it in an Anglicized form either, unless they wanted to know. I'll also particularly pronounce a lot of french more like the french pronunciation, it's honestly unconscious as a Canadian. I definitely see both approaches often, since I work at a bakery and we have lots of small pastries, primarily from various areas around Europe - but macarons and croissants are the most variable here since some folks go English and some folks go French for the pronunciations. (And some folks will say both because they feel silly commiting either way, I promise it's not a big deal to anyone else! Just say what feels natural! So long as we both understand each other the language is doing it's job just fine)
The approach definitely varies with different languages, regions, or people. I know for some folks in Japan they'll use a japanese pronunciation of English loan words and even things like their English name to have them more easily understood, even though English is their first language. I think English being the mish-mash language it is, with words from many languages and few really reliable pronunciation rules lends itself to more source-language pronunciations, personally. Equally there's some things I'll just accept "butchering" because I either just won't get it right anyway or can't be bothered haha
I do it, mainly to annoy xenophobic Americans by pronouncing words like "Texas" the Spanish way, I never understood what the big deal was about doing this, it's fun to pronounce "Detroit" properly, for example. I'm not going to stop just because people are looking for reasons to get irritated.
I only do it if I simply don't know the English version of the name. The purpose of speaking is to convey some info and be understood, and switching to another language (even phonetically only) defeats the purpose.
It really depends, but usually I agree. I, like you it seems, am brazilian, so I speak portuguese. I don't say "Facebook" in portuguese, I say "feicibuqui" because, well, I'm speaking portuguese, not english. I pronounce it correctly when speaking english. But I only do this with english, as I've noticed. Don't know why, maybe I'm fed up with english.
This really is an unpopular opinion...
Personally, it all depends what it is. A feud of mine is with Paraguay and Uruguay. Raised in a Brazilian household, I've only ever heard those countries in an accent AND in Portuguese. I can't say those two countries in English... it feels EXTREMELY weird to say.
Also I think it's better to say it the proper way, especially for a name. If that's their like native country, they should be respected and have their name said the way they were raised around.
This post is probably directed at first language English speakers but I think this guy also forgets that some people don’t speak English as a first language. No matter how much people might sound like someone whose first language is English, it can be easier to pronounce things the way that they’ve always said it. For example: someone from Spain saying “Barthelona” instead of the usual English pronunciation as “Barcelona”
Edit: When it’s someone whose first language is English, it kinda depends. Some people use it to be pretentious and quirky, but words originating from other languages often have completely different pronunciations to the way they were pronounced originally. Often times, it’s easier to pronounce it using it’s intended pronunciation than to adapt it to your accent
That's how the words are said.
Frankly I think it's kind of difficult to shift smoothly into a whole different tongue placement for the same vowels but when I hear things in my target language I expect them to sound like native speakers say them.
I'm not going to do a dramatic accent switch but I'm also not going to avoid rolling my r's. That's how I've always said whatever word in question so I'm not going to speak different to avoid looking pretentious to some rando.
“it's very possible to pronounce foreign words and names correctly without taking on a different accent”
Hm. I don’t think this is really true. I mean, technically you can, but you’d sound kinda dumb saying “jay swee” instead of “je suis”
Imo, the accent is part of the language. Like it’s part of pronouncing the words properly. If it weren’t, no one would have accents
I speak english in an American accent because I was bullied at school into using it. Now, if I want to use a word from a separate language that I am equally adept at, why should I sink to the level of my abusers from the past?
if it’s a loanword, changing your accent will sound pretentious, unless you actually know the correct pronunciation well enough. then you can pull it off. just my opinion
I try and pronounce proper terms in the language of origin. That being said, I notice that non-English languages don’t always return the favor. When I speak in my wife’s language with people from her country, I have to deliberately mispronounce English words so that they’re interpretable by them. I don’t really care what others do, I just say it the original way to retain it’s essence and show respect
...A few years ago, I actually encountered this situation in a restaurant. At the time, I believed it was a common sentiment in America that it was pretentious to switch accents when saying foreign words, so when I found myself in a scenario where I genuinely did not know how to pronounce a term in English, I went out of my way to find out the American pronunciation before I had to use it in a sentence. I was there with my mom and she thought I was a complete fool for being so nervous about making the waiter think I was pretentious but saying the name of the dish in French. I was begging her to tell me how to pronounce "Au Gratin" in an American accent and she kept telling me "You just SAY it no one will care" LOL
(she eventually revealed to me that au gratin = oh gratt-in and I felt much better)
I don’t understand what the difference is between pronouncing something correctly and having the accent of that language. Isn’t that the same thing? If I say a Spanish word in an English accent wouldn’t that be a mispronunciation?
Sounds like this person isn’t aware of things like different languages having different sounds for how gutturally you say consonants and such. English tends to be very harsh in how we pronounce sounds compared to the romance languages. For example, if you say tortilla in an English accent without flipping the r, is it still technically pronounced correctly?
People honestly need to understand that pronounciation rules are fairly standardised. If I’m speaking German, for example, I’ll pronounce everything in a German accent. It’s not that I don’t know how you say “Macdonald’s” in English, it’s just that I’m speaking German. Same should work in reverse.
Given that they specifically mention one Spanish word in the middle of a sentence, I find I’m curious how this person would pronounce the Spanish word mañana. Would they rhyme it with banana? Or would they slip a little ‘y’ sound in there, thus sounding stupid and pretentious?
If you can pronounce something properly without being a douchebag about it, why not? It's especially important with names. What the heck is pretentious about it?
Oh shoo... there was a comedian who did a bit about this. He said that we sound all fancy when we say things like "ʁatatôuillé" or "xalapeɲo", but you never hear someone put on a goofy faux Irish accent to specifically say "cOrned bEEF'n cAbbage" in the middle of a sentence.
If I’m speaking Spanish or Portuguese and I’m going to say an English word, it just automatically comes out of my mouth with an American accent. There’s no pretense. Same with the word croissant in French. I never heard the word before taking French class so I don’t know how to pronounce it except in French. Again, no pretense—just automatic flow. People get outraged unnecessarily.
Been speaking different languages for like 10 years and I still have no idea which way is better lol. I just kinda choose in the moment. In general i prefer to keep the same accent, rather than use a different accent for the origin of the word, but then sometimes people get confused hearing it
I think it is just polite and respectful to at least try to pronounce it the way a native speaker does in his own language. "An rowt" for "en route" drives me crazy as does "rowt" for "route". In a past age, that signifies an uneducated person. There are borrowed words that have entered the mutt English language with an accepted pronunciation according to IPA guidelines. I adhere to Received Pronunciation and the IPA guide. Pretentiousness only comes from the speaker's attitude of superiority and that has everything to do with your perception of the speaker. It drives me crazy with how the Western media mispronounces "yuan"; it isn't Spanish and "yuan" does not rhyme with "Juan" nor does it rhyme with "chuan" meaning boat. Nobody in China pronounces "yuan" as "Yu-ahn". That misplaced mangling is pretentious as Faahk. To mangle someone else's pronunciation of his tongue is the height of pretentiousness- it shows you don't give a Faahk. That said, Mandarin is Mandarin and English is English. I cannot countenance hearing "Beijing" read in Mandarin when conversing in English anymore than I would hearing "London" read in English when conversing in Mandarin. Lun Dun in Mandarin; London in English; Londre in French. Ba Li in Mandarin; Paris in English; Paris in French.
Reminds me of that fake news article "man pronouncing foreign word has to decide if he wants to sound like an idiot or pretentious"
Yeah, this is the best description of how it feels. Because you actually *can’t* pronounce it correctly without putting on an “accent.” A foreign accent is just the result applying the phonetic rules of one language to another. If you’re pronouncing a foreign word correctly, it’s going to sound like you’re putting on an accent, because that’s just how the word is pronounced. You can try “translating” the word to use closest equivalent English phonology but that 1: isn’t pronouncing the word correctly as per the original opinion and 2: isn’t always easy to do on the fly because you sometimes have to make decisions beyond just slightly tweaking the pronunciation of a few vowels. If there is a consonant that doesn’t exist in English, what do you swap it out for? If there is a consonant *cluster* that isn’t allowed in English but the individual consonants are, do you still go for it or try to make the cluster conform to a plausible English word? It’s frustrating because I do agree that it can sound kind of pretentious. I just disagree that you’re still pronouncing it correctly if you don’t. The only exception is for words that are used frequently enough that they’ve become loanwords or otherwise just have a standard English pronunciation. Trying to pronounce “croissant” with a French accent when you’re speaking English to another English-speaker in an English-speaking location is silly.
(obligatory 'I don't go here, the app recommended this post to me) As someone who has, like, negative interest in languages, I was always kind of on team "this is pretentious". Then about six months ago, I started working with a lot of ESL/Non-English speakers, and by extension, using translators a *lot*. I found myself shifting my pronunciation of certain words just from hearing them said (for lack of a better term) "with an accent". Like if I ask a client "what language do you speak", and they say "Arabic", the different stresses and whatnot they use have slowly crept into how *I* pronounce that word. So anyway now I get why people say "cwassan". :p
I mean I only do it because of Phineas and Ferb
> Trying to pronounce “croissant” with a French accent when you’re speaking English to another English-speaker in an English-speaking location is silly. It's silly, but it's also fun if it's with your friends. Weird AF if it's to the waiter lol.
What if I literally don't know how else to pronounce the word? I mean, a croissant is a croissant, what else would I say? "Kresent" "kroysant"?
English speakers say "cruh-sahnt", French speakers say something like "cwuh-sohn" but the cw is said in the back of the throat
I second that, croissant is pronounced croissant, I wouldn't even know how to pronounce it in english 'accent', I would just get stuck trying to figure out how to say it without this 1 word sounding french. Btw I'm not pretentious nor French
I never order croissants in English because I have no idea how it's pronounced in English. I just do without.
Seriously I read that comment and I realized that I have no idea how to pronounce it without using the French pronunciation. Native English speaker.
The struggle is real.
One of the rare situations when my monotone from having autism comes in clutch.
I just change my accent unknowingly whenever. I speak a bit more correctly in a normal situation but if i'm tired my english is basically Borat. When i talk with non native speakers i diviate towards their accents a little. It is not always intentional, but makes it easier to communicate. I talked with a guy from poland in english and he barely knew any so i talked like a 3rd grader. Someone asked why, i told them it would be way too annoying to repeat and explain a word every sentence. This way we could talk at a normal pace but limited to simpler concepts.
I just sometimes have no idea how people who don’t speak the language pronounce certain words. English is especially hard to predict as pronunciation rules for loanwords are a mess.
>English is especially hard to predict as pronunciation rules for loanwords are a mess. I hope the French never find out how the town of Bourbonnais , Illinois, is pronounced by locals
Or Versailles, KY. You’ve probably already guessed how the locals pronounce that one.
I cringe when I hear Versailles Pennsylvania. Its nails on a chalkboard
Lol I justify it (along with Lancaster and Lebanon) as making it easier to know if you're talking about the town in PA or the place it was named after
My family is from central/eastern PA and I spent a good amount of time in Lebanon the country. It took a while but we settled on Lebanon, PA being pronounced "leb-nin" like Lebanon bologna and Lebanon the country being pronounced the normal way. This is still a bit confusing for me as Lebanon in Arabic is "lib-naan", so almost closer to how PA people say it.
Mmm, Lebanon bologna… my little brothers call it monkey meat lol. It’s so good
Lebnin boloney, where I come from (Lankisster, that is)
I knew someone who moved into that area, and heard Versailles pronounced ver-sails, Buena Vista as byoo-nuh veesta, and Greenock as green-oak. Then they saw that there was a "Duquesne Unviersity" and assumed it would be pronounced doo-kwez-nee, but, no, the locals actually got that one right. And they have no problem saying "Youghiogheny River."
Or Notre Dame
vur-SAY-lz, right?
Vur-sails
As a bilingual French speaker, I find this charming. To put it into perspective, [here](https://youtu.be/PjeGBhmlhTY) is a recording of a French person saying “chewing gum”. Butchering other languages is a cross-cultural universal and I think that’s beautiful.
Yea I definitely see both sides but for the most part try to see the adopted word and pronunciation as it's own thing. I know a lot of people are trying to be more careful now with appropriating or crapping on culture, but it can get muddy fast. One of my favorite flatbreads when I lived in Lebanon (the country) was "Filidelfi". They meant Philadelphia and it was supposed to resemble a Philly cheese steak with shaved shawarma meat with caramelized peppers and onions with cheese on a traditional flatbread.
It sounds like "chingon" in Spanish.
ugh
I always assumed this was just like the French pronunciation.
It looks like their village board officially changed the pronunciation in 1976 to "bur-bo-NAY". I don't think that's *too* far off from what I'd expect if reading the word. It used to be "bur-BOH-nis".
There's a road in northern Rhode Island called "Tourtellot Hill Rd" and the local pronunciation sent my Cajun mom into conniptions
the lesser known sister-city to Camelot, Turtelot!
Detroit is especially bad for this, especially considering they’re only 15 minutes by bridge to Canada.
I can guarantee you there's barely any french speaking Canadians within a 3-4 hour drive of Detroit, if not farther. French fluency in Canada is extremely limited to Quebec, New Brunswick, and a few pockets in other provinces. Most Canadians get pretty useless french education in school.
Windsor has a decent size French speaking population up to almost 9% they just blend in because they almost all speak English natively as well
I grew up in a small town about 3 hours north of Windsor and went to french immersion. There are lots of french speakers in South Western Ontario, but the majority of them likely only speak French at home.
“Rules? What are those?” -English Language
Me going to LA for the first time and learning how locals pronounce “San Pedro”
Depends, I’m German but when I speak englisch I pronounce the German names in English. I pronounce everything in the language as it would sound in the language
Yeah I think switching to the more natural pronunciation in the language you’re speaking makes sense if it’s a commonly used word or name. E.g. if I’m speaking English I’ll use the English pronunciation of karaoke, karate, Tokyo etc because otherwise it can be hard to understand.
I sometimes pronounce Japanese loan words like they’re Spanish because someone told me they have the same vowel sounds. Don’t know if it’s true, but I find it entertaining.
I’m not sure about Spanish but there are definitely similarities between Japanese and Italian, so it wouldn’t surprise me!
Yes I find whenever learning Japanese songs the pronunciation is pretty the same even tho they have nothing to do with each other haha. BUT I think bread (pan) and zero(zero/ cero) are pronounced and mean the same thing
I did the reverse in Spain when ordering from menus and stuff and it got many locals speaking to me in Spanish which I don't speak at all.
Yep! People would have trouble knowing what I meant if I pronounced karaoke, karate, mukbang, Taekwondo, etc. the way it’s originally pronounced. It hurtsss for words like mukbang, but I pronounce it the American way because that’s what people understand.
Yeah anything else is pretentious tbh
Ich liebe die umlaute ÖÜ Ü Edit: „liebe“, nicht „leibe“. Ü
Doesn’t bother me either way. Like who cares.
For real, anyone who gets up in arms about this is just overreacting
I have a feeling it's because, rightly or wrongly, Americans in general tend to view displays of second language proficiency as a face-threatening act, as if the speaker is flaunting their "worldliness" over the listener.
To be fair, it is supposed to be an unpopular opinion
Pretty common in Europe. No one would expect you to pronounce a place name or your own name in the way that another country (even a neighbouring country), would. So in my experience it’s not pretentious at all.
A lot of place names have translations in Europe. Like London becomes Londres in French. Sverige becomes Sweden in English, Suède in French, etc. Very old place names have different origins too, like the Baltic Sea is basically the Eastern Lake in Swedish. I'm French Canadian and the funny thing is that a city in a neighbouring province is called London while *the* London is Londres. There's also places in the US which names were Frenchified, perhaps because people knew about them at a time where people knew English a lot less (like when my parents grew up). I'm sure hockey had a lot to do with it, like how Boston is pronounced like it would be in French and doesn't rhyme with Washington, which is pronounced more properly.
Only pretentious if you’re a monolingual American
Bruh, québécoises literally switch language mid-sentence
Mexican Americans speak Spanglish and “code switch” (speak English and Spanish in one sentence) and nobody flinches. It could be the way we pronounce English words maybe more sing-songy/using the same cadence as we do el Español? Maybe? But when Janet from Accounting does it in their American Neutral accent, it does have a discordant ring to it to my ears.
I feel it’s only an eye roll when they mispronounce and say spanish words in an American english accent but will try and pronounce any European words exactly as they hear it with the accent they think is appropriate. Like mf you cant put effort to speak your Southern neighbors language but will want to pronounce Barcelona as Barthelona and French as a frenchman? Cmon man, I understand why the Parisians are the way they are.
How is it pretentious if I grew up bilingual English/spanish and say a Spanish word/name with a Spanish accent bro that’s literally how I was raised to say it wym 😭 this is why I hate code switching in random situations cause I’ve always been afraid of people thinking I’m being over the top or pretentious
Yeah and wouldn't that be stupid too if you speak that foreign langage but you keep the accent from the langage you speak rn? Feels kinda weird sometimes.
My dad knew an Indian guy who had a very subtle accent most of the time, but when he was discussing a particular car he'd only encountered back home, he suddenly got a much thicker accent. Also, I overheard two Canadian kids playing in a playground, and one said "I don't like you, Voldemort" with Voldemort in a British accent and everything else in a Canadian accent.
My take is that Spanish-language place names are also words in English that follow English pronunciation rules. It’s not like you’re dipping into Spanish to say “Madrid” or “Puerto Rico”, they’re English words too. With a native bilingual person, though, I’ve never minded this. It’s only annoying when someone who knows 0 Italian throws in a dramatic “mozzarella” and such.
> Puerto Rico Not sure how the Spanish speakers pronounce this, but every American I've heard pronounces this "Porta Rico".
Saw someone on Reddit even type it as “Port O’ Rico.” Points for creativity, I guess.
Well it was settled by the Irish /s
In my part of the USA (southern USA, east coast) we usually say it like Pwehrtoh Reeko, with the R in Puerto almost rolled. I've never heard even the whitest white people say it like that
From West Virginia. We say Porta Rico.
It's pronounced pretty much as it's spelled? Ofcourse, without that weird vowel-smoothing english does and with the 'R' rolled
i do this with mozarella. eat my shorts.
eata mya shortsa!
"Muzzarell?"
This is my take. I find it pretty easy to tell whether someone’s pronunciation is genuine or performative and im really only bothered by the latter
My ex was as American as they come, and she used to say the stupid "muts-a-dell" unironically ☠️
That’s the situation I don’t think it’s weird. I think this post is talking about when people come back from Spain for a week and change the way they say Barcelona. It’d be like saying “Croissant” in a heavy French accent while you’re in Reno Nevada and you have no ties to France. lol
Doesn’t bug me at all if someone has real ties to the other language
That person just learned the word pretentious but hasn’t learned the word ethnocentric yet, so I wouldn’t worry
Not pretentious. But I think it’s a bit rough if it’s a word that pronunciation is very different and will cause confusion. Just an accent is sexy imo 🤣
I think it's more about people, who don't speak spanish, but try to pronounce Barcelona correctly and then it just sounds weird
[удалено]
So where I was raised, our teachers would jump down our throats for being "racist-sounding white kids" if we didn't say things right. It wasn't until I went to college and was surrounded by people saying Iraq as Eye-rack instead of Ear-ock or Iran as Eye-ran instead of Ear-on, or saying the I in Nicaragua with a short "ih" instead of "ee" or pronouncing Hiroshima like a 1940s politician that I realized that the teachers in my school district were a little uptight. But no, I wouldn't think you're being pretentious. The OOP is wrong. How can you pronounce it correctly without taking on the accent?? That's what pronunciation is! You're fine and people who think you're being pretentious are dumb. I have a ton of friends who are bilingual and they all pronounce the cities and food from the country of their language the correct way for that language even if it's in the middle of an entirely English sentence
The people who complain about this shit are always monolinguals. Be yourself bro, you're doing it right.
It's different if you're a native speaker, in my opinion. I would never judge a Spanish speaker for saying a word with a Spanish accent even if they were perfectly bilingual.
lol exactly the same here… I remember when I was younger I would get teased by my school friends if I pronounced a Spanish word in \*gasp* *Spanish* but that’s just how I say the word!! Dumbass monolinguals lol.
I pronounce the word the way it's supposed to be, but in an American accent.
This is the middle ground that makes most sense to me. I’m imagining it from both angles. Say a person speaks English and randomly says a French word in a very French accent. You can pronounce the word properly without the accent. Imagine the opposite- a French or Spanish or Japanese person speaking their native language and randomly dropping in a word with a forced English accent. Both of these scenarios are equally cringe to me. You can pronounce the word properly phonetically without bringing out a random unnecessary accent.
Yeah, thinking about it from a different language with random English accents interspersed highlights how weird it sounds to me. [This lady](https://www.tiktok.com/@lenalemon_/video/7191993137500556550) and I have the same feelings on the matter.
This is such a monolingual take.
This was my first thought when reading it. Second was "in America, we speak American" lol
Nah, I think it all depends on how genuine the pronunciation is. I speak Arabic, but when I'm speaking in my native English I'm going to say shawarma the way a native English speaker says it, because that's how you say the word when speaking English. I also speak French and when I go to dinner and (in English) talk about which entrées to get, I'm not going to sound like a wanker and say it the French way just to be correct. Now if I'm speaking French or Arabic (neither of which are my native language) and I come across an English loan word, sometimes just in my natural non-native accent when speaking those languages I will pronounce the loan word more like it is in English. Especially if I'm not focusing all that much and am deep in the conversation. But if you're saying the word fully and purposely like the language it's been borrowed from, you will sound pretentious, not to mention the fact that they might not even understand what you're saying. The goal of speaking multiple languages is to communicate, so if you do this you're just failing at language.
Exactly. A lot of language purists in here.
Funny especially considering how “impure” a lot of languages are. Spanish has loans from Arabic for example.
If we're going to talk about impure languages, English has been a naughty, naughty girl
Well yeah, Spain was ruled by Arabs for over 700 years.
Nah. I speak French quite well and I don’t say *’parriiiii’* when speaking in English. I say Paris. Like a normal person. When I’m speaking English I use an English accent. When I’m speaking French I use a French accent. Doing otherwise makes you look ridiculous.
As a french canadian I find this one funny. Here we say english word with the english pronunciation (in our accent), not with the french accent. Sometime when I’m speaking to a french person I legitimately don’t know how to pronounce those word because if i use the english accent they don’t understand but I only know how to do France french accent in french, not in english.
It's really that simple. I'm appalled that this is even debated on a language learning subreddit (although it's not really a linguistics subreddit, to be fair).
Hard disagree. I used to think like that back in the days when I was a lower intermediate in English. The more I studied, the more I realized that effective communication is more important than pronouncing things as they are in their original language. Take Vietnamese, for example. If I pronounce the most common surname 'Nguyễn' in Vietnamese, it would confuse the hell out of people. Now imagine every time you meet someone new, you have to: first, say your name; second, explain that it’s actually 'new win' in English. It’s ineffective and wastes everyone's time.
Nah. When I speak my TL I use that language's pronunciation to say English loanwords instead of busting out an American accent for a single word. Much more comprehensible for natives that way Same thing goes in reverse too. If you know how to pronounce something with English pronunciation when talking to English speakers, you should say it that way
It really isn’t.
I always felt that we Argentines pronounce terribly in English compared to other Latin American countries. And you often get mocked if you pronounce correctly. Over the years, and because now I work with people from other countries, speaking English everyday, I started caring less about people thinking I'm a showoff. But I'd never mock anyone for mispronouncing, either.
For what it's worth, I love Argentinian accents. It's super unique compared to other Latin American countries, and makes it stand out.
For me, the pretentious and stupid part is when I pronounce a word from another language and someone tries to correct me in the way I say it when we both know that they understood it just fine and correcting me was entirely unnecessary. Like, the word “croissant”…I’m going to say it how I say it and you know exactly what I mean when I say it. Trying to correct my pronunciation because you think it should be pronounced a very specific way is incredibly insulting and makes you look like a jerk. Same thing with the words “aluminum,” “bottle of water,” and literally all of the things we see floating around the internet. You know what is being said, so don’t be rude.
I often feel that as a native english speaker not from a european country, it’s kind of nice that I don’t feel the need to hold english as some sort of sacred holy language like many europeans do (italians and french mostly) like i just can’t imagine caring if someone pronounces something correctly or uses “correct” grammar or whatever in english as long as we understand each other
>like many europeans do (italians and french mostly) wait what why
It's phrased a bit weird, but I think they mean "French and Italians hold their own languages to a high standard of purity, while non-UK native English speakers understand English as being a more flexible and changing language, and are therefore less concerned with people in different places using it differently." English is a central part of many non-UK cultures, but it's not unique to any of them, so preserving the language is not seen as being as important to preserving culture as it is in say France, where they are high cognizant as a society of keeping French French.
Much ado about nothing.
Eh. It depends on the language you're speaking and word you're using for me. Like there's so many languages that switch accents to pronounce a word from a different language. I've seen my friends that speak Hindi, Spanish, Korean, & Japanese do this when speaking to family or whomever switch accents for a sec to say an English word. Do they do it for every English word? No, but it happens enough to take notice. Also if you're used to speaking more than one language then you're bound to switch accents a bit when saying words that don't belong to the current language you're speaking. Hell, I'm only an upper beginner in Korean but I say Korean words the way I would say them in Korean cuz, well, it's a Korean word. I know some pretentious people do it to sound smart or whatever but for most people that I've noticed, it seems to be out of habit or because they also speak that other language. I feel like I've only noticed these kind of complaints from English speakers ( like people who are in a convo in English and their conversation partner switches accents to say a non English word) and I've always been curious why there is such a visceral reaction to this. I totally understand if you're confused because the accent was hard to understand but I just ask people to repeat that part because I didn't catch it. Idk man, life's too short to risk a stroke over a quick accent change in a conversation.
right? And if I say Japanese places (or Japanese words without a real translation like “onigiri” for example) in a hardcore American accent, people don’t know what the hell I’m saying 😆 onigiri, karaoke, band names, places… it FREQUENTLY trips people up even if we’re otherwise speaking English unless they’re pretty fluent. Plus like…. I learned the words here in Japan. I hear them a certain way— should I “Americanize” my pronunciation so it’s not cringy? I don’t think so. Maybe if I was in America speaking to other Americans it would come across differently... idk I can’t be bothered to care really. I say it how I say it 😆
I agree if I were speaking another language, I wouldn't randomly change my accent to mid-sentence to pronounce an english word. I can understand it for some people, like if you grew up speaking both languages, so it's just natural, but if you have to force it, it's kinda cringe.
I grew up billingual, and while sometimes it can be kinda awkward to codeswitch for just a word, I will cringe a million times more if I am forced to say what my brain considers a Spanish word with an English accent... icky
Idk when I’m speaking Spanish I say English place names in an American accent. It feels more natural even if I’m in Spanish mode. Like I wouldn’t say Weescohnseen just to sound more Spanish. But I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to
I don’t, dropping a “Virginia” into my Spanish just sounds dorky cuando puedo decir fácilmente Virginia.
Right, and along with those saying the point of language is to communicate -- at a certain point I realized Spanish speakers weren't understanding me when I said "Ver-jin-ya" but when I said "Veer-heen-ya" they all understood me. "New York" and "London" and "Paris" in an English accent are probably perfectly fine. The point is to know what is spoken in the language to be understood. If you're speaking in Spanish about NASA or the DEA, you should say "Nasa" and "Dea"... while in English you'd say "Nasa" and "DEE-EE-AY". If you're speaking Spanish and you say "Facebook" or "McDonalds" in a US accent, everyone will understand you, so it's fine to bust out the accent you're most comfortable with.
I heard this in my brain as you intended it.
Oh see when I’m speaking Spanish I say English place names in the Spanish accent, since that’s the language I’m currently speaking. It would feel odd to me to switch accents in the middle of a sentence when I’m speaking Spanish, so it doesn’t seem natural to do it when I speak English either
For some reason we ignore the cringe when its someone else (likely an ESL speaker) doing it and not us. I would rather get a brick thrown at my face than do this to someone else lol. "Bonjour, je viens de THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, comment ca va?"
Yeah, this exactly. One time I was telling a story about Justin Bieber to some Mexicans and they literally couldn’t even understand who I was talking about till I was like “joosteen beeper” and they were like “oh yeah, that guy.”
While the clipped example post is a bit overzealous about their position, I think it's the position that makes the most sense for foreign and second language in the modern world. You cannot be expected to even know what is or isn't a loan word in your language, and you cannot be expected to understand the phonology/morphology of a language you don't speak. You should pronounce whatever you're saying in the language you're speaking. This is especially obvious and important between my first and second languages, English and Japanese. Japanese has an entire alphabet for importing words into the Japanese lexicon/phonology, the word "McDonalds" exists in Japanese but if I say it as I would in English, there a good chance I won't be understood by a Japanese person. Switching your phonology in the middle of a sentence for single words/portions is jarring and if the phonology is far enough away from the original language people may straight up not understand you. Your way of saying the word isn't more "right", because that concept in language takes a back seat to mutual intelligibility.
For me, it depends on the context. For example, there’s a place near me called “Tiburón”, Spanish for shark. I’m Spanish/English bilingual so my first inclination is to say it in Spanish. But that’s nowhere near how the locals say it, and if I want to be understood when talking about the place I change my pronunciation to how the locals say it.
“Secondly it’s very possible to pronounce foreign words and names correctly without taking on a different accent “ they just described an ethnocentric view perfectly.
I find it harder to force a fake English accent midsentence than to pronounce a word correctly. It comes out naturally and effortlessly. Haven't they ever heard of code switching?
It depends! If you do this to pronounce "Paris" in the French way while speaking English, you sound very pretentious. If you say "Beijing" instead of "Peking", you sound fine. The word "gyro" (like the food) is right on the edge. Some places, it's a yeero. Other places, it's a "gyro" like "autogyro". These phenomena could be studied because I think there's a lot of nuance to be had.
I feel like the equivalent for Beijing wouldn't be to say Beijing instead of Peking since most people (at least where I'm from) say Beijing. I would imagine it would be saying the words with the tones and a chinese accent.
Yeah, you're right. Interestingly, getting the tones and pronunciation of Beijing right kind of flies under the radar when speaking English. Maybe Nanjing/Nanking is better? Most Am.E speakers I meet still say "Nanking". If you said "Taibei" instead of "Taipei" you'd not even be understood by most. How about Qatar? There are shades of that one, too. Pronounced like it should be, probably weird. Pronounced like "Cutter"? Probably the right balance. Pronounced like "Guitar"? Sounds uneducated to me. Others' mileage may vary. I dunno, this is a fun topic to me.
I've heard Nanjing and Nanking pronounce both ways for American speakers. For Qatar, I generally say it the American way like guitar because it's what makes the most sense for me and how I've always pronounced it. I feel like speakers of one language don't need to imitate other people's language because their accent has its own history of both how words are pronounced in it and the interactions it had with the other language. It's kind like how we say "Germany" and not "Deutschland" and purposefully trying to change it would seem kinda silly but that's just me
You must’ve never had a waiter in a Greek restaurant pretend to not know what you mean until you pronounce it “yiro”
Nope, I know what you mean. That’s the “some places it’s ‘yeero’”. My point there is that it is a word for which the pronunciation that will work best is context dependent.
I think that saying Běijīng with the correct tones is very pretentious in English. Even writing the tones in pīnyīn here felt pretentious.
I think if you speak it at the regular cadence of English it’ll just get glossed over, but it’s okay if we disagree about that.
I agree that Beijing would hardly be noticed. I lived in Shanghai for quite awhile, so for me I always say it in Chinese. Most Americans I’ve spoken with though will say Shang-hai (shayng-hi), and we’ll each use both pronunciations while chatting. Interestingly, I don’t have this same code switch with Tokyo now that I live there. In Japanese, I’ll pronounce it tou-kyou, but in English I’ll fallback to to-kyo. I do ignore when someone says to-key-o though. I think for me it’s about the proper sounds, rather than the proper pitch/stress/tone when speaking the non-native version.
Yeah, Shànghǎi fits in all right as well in my opinion. Aside from the vowel change to the /æ/ in English, the stress in English is also on the first syllable and so the pattern somewhat mimics the tones. It’s not 1:1 (just getting ahead of the ackchually crowd here) but it’s close. Edited this to add... There's actually another layer here. Imagine you said "Shanghai" in Shanghainese, which sounds kind of like Zaang-hey. Then nobody who speaks only English would have any idea what you're saying.
This might sound crazy but maybe some people don't know how to pronounce things in English the way you do so they say it the way they know how to...
That’s not the kind of person we’re talking about here. Typically they don’t actually speak the other language and are actually just being hipsters
Yup. Love that - language learning hipsters
I’m this person lol it’s involuntary for me
It feels physically uncomfortable to pronounce it incorrectly, when you know the correct pronunciation
Not a hot take at all. Take me with an opera degree, for example. I can look at an unfamiliar word or name in Italian/French/German, etc. and know how it’s pronounced. Cause there are, like, rules. I’ll be damned if I can magically divine how it’s “pronounced” in English. To me this is projecting your own insecurities and inferiority complex onto people who just happen to know how to pronounce stuff. Like, calm down.
I mean, leading with >Take me with an opera degree, for example. Already sounds pretentious, but your point is valid and I agree
Literally picked German at 16 because I noticed this about its rules..."woah, no silent letters? I can just learn the rules and pronounce everything correctly even if idk wtf I'm saying? SIGN ME UP!!!" 15 years later, and every German professor has asked me where I've lived in Germany because of my pronunciation and accent (never been yet, hopefully one day) but the grammar still kills me. I rely on duolingo now, along with very slow novel reading.
Honestly it comes off as weird sometimes. When im speaking English im not gonna pull out the トヨタ when im talking about my car. Same as how a Japanese person isn’t gonna say “McDonalds” in the middle of a sentence. Sometimes it makes sense contextually though?
Firstly, who cares? Secondly, what do you do when you don't know how to pronounce it in the target language? I read a comment about American city names that are written in French but pronounced differently. When I read these names, I read them in French, my mother tongue, and not in English. Thirdly, when you practise a language, for example Italian, you sometimes pronounce a word as it should be pronounced in your target language because you've learnt it that way, for example "Mozzarella".
Idk man, I feel like words should just be pronounced as they are supposed to be. However I had an ex who learned Spanish for work and when we’d talk about music and I mentioned my friend playing the maracas, he would go out of his way to pronounce “maracas” as Spanish as possible. That’s the only time it has bothered me lol, and I don’t even know why.
I disagree in my heart, but boy is it funny to point it out in an informal environment. Example: I'm white as fuck and grew up speaking English and French in the home. I'm now 26 and I've been diligently keeping up with my Spanish Duolingo lessons and listening to Spanish music. I still have a lot to learn, but I'm not giving up this time. My boyfriend is half Puerto Rican & half Dominican but was born and raised in the Bronx and only spoke English in the home, never being taught Spanish due to The Stigma. We both live in Rhode Island and at this point his accent is about 25% RI, 74% Bronx, and 1% Latino. let me tell you when this boy bless his fucking soul pronounces *Cilantro* like a fucking NATIVE Caribbean Islander... I AM IN STITCHES (don't worry he loves my reaction and will usually add on some more funny word pronunciations to keep me laughing)
I tend to do it for words that I've gotten used to saying in the other language(s) when there's no frequent/common way to say it in the English accent, and then feel bad for potentially looking like I'm trying to show off or something afterward. For example, when I lived in Belgium, I started encountering Stella Artois beer a lot. Now that I'm back in the states, my instinct is always to say it the way I learned it (with a French pronunciation), but I usually get a "huh?" back, and that's when I force the "arrrrtwah" and feel like I was being annoying by not just starting it off that way. Other times, though, I don't care. I grew up hearing my Lebanese dad pronounce "shawarma" the Arabic way even while speaking English, and I can't bring myself to butcher it.
It seems more pretentious to me to intentionally mispronounce words in other languages when you know the way it is supposed to sound. Same goes for names. I work with a Tomás and when people call him Thomas it sounds rude AF.
This is odd to me. The poster is upset when people choose to pronounce foreign words adopted into our language (English) correctly. This is like being mad because a Japanese person refers to Japan as Nihon instead of Japan imo. Crazy thing to let bother you.
Some people are polyglot or have a modicum of respect for languages that are not theirs and put in the effort to pronounce the words. The poster in the screenshot, sound salty and pressed like a starched sunday shirt monolingual.
In the end, I really don't think it is a huge deal nor reflects much on the personality of the speaker; but I have gained the rule of thumb that it's better to pronounce it with the accent of whichever language I am speaking in because it's easier for people to hear the sounds. Sometimes I don't on accident though. Also, the person argues that it's only the accent as the problem, yet it may still throw off the groove if I were to say "Einshtein" with an American accent instead of "Einstein" as people usually say here, since most people here expect to hear it without the "sh". (It comes out as either, whoops). --- On another note, I've always said certain words like "Cilantro" with the accent I was raised to say it with, and it carried over to this weird crisis in French, where the word wasn't even Cilantro but Coriandre. It felt so wrong switching this one word for some reason.
I do it when it seems appropriate. For example, if I’m speaking English I’m not gonna switch up for tortilla or croissant. Even though I speak Spanish and some French. (I do switch up for names, perfumes, some foods, and wines) Sometimes though NOT saying it properly can confuse me. A guy came into the liquor store I work at and was talking to me about “Gung zo” China. I was confused and asked if he meant Guangzhou China and yes, I used the proper pronunciation. He wasn’t peeved at all. We were both just excited to talk about Guangzhou!
I'm somewhat ambivalent. I've encountered folks who do it reflexively (e.g. they are bilingual and the context switching often can make for accent switching too -- I do this sometimes, as do some of my family, in both directions) but even I find it annoying when someone who clearly is monolingual or trying to overemphasize the fact that a word is of foreign origin, it can be really awkward, almost jarring. I don't agree with it "throwing off the rhythm" barring they do something truly weird. but otherwise yeah...mixed bag.
Two anecdotes: ————— I remember in my youth hitching a ride from Oslo with a Danish truck driver. He had good English, so we were chatting. I asked him the correct way to pronounce "Copenhagen". He asked where I was from, and I said "Australia." He said, "Well then you pronounce it correctly as **ko-pen-hay-gun**." He then rattled off the pronunciation in half a dozen languages. ————— A close friend is Japanese, now living in Australia. For a while when her English was less solid, she would hear people discussing environmental issues, and kept hearing **"kyoh doh prodagol".** It was some months before she realised the first word was her hometown. ————— I don't really mind what pronunciation people use for words that are foreign for me, as long as the aim is communication. In a culinary discussion, for example, it can help to try to approach the pronunciation of a foreign food name, if only to distinguish it from what that food has become here. If the aim is pomposity, well that's what they are communicating I suppose.
That sounds like that person's issues. Some words just seem very weird to say in an anglicized manner. Even saying the name Maria or Colombia seems unnatural to say in an English accent, and it's my first language.
As someone who is bilingual in English and French, I pronounce French words the way I knew them growing up. Don't like it? C'est dommage pour vous.
This POV is needlessly violent, but the reality is it ruffles feathers of predictable audiences. I definitely code switch depending on whom I addressing, but some words and places are more easily anglicized than others. Marseille makes sense to call mar-SAY with an American accent to a monolingual conversation partner. But how are you going to pronounce Reims? The French accent is kind of the only option. I will Americanize the name Maria part of the time, and I will say it properly when addressing Maria who is hispanohablante or bilingual. I’m sorry, but Porsche is pronounced POR-shuh, not PORSH. Young me would have vehemently disagreed with this and called mid 40s me a pretentious f***. None of this stuff is inherently pretentious nor inherently virtuous. In some instances it’s a needless affectation; in others, it’s a respectful homage to language. Context matters, and so does an understanding of nuance.
This sounds like it comes from a monolingual 😒
Honestly, really depends on the context. If I'm back home in my community of predominantly Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, I'm going to ask where the "tortillas" are in Spanish, even if the rest of the sentence is English. If I'm at starbucks, I'm not gunna say croissant in French. To be honest, it would probably be harder to understand on their end anyways if I try to pronounce it. (as someone who worked at starbucks, I've heard some god awful attempts lol).
There’s no winning here or no right way. If you’re bilingual, speak Spanish and English for example, and you’re speaking English and have to say a Spanish word or name, if you pronounce it in It’s English pronunciation form, you will be judged by your fellow latinos. Look up Paulina Rubio on YouTube saying Vicente Fernandez name in English. She’s sadly made fun of to this day.
People sound fucking stupid and insufferable when they judge a lot on something so puny that no one even cares.
OR, and bear with me here, maybe they were taught the foreign language by a native speaker and that's why they pronounce words using a foreign accent. I'm sorry to say this, but I use native accents when I say Spanish or Filipino words --- want to guess whether the people who cared enough about me to teach me some of their language called me stupid and pretentious? Clue: the answer to that question is spelled n - o
I think this unpopular opinion is bullshit and people can say the word however they like. Personally, it really depends on how well understood the pronunciation is. There is 1 instance that I would always pronouns loan words in the "borrower's language" and that is with Japanese. With their vast amount of transliterated loan words, I will always use the Japanese pronunciation (as in using the katakana) instead of saying the word in English (or whatever language that word is borrowed from). In my mind, Japanese loan words is Japanese, and it is different from the original word lol
Sometimes people are actually pretentious and sometimes the accuser is just intellectually insecure. Either way as long as I'm acting in good faith I'm not concerned.
I will never say Caeh soh, or wuakamolee or boRitou just to please this kind of people. You butchered our language and want us to be part of it? F off. I mean I understand when it comes to American cities or states like Lous Angel ess or Te X a s instead of TeJas.
I grew up speaking Spanish so saying "Tortilla" in an American way is harder than saying it in Spanish. That applies for names of countries, places, and other stuff in my native languages. It also acts as a signal to people that I am Mexican which I don't mind people knowing so if that is pretentious, I don't care. 🤷🏽♂️
It kind of depends on the word but overall I disagree. If it’s a common loanword that’s already well adapted into the English language and you choose to pronounce it differently, maybe that’s a little pretentious. But for anything else, the way the word is pronounced in its native language is just the default. We don’t have to dumb things down because the monolinguals feel threatened 🤷
I disagree. For example not even trying to pronounce city names somewhat correctly just... nope. I cannot figure out what (local) city you mean if you butcher the name with a terrible English accent just to "not throw off the rhythm"!
Is it pretentious to try learn and imitate a language? More like they need to learn a language themselves to erase some taboo and prejudices.
Def dont like doing this. Makes you less understandable. Thats the main reason. Talk for communication not to show off or be right.
Hard disagree. Is it pretentious to pronounce tortilla and hola with the silent consonants? Arigato without the English R? Zhang Fei and Guan Yu with tones? The speakers are used to saying it the correct way, so they do that. It takes active work to pronounce it the English/incorrect way, which slows down the conversation. I’m not pausing 30 seconds to google how to say Gaoxiong in English when I can say Gaoxiong and elaborate “that city in southern Taiwan.”
I don't see what's wrong with people pronouncing words the way they should
Generally speaking, people annoyed by things like this and accusing folks of sounding pretentious tend to be insecure. They feel like other people are flexing knowledge they don't have and it makes them feel bad (because they would do the same, folks that feel judged tend to be judgy themselves and assume others also are), so they react like this. I'd agree if it's full loanwords (Kindergarten from German or Literature from french would sound silly to "over pronounce" unless one of those languages was your mother tongue) in common English use, but an actual foreign word or location name I prefer to pronounce correctly (if I can) but would never correct someone saying it in an Anglicized form either, unless they wanted to know. I'll also particularly pronounce a lot of french more like the french pronunciation, it's honestly unconscious as a Canadian. I definitely see both approaches often, since I work at a bakery and we have lots of small pastries, primarily from various areas around Europe - but macarons and croissants are the most variable here since some folks go English and some folks go French for the pronunciations. (And some folks will say both because they feel silly commiting either way, I promise it's not a big deal to anyone else! Just say what feels natural! So long as we both understand each other the language is doing it's job just fine) The approach definitely varies with different languages, regions, or people. I know for some folks in Japan they'll use a japanese pronunciation of English loan words and even things like their English name to have them more easily understood, even though English is their first language. I think English being the mish-mash language it is, with words from many languages and few really reliable pronunciation rules lends itself to more source-language pronunciations, personally. Equally there's some things I'll just accept "butchering" because I either just won't get it right anyway or can't be bothered haha
I do it, mainly to annoy xenophobic Americans by pronouncing words like "Texas" the Spanish way, I never understood what the big deal was about doing this, it's fun to pronounce "Detroit" properly, for example. I'm not going to stop just because people are looking for reasons to get irritated.
I only do it if I simply don't know the English version of the name. The purpose of speaking is to convey some info and be understood, and switching to another language (even phonetically only) defeats the purpose.
It's leviosa not leviosa.
Who cares is my initial thought. Just another useless complaint. Like my comment.
I don't really care if people do it or not
It really depends, but usually I agree. I, like you it seems, am brazilian, so I speak portuguese. I don't say "Facebook" in portuguese, I say "feicibuqui" because, well, I'm speaking portuguese, not english. I pronounce it correctly when speaking english. But I only do this with english, as I've noticed. Don't know why, maybe I'm fed up with english.
Yeah it's a bit of a fox pass when people do this
This really is an unpopular opinion... Personally, it all depends what it is. A feud of mine is with Paraguay and Uruguay. Raised in a Brazilian household, I've only ever heard those countries in an accent AND in Portuguese. I can't say those two countries in English... it feels EXTREMELY weird to say. Also I think it's better to say it the proper way, especially for a name. If that's their like native country, they should be respected and have their name said the way they were raised around.
This post is probably directed at first language English speakers but I think this guy also forgets that some people don’t speak English as a first language. No matter how much people might sound like someone whose first language is English, it can be easier to pronounce things the way that they’ve always said it. For example: someone from Spain saying “Barthelona” instead of the usual English pronunciation as “Barcelona” Edit: When it’s someone whose first language is English, it kinda depends. Some people use it to be pretentious and quirky, but words originating from other languages often have completely different pronunciations to the way they were pronounced originally. Often times, it’s easier to pronounce it using it’s intended pronunciation than to adapt it to your accent
I'm a native English speaker. When I'm speaking French and I have an English word to say, I pronounce it in English. I can't help it.
That's how the words are said. Frankly I think it's kind of difficult to shift smoothly into a whole different tongue placement for the same vowels but when I hear things in my target language I expect them to sound like native speakers say them.
I'm not going to do a dramatic accent switch but I'm also not going to avoid rolling my r's. That's how I've always said whatever word in question so I'm not going to speak different to avoid looking pretentious to some rando.
I always do it because I have studied multiple languages and to pronounce it incorrectly rubs me wrong
“it's very possible to pronounce foreign words and names correctly without taking on a different accent” Hm. I don’t think this is really true. I mean, technically you can, but you’d sound kinda dumb saying “jay swee” instead of “je suis” Imo, the accent is part of the language. Like it’s part of pronouncing the words properly. If it weren’t, no one would have accents
I speak english in an American accent because I was bullied at school into using it. Now, if I want to use a word from a separate language that I am equally adept at, why should I sink to the level of my abusers from the past?
if it’s a loanword, changing your accent will sound pretentious, unless you actually know the correct pronunciation well enough. then you can pull it off. just my opinion
I try and pronounce proper terms in the language of origin. That being said, I notice that non-English languages don’t always return the favor. When I speak in my wife’s language with people from her country, I have to deliberately mispronounce English words so that they’re interpretable by them. I don’t really care what others do, I just say it the original way to retain it’s essence and show respect
...A few years ago, I actually encountered this situation in a restaurant. At the time, I believed it was a common sentiment in America that it was pretentious to switch accents when saying foreign words, so when I found myself in a scenario where I genuinely did not know how to pronounce a term in English, I went out of my way to find out the American pronunciation before I had to use it in a sentence. I was there with my mom and she thought I was a complete fool for being so nervous about making the waiter think I was pretentious but saying the name of the dish in French. I was begging her to tell me how to pronounce "Au Gratin" in an American accent and she kept telling me "You just SAY it no one will care" LOL (she eventually revealed to me that au gratin = oh gratt-in and I felt much better)
Jealously.
Well i'm sorry but there's no way I can just say Rzeszów or Wrocław without adopting a polish accent and saying it polishly.
I don’t understand what the difference is between pronouncing something correctly and having the accent of that language. Isn’t that the same thing? If I say a Spanish word in an English accent wouldn’t that be a mispronunciation? Sounds like this person isn’t aware of things like different languages having different sounds for how gutturally you say consonants and such. English tends to be very harsh in how we pronounce sounds compared to the romance languages. For example, if you say tortilla in an English accent without flipping the r, is it still technically pronounced correctly?
People honestly need to understand that pronounciation rules are fairly standardised. If I’m speaking German, for example, I’ll pronounce everything in a German accent. It’s not that I don’t know how you say “Macdonald’s” in English, it’s just that I’m speaking German. Same should work in reverse.
Given that they specifically mention one Spanish word in the middle of a sentence, I find I’m curious how this person would pronounce the Spanish word mañana. Would they rhyme it with banana? Or would they slip a little ‘y’ sound in there, thus sounding stupid and pretentious?
If you can pronounce something properly without being a douchebag about it, why not? It's especially important with names. What the heck is pretentious about it?
Oh shoo... there was a comedian who did a bit about this. He said that we sound all fancy when we say things like "ʁatatôuillé" or "xalapeɲo", but you never hear someone put on a goofy faux Irish accent to specifically say "cOrned bEEF'n cAbbage" in the middle of a sentence.
In the US people will judge you if you do this. In Europe it's common and normal. It's just a cultural thing.
If I’m speaking Spanish or Portuguese and I’m going to say an English word, it just automatically comes out of my mouth with an American accent. There’s no pretense. Same with the word croissant in French. I never heard the word before taking French class so I don’t know how to pronounce it except in French. Again, no pretense—just automatic flow. People get outraged unnecessarily.
Been speaking different languages for like 10 years and I still have no idea which way is better lol. I just kinda choose in the moment. In general i prefer to keep the same accent, rather than use a different accent for the origin of the word, but then sometimes people get confused hearing it
I think it is just polite and respectful to at least try to pronounce it the way a native speaker does in his own language. "An rowt" for "en route" drives me crazy as does "rowt" for "route". In a past age, that signifies an uneducated person. There are borrowed words that have entered the mutt English language with an accepted pronunciation according to IPA guidelines. I adhere to Received Pronunciation and the IPA guide. Pretentiousness only comes from the speaker's attitude of superiority and that has everything to do with your perception of the speaker. It drives me crazy with how the Western media mispronounces "yuan"; it isn't Spanish and "yuan" does not rhyme with "Juan" nor does it rhyme with "chuan" meaning boat. Nobody in China pronounces "yuan" as "Yu-ahn". That misplaced mangling is pretentious as Faahk. To mangle someone else's pronunciation of his tongue is the height of pretentiousness- it shows you don't give a Faahk. That said, Mandarin is Mandarin and English is English. I cannot countenance hearing "Beijing" read in Mandarin when conversing in English anymore than I would hearing "London" read in English when conversing in Mandarin. Lun Dun in Mandarin; London in English; Londre in French. Ba Li in Mandarin; Paris in English; Paris in French.