“Give Your Daughters Difficult Names” was spelled out in lights on the underside of the canopy covering the stairs leading up to Manhattan’s High Line. In other words, this took some serious work.
Nobody, though, was entirely sure what it meant (though it did serve as a conversation-starter among strangers, which if nothing else is a good thing).
Comics I Don't Understand 
This I think.
“give your daughters difficult names. give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue. my name makes you want to tell me the truth. my name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
“… and give your sons everything else.”
Aha…just as I thought, it’s an art installation.
According to the article linked below, there are several different installations on display along the High Line. The exhibition is called “Agora”.
http://art.thehighline.org/project/agora/
Here is the description for GIVE YOUR DAUGHTERS DIFFICULT NAMES:
“Marinella Senatore (b. 1977, Cava de’ Tirreni, Italy) is an artist working in performance and sculpture. In her work, Senatore is interested in creating a conversation between herself and the people experiencing it. For the High Line, the artist presents an installation of festive lights under the park at Gansevoort Plaza similar to the celebratory ones made by artisans in Puglia, Italy, on the occasion of popular and religious events. The installation takes the title GIVE YOUR DAUGHTERS DIFFICULT NAMES from a quote by the feminist poet Warsan Shire, and creates a space of gathering and congregation—a public piazza for people to use.”
See linked page for info on the exhibition itself.
How effing stupid is this? Sorry, but you want to burden your child with a name that no one can pronounce or spell? I’d call this grounds for termination of parental rights.
“How effing stupid is this? Sorry, but you want to burden your child with a name that no one can pronounce or spell?”
As with everything else, Monty Python addressed this 50 years ago. It’s pronounced “Throatwobbler Mangrove”.
Personally I like it.
I’d say, just make sure your kid can spell it. I have the perfectly good middle name Bjorn, but it was a strange and improbable one where I grew up. I’d botch it in grade school, and people would correct it to John or Ben or whatever.
Now that I know where it comes from, it still makes no sense at all.
I think Warsan Shire’s parents gave her a difficult name, and she now needs to pretend that it was a GOOD thing because she was once angry at her parents for doing so.
“My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.”
I wouldn’t trust anyone who couldn’t pronounce “Jane” or “Colleen” right. “Warsan” you have to give people some slack with.
For all that I may appreciate Janeane Garofalo in her comedy or political work, I just can’t help myself from complaining about her spelling, any time she is introduced. Or pronunciation, if you look at it from that side.
” I see Jane (which anyone can pronounce) and I see it followed by -ane (which is uncertain but one may guess is the rhyme of Jane) — so, all together, she must be called Jane-Ain, no?”.
“Oh, Janine! Why didn’t they make that clear in the spelling? It’s a pretty common name, with a well-established spelling”
Mitch, in the past, I’ve had to choke back that same reaction to cashiers’ and bank tellers’ name tags and plaques reading “Teena.”
The “not trusting people who can’t pronounce it” thing is actually very tribalistic and regressive — basically, someone who knows it’s pronounced “throat-warbler mangrove” is an “in” member, someone from from my tribe, and therefor I can trust them, whereas someone who doesn’t know the secret code is “outside”, and therefor not to be trusted. (And that thinking works so well in the world of kidnapping and child molestation…)
Aside from maybe when answering the phone, where is this knee-jerk discriminating desirable or aspirational or even really inclusive in this big small world of ours?
From reading some of her other poetry on that page, I’d say I disagree with her about almost everything.
That’s fine, I guess – differing opinions are what makes horse races, right?
I did not give my daughters difficult names. I did try to teach them to pronounce their names correctly (adverb), not right (adjective).
I logged in after lunch intending to blast Warsan for her arrogance, but I see that between last night and right now, the rest of you said everything I was going to say.
Thanks for that, bobpeters61. But I should clarify that I’m not quite where you are on these. I don’t have much of a problem with Teena, nor even, after years of struggle, Antwan.
Those do create a difficulty by not using the standard spellings, which is that you can hear the name but not be sure how to write it. But that is very often the case anyway.
The Janeane case is a little different, I submit. For Teena and Antwan it’s immediate and transparent what the intended pronunciations are. But I thought Janeane relates to the pronunciation of Janine only retrospectively, once you’ve been told.
(It was hard getting past my displeasure at Antwan, but I finally had to admit that my preference for, uh, the real spelling was rooted in a phony/snobby Francophilia. And, truth to tell, probably in some rather racist assumptions about how the parents selecting the americanized-phonetic spelling arrived at that.)
And there are given names with punctuation such as apostrophes and hyphens that are supposed to aid in pronunciation but only make things confusing at first glance. Often the apostrophe is in place of an accent mark of some sort. Computer databases don’t like apostrophes in first names, let alone accents. :-)
These are supposed to give today’s kids unique names to stand out from the crowd. The problem is, if it’s a trend, there’s going to be a bunch of little kids named Xzavey’r, D’Arcy and La-a (“la-dash-a”) in each classroom hehe.
Rereading the comments above, I think some of you are unfairly judgemental of Warsan Shire, even mocking her own name.
“Warsan means “good news” and Shire means “to gather in one place”. My parents named me after my father’s mother, my grandmother. Growing up, I absolutely wanted a name that was easier to pronounce, more common, prettier. But then I grew up and understood the power of a name, the beauty that comes in understanding how your name has affected who you are. My name is indigenous to my country, it is not easy to pronounce, it takes effort to say correctly and I am absolutely in love with the sound of it and its meaning. Also, it’s not the kind of name you baby, slip into sweet talk mid sentence, late night phone conversation, whisper into the receiver kind of name, so, of that I am glad.”
http://wellandoftenpress.com/reader/to-be-vulnerable-and-fearless-an-interview-with-writer-warsan-shire/
Be that as it may, she obviously has a chip on her shoulder about it; I’m all for her coming to terms with her own issues, but to proclaim her deficiencies as a panacea for others I do have problems with. As I alluded to above, her trust issues resolving to primitive tribalism is NOT a good thing!
And you should name your boy “Sue” because it’ll make him grow up tough.
It’s frigging poetry. It’s not actual advice. Although I personally always wanted to name my kids distinct names.
Good poetry makes you think and feel emotions, as this does. But thinking and feeling, “That’s a dumb idea”, makes me think it’s out of running for the “good” category. That she apparently might have meant it seriously heightens my dislike for it.
This appears to be a case of, “It worked for me, so it should work for you.” My favorite counter-example to that (even thought it’s fictional) is the end of Tommy.
“The “not trusting people who can’t pronounce it” thing is actually very tribalistic and regressive — basically, someone who knows it’s pronounced ‘throat-warbler mangrove’ is an ‘in’ member, someone from from my tribe, and therefor I can trust them”
That’s one way of looking at it, but it isn’t the only way. A person who respects you knows how to say your name. If they don’t know you personally, they care enough to find out.
People who act like you’re on friendly terms, but don’t even know how to pronounce your name… are likely not to be trusted.
It’s like recognizing that anyone who says your name three times or more in the first two things they say to you is trying to sell you something.
Having spent years living in cultures where English is not the first-language and my name is not as common as can be, I have to disagree with Warsan. People would try to say my name and I’d try to say their’s. It was grounds to have a polite chat and for me to share something about myself and my culture if someone was curious. The more informed ones would even ask about how you get “Bill” from “William.” Most of those people who couldn’t pronounce my name were lovely.
Warsan’s viewpoint is, I suspect, not really about what it says it is about. It strikes me as much more aggressive. I suspect we’ve had different experiences with out “odd” names.
Woozy. it might be poetry, but it’s also offered as advice. I’m no authority on poetry, but I can recognize bad advice.
If she bases her trust on whether or not people remember her name, she’s in for a world of disappointment.
Sorry, but I can’t get past the fact that Warsanshire is a county in northern England.
I decide whether to trust someone by seeing if they can pronounce “shibboleth.”
“Sorry, but I can’t get past the fact that Warsanshire is a county in northern England.”
And I suppose you found the character of Major Major in Catch-22 was unbelievable, too.
I do make judgments on whether people know the difference between “less” and “fewer.”
“I do make judgments on whether people know the difference between ‘less’ and ‘fewer.’”
Assuming there is one.
Bill: Of course, I know the difference. It’s that “less” has one less letter than “fewer,” right?
Sorry for the grammar mistake. I meant to write “Its that. . .”
Winter Wallaby wins. Though I judge people on whether they use “shibboleth” correctly (as you did); it’s disappointingly rare.
“I meant to write ‘Its that. . .’”
Hopefully, no, you didn’t.
Ignoring the typographical nitpicking and getting back to the subject at hand: I have no objection to using names from other languages and/or cultures, but there are rational limits. Giving an American (or German) kid a name spelled in Cyrillic or Japanese kanji would clearly be insane. However, even if you stick to the local alphabet and eschew wacko interpunction, a responsible parent should consider how much effort an unusual name is likely to cost (for the kid’s entire lifetime).
There are also esthetic considerations, depending on where one lives and/or the relevant cultural heritage in the family. In recent decades, there has been a tendency among (some) German parents to adopt “fashionable” American names, often ignoring crass incongruities between the given and family names (to invent an example: “Felicity Isabella Schulz”).
When selecting for our children, we were looking for names that would work equally well both in Germany and in America, preferably sounding “native” (or at least “understandable”) in both languages. That turned out to be an extremely limiting condition. My first cut was to eliminate any name with an “Umlaut” from the potential list. I also nixed “oddball” letters (such as J, Q, X, & Z), primarily to avoid pronunciation issues. This made it much easier to browse through the list looking for acceptable names.
After we had a short list of candidates, I asked for input from a small circle of close friends and relatives on both sides of the Atlantic. We were not looking for “which name do you like best?”; instead, the question was “are there any names on this list that have unpleasant ramifications, such as connections to current events or celebrities?” This eliminated a few names for reasons we had never considered.
The names we finally selected are not perfectly “native” in both countries, but they work well, and fit well in the family. All in all, an eminently acceptable compromise.
I delayed pursuing parenthood, to the frustration of my maternal unit. My sister delayed even more, but that’s a different story.
When we’d get the subtle hints, I’d suggest that we wanted to pick out the perfect name, first. For a boy, we wanted a strong, powerful name, a name that people would respect. A name unmistakably masculine, a name that would guarantee success in life and business. Little Genghis would have absolutely RULED the grade-school playground…
Or, James, all the kids would have been lining up to try to beat up Little Genghis because, you know, Little Genghis.
Winter Wallaby – not sure if this is what you mean, but in “The West Wing” his test was if the man knew the word Shibboleth and not if he could pronounce it. (Amazed me that I spelled it on the first try, in a way that spell check liked.)
Another name that should be avoided is Meryl. Pronounced Meh-rill not Mirl.
Along with that, both myself and my sister Randi (who is actually and truly, no joking or kidding, married to Randy) I suggest not using names that can be used for both sexes (such as Meryl and Randi/Randy along with loads of others) as the child will be miserable with teasing. Hence my other sister is named Emily (Evan if she had been a boy) and not Eric or Erica as my mom originally wanted to name her (him) as result of our complaints about names that are for either sex.
When I was in junior high I added my middle name, Ann. to my first so that people would know on seeing the name (if it did confuse them totally as a name and how to pronounce it – no matter how many awards I won the Vice Principal in high school could not pronounce it correctly) that I was female – no more seating at bar mitzvahs between 2 girls when there was boy/girl seating.
Luckily my 18th century alter ego, Anne, does not have this problem.
Oops,there is an extra I in the first sentence, sorry.
Meryl A: The “original” test was for pronunciation, not meaning. And the penalty for failure was quite harsh!
“Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, ‘Let me go over,’ the men of Gilead would say to him, ‘Are you an Ephraimite?’ When he said, ‘No,’ they said to him, ‘Then say Shibboleth,’ and he said, ‘Sibboleth,’ for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Forty-two thousand of the Ephraimites fell at that time. (Judges 12:5-6, NIV)”
Meryl A: what about Anne de Montmorency ? ;)
Those Ephraimites aren’t very bright, are they? Unless it really was that they “could not pronounce it right” (upon pain of death!), you know that THEY thought the men of Gilead could not pronounce ‘Sibboleth’ right, and I’m sure were able to make fun of them, imitating their silly pronunciation. So, Gilead dude says, “say ‘Shibboleth'” (not even, “Say that word that means whatever”, but giving you an actual model to imitate!), and you’re claiming to not be an Ephraimite, and you’ve seen up to 42 thousand of your fellow Ephraimites killed before you, and you still can’t bring yourself to say ‘Sibboleth’ in the mincing manner of the Gileads?!
Welease Wodewick!
“Luckily my 18th century alter ego, Anne, does not have this problem.”
That Ananias — he thinks he’s so cute insisting on using his nickname!
Somehow I’m visualizing the Ephraimite story retold with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd — “O.K., Doc, say ‘rascally rabbit. . . “
@ Meryl Ann – In Germany, parents are allowed to use “gender unspecific” names(*), but when they are used as the “first” given name, a second (gender-specific) name must also be supplied.
Ashley is all find and good but you’ve got to love a good Aschgleiagh.
larK: It seems plausible to me that they just couldn’t pronounce it correctly. Certainly there are words in foreign languages that have phonemes I’m not familiar with, and can’t pronounce correctly even when repeating what was just said. (I assume the story is fictional, I just mean hypothetically the core seems plausible.)
Bringing us back to the original topic: Virtually no one in the U.S. correctly pronounces my “weird foreign name,” even when they’re repeating it back to me, and it’s not really a big deal. I feel like the cost over my lifetime has been negligible. Mostly I just go by a nickname, but even in contexts where people are using my full name, it’s not really a big deal.
@WW: that’s a very interesting proposition you bring up! It’s basically saying that the “deafness” to certain phonemes as you developmentally target in on one particular language ALSO happens as you target in on one particular dialect. I’ve never considered that before. And I’ve also always implicitly assumed that you can reproduce (and hear) differently produced phonemes in dialects of your native language — but what if you can’t? Fascinating.
To illustrate my implicit assumptions, when I was teaching English as a foreign language to Brazilians in Brazil, one of their difficulties was the “r” sound in English, because in Portuguese, “r” is either trilled/rolled, or aspirated like an “h” or even like “ch” in German. However, in rural dialects, that everyone loves to imitate and make fun of, the “r” sounds exactly like the American “r”. So they can hear and produce the sound — they just feel it must be “wrong” to produce it in this clearly inferior way, but there is no real barrier (unlike say the difference between “sheep” and “ship” and “beach” and a female dog, which they really can’t hear the difference to). (Similarly, Germans speaking English often bizarrely (to my mind) pronounce “v” like “w” , even though they have the “v” sound in German (as their “w”), and don’t have a “w” sound! “Th” is an interesting case — they don’t have it, but does that mean they can’t hear it? I think they do have it and can hear it, because almost everyone can imitate and make fun of a lisp — they just can’t believe that that is really the correct, serious sound in English…)
Specifically to “Shibboleth”, Portuguese has that difference, though only at the syllable end, not the beginning; people from Rio (cariocas) produce syllable final “s”s as “sh”, and are universally teased by other dialects for doing so — every other dialect can imitate it (as far as I know!). But I’ve never considered if a carioca really understands what everyone else is teasing him/her about, and whether they can produce a syllable final “s” as “s”…
Wow, something new to think about and observe…
I remember calling my friend to tell him our son was born, and after his wife picked up trying to convince her his name was Aaron, not Allen. Finally I said “Have Barry call me when he gets home.”
Let’s not discuss how she refers to Barry.
Then years later, I ran into a woman who introduced herself as “Aaron’s mother” and got increasingly upset when I didn’t know who that was (I’m thinking “I’m pretty sure I know who Aaron’s mother is, lady.”). Turns out she was the mother of my younger son’s girlfriend Erin.
The point being you don’t have to have a very complicated name — go more than half a mile from home — to hit a problem.
“Chowdah” could be a modern shibboleth.
“Say chowder.”
“Chowdah.”
“Begone, Yankee liberal.”
I’m not originally from Boston so I say “chowder”, “park my car in Harvard Yard”, “scarf” etc. I was in a clothing store near Boston and said I was looking for a scarf.
“A scaff? A scaff? Oh, you mean a muffla!”
“Yes, a muffla,” I said.
It cost foah dollas and ninety-five cents.
I was in a military tech school class with a guy with an impenetrable Boston accent, along with a full-blooded Hawaiian. I learned a lot about people from different regions. The only one who fit the stereotype was the Texan.
‘Those Ephraimites aren’t very bright, are they? Unless it really was that they “could not pronounce it right”’
Some people say *and hear* the same vowel for all of the words in “Merrily Mary married Murray”. I know someone who worked at a firm whose name had one of those vowels. It took a long time of practice to say the company name correctly, and *still* can’t hear the difference.
So, yes, it’s quite reasonable to assume that without training they truly couldn’t say it “correctly”.
Professional actors learn to affect dialectical speech patterns. It takes a LOT of practice to do well. Some of them do not or cannot, and take roles in which their natural speech cadences and intonations will not be a distraction. Some can even learn well enough to fool native speakers.
But to affect an accent “on the spot” with no practice or preparation? To do it well enough to fool a native speaker, on the first try? Nah. Not believing it.
The one that’s interesting to me is Craig Ferguson. Craigyferg was, of course, a Scotsman who resettled in the United States. There’s no mistaking his natural speaking voice for an American accent… except, according to Mr. F, when he returns to Scotland, and they complain about how American he sounds.
There are some British actors who do such convincing American accents in American roles that I didn’t pick up on their original nationality until seeing them in a behind-the-scenes clip or another production where they are not putting on the American.
I never questioned Dominic West as a Baltimore cop in The Wire; perhaps he was less convincing for a viewer more familiar with what Baltimore sounds like, but to me he was perfect with General American. Then I saw him in The Hour as the perfectly fatuous senior newscaster and his origins were revealed. (Or perhaps he was doing a different accent than his native one?)
For the last several years he is back in American character in The Affair and again pretty much undetectable as far as I am concerned. I would say the same about co-star Ruth Wilson, except that I had already gotten used to her as English in Luther.
Matthew Goode was convincing as American in The Good Wife, but then was exposed in Downton Abbey and more recently The Crown.
I must have seen previews or promotional materials for The Americans before that great, and recently completed, series was even started, so I knew Matthew Rhys was British (and from the name I would guess Welsh), but in the performance he was convincing as … well niot actually a native speaker of American English, come to think of it, but convincing as his character was supposed to be convincing too.
@Arthur: I quibble with your statement that the company worker couldn’t say the name of the company “correctly”, but your point is well taken; I now realize that despite my protestations in my previous post, I am aware of English Shibboleths that I personally can’t hear the difference in. Aside from your example, for which I’ve never encountered much passion one way or the other, there is the “nuclear” shibboleth, which raises such passion in those who claim others are not pronouncing it “correctly”! I seem to fall into the wrong socio-economic camp with this one; I am disparaged, and, more importantly, I feel that the self-appointed “correct” group is just making sh!t up, because I can’t hear what they’re on about! So I guess if you lined me up and told me to say “nuclear”, even with George W. Bush right in front of me in line, I would still be shunted with his ilk to be slaughtered…
Re: Craig Ferguson.
It always seemed a bit odd when he’d say that, until the time he had his sister on as a guest. Then you could tell what he meant. He had an accent. She had an ACCENT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okv7LFTyMF8
Ferguson can put on an American accent, and it’s pretty good.
larK: I find it difficult to understand how someone can claim that one of two alternate pronunciations is “the” correct one, let alone passionately. I had a lot of criticisms of George W. Bush, but that one always seemed silly. (OTOH, I have trouble even understanding claims that a prescriptivist grammar rule, such as “less” vs “fewer”, is “correct.”)
However, are you saying that you can’t even hear the difference between the two nuclears? That seems surprising. To be clear, the two “nuclears” are nü-klē-ər and nyü-kyə-lər, right? Bush inserted a vowel between the “k” and “l” sounds, typical American news reporters don’t. I would have thought that a vowel insertion would be a clearly detectable difference to a speaker of any language? (I’m not criticizing, just curious if I’m understanding you correctly.)
When I first started working at Megacorp, they issued* us a dictionary, American Heritage, as I recall. One of the features was a “usage panel” that would discuss some words and usage. Things like singular “data”. Those often (or always) had statements like, “70% of the panel found this usage acceptable.”
* With dire warnings that when you left the company, you had to turn in the dictionary or be charged for it. I don’t know if anyone was. By the time I left 36.75 year later, Megacorp had merged with another Megacorp and had stopped issuing dictionaries many years before. No one asked about the dictionary on the way out.
I find it believeable. Language processing can be divided between conscious and subconscious (“hearing” vs. “listening”). We know that human listening is subject to spurious transcription errors, as the brain tries to match up what is actually being said to patterns of speech that are expected (think of “telephone” game, or mondegreens/misheard song lyrics (did Mr. Hendrix really just say “‘scuse me, while I kiss this guy”???)
If part of the brain hears pronunciation A, finds it an acceptable pronunciation of the word, and substitutes whatever symbol the word represents at a subconscious level, it might well be that it also does so for pronunciation B, and since both connect to the same internal representation, they are the same. Kind of like the reaction you might get insisting that “two” and “2” are completely different. Most people will see the distinction, but some might say “what? Two=2. They’re the same number. What difference are you talking about?”
@Winter Wallaby: Yeah, I’m actually claiming the strong, latter case, and yeah, I’m actually as surprised about it as you.
To be clear, when written out phonetically and emphasized exclusively, I suppose I can be made to hear a difference. But left to my own devices, and without focusing in on it, I would never by myself come upon the idea that there was a difference in pronunciation between what the news anchor said, and what Dubya said, other than of course, the news anchor said it like he has a stick up his ass, and Dubya said it like he’s a moron, but that’s true for all the words either one said; I would never have homed in on “nuclear”. And people berated me for my pronunciation, sometimes thinking I was doing it on purpose to be “ironic” (sure, whatever), and other times expressing incredulity that I was using such a base and wrong pronunciation. And I honestly had (and mostly have) no idea what they are talking about. I feel like I’m the victim of an agreed upon joke where everyone pretends to get something where there is nothing to get (no soap, radio!). I am only guessing which pronunciation I must have based on reactions of others and having a clear good side / bad side, with my purported pronunciation falling on the bad side.
I too find it preposterous that I can’t hear when an extra syllable is inserted (or left out), but then I think about one of the most wondrous little factoids I once learned: The word “petal”, pronounced in an American accent (and a two syllable word) is indistinguishable phonetically from the word “pearl” (a one syllable word) pronounced in a Scotch accent…
I was watching some British panel show shortly after the death of David Bowie, and was paying attention, because British people seem to pronounce his name differently from what I thought it was (B-ow-ee vs. B-oh-ee), but then, within the show, various people said it in various ways, with no one mentioning the differences, and in the end, I clocked at least one instance of the same speaker having said it in two ways, such that I was forced to conclude that they simply don’t hear a difference!
larK: The difference doesn’t really jump out at me either. When this first came up with Bush, I had to do a double take and triple take to hear what people were complaining about. But I can definitely hear the difference if I make an effort. (And I’m pretty sure I could insert the vowel properly, if necessary to avoid being killed by a Gileadite.)
My wife was recently the only American-born guest at a birthday party where all the other guests were Indians. The child, Rahul, was complaining that the kids at school kept calling him “Rahul.” All the parents thought that was really funny, and said, oh, and do they also sometimes call you “Rahul”? There were some jokes in this vein, none of which my wife got, because as far as she could tell all three pronunciations were identical.
larK say, ” I quibble with your statement that the company worker couldn’t say the name of the company “correctly”, but your point is well taken”
Unlike descriptivist language, a company (or a person) can determine how their name is pronounced. A company has a fair amount of control of its employees, and if it wants its name pronounced a certain way, the employees have a lot of incentive to get it “right”.
“Unlike descriptivist language, a company (or a person) can determine how their name is pronounced.”
Maybe. Or maybe you embrace the people who won’t or don’t call you by the correct name. See, e.g., commercials for “Chevy”, “Mickey D’s”, or “Bud”.
And back in the 80’s, Isuzu ran an ad campaign about how hard it was to say “Isuzu”, with actors mangling it in fun, creative ways. EEsibooboo! At the end, an extremely Asian “engineer” comes out and says “It’s OK. I can’t say Shibooray, either.” Then they hired David Leisure to be “Joe Isuzu” and ran with that for a while. And then they… disappeared? I must’ve stopped paying attention. Anyway, you can try to control how people say your name, but if you’re not this guy, good luck.
“Or maybe you embrace the people who won’t or don’t call you by the correct name.” Or even the ones who do, but who feel a little funny about it. “When your jam is called Schmucker’s, you know it HAS to be good” (or something like that).
A thought I’ve sometimes kicked around: if there is a definable “very best” pronounciation (or spelling) for a given word, should there not logically also be a definable “very worst”? I would think for instance that the very worst pronunciation for the word “no” would be “yes.”
Reminds me of this:
@Arthur: well, maybe; was the name with sound in question a proper name, or a common word used in the name of the company? If a proper name, I guess I’ll grant you that the company can be the arbiter of the “correct” pronunciation. However, if it’s a common word (say, Nuclear Engineering International), then I would take umbrage with the company proscribing how I am to say “nuclear”.
How about Volkswagen? This is a different case, because it is a foreign word, so I can insist that you are not saying correctly if you don’t speak German, but should they insist on “Folksvahgen”?
My father (German immigrant to the US) insisted on correcting every damn server or vendor as to the “proper” pronunciation of the beers they had on offer, which I guess technically might be OK for Löwenbräu back when the Bavarian brewer licensed some swill to be branded here under that name, but not for Budweiser, which actually was in no way affiliated with the real Budweiser sold in Germany, until they way later acquired one of the two Czech brewers who had been using the name since the beginning and had actually imported to the US under that name before them as an end run around the one whose name they appropriated and they know it, but I digress.
“was the name with sound in question a proper name, or a common word used in the name of the company?”
It was a proper name, probably the last name of the founder (but I’m not sure about that bit). It is certainly a not-rare last name.
Details are being withheld to protect the guilty, the innocent, and me.
Is that like the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? ;-)
Bill – was my post not allowed? I remember posting about my name and hating it, and I keep a list of the comics I posted on to check back the following week – and I don’t see it. Or did my computer eat my “homework”? (Robert is pushing very hard for me to get a new laptop as he listens to me complain about this one and its peculiarities. )
Boy, I am a mess with this strip – ignore my comment about not finding my post(s) as I found out afterwards that there is “a page” of prior posts.
Winter Wallaby, Thank you. I had mostly heard of it in the the West Wing episode and “the President” talks of whether or not one knows what it means being the test. I wonder what happened to people with a lisp?
Olivier – Darn ! I had never heard of Anne de Montmorency, he’s before “my time” – the 1700s. I guess I need to go with Mrs. When we did our recent under the occupation (of the British army) event, we had to carry passes and permission to travel papers (or get hasseled by the “soldiers”). When our company clerk wrote them out for us at our meeting in advance of the event (with quill and ink) after I had mine written up as Anne Everyman, I realized that I would not same on official documents,but Mrs. Alexander Everyman. If we get new papers written up next year (instead of reusing the ones we have) I will have it written that way.
Meryl A (‘“my time” – the 1700s’): then, you want Anne Turgot.