While Anglos and Westerners usually at least try to pronounce, say, Japanese names right, they don’t even bother with Slavic/Eastern European ones, especially the ones with Cyrillic letters in them, which means that they end up writing the names ending with ‘ić’, as ‘ich’, and pronounce it with K. For example, if the last name is ‘Jovanović’, they’ll write it ‘Jovanovich’ and pronounce it ‘Jovanovik’.
There are names such as Ivan, Bela or Vera, which get pronounced as Ajvan, Beyla or Veyra instead of properly and of course Stalin being pronounced as Stalin instead of Staljin.
Then DimitrescU, if I have to hear it pronounced without U one more time, I’m going to lose it… They keep saying it without U, which just makes it sound French almost as if it’s Dimitresque, how hard is it to pronounce it with U?
Then the last name Ćertić, they write it as Certic or Sertic, which is completely wrong.
And the one I saw most recently, Miloch or Milosh instead of Miloš, it’s one of the most common names in Serbia and I see it frequently written like that for some goddamn reason.
So, why is it so hard for Westoids to at least try to pronounce and write Eastern European names correctly while being able do it accurately for Japanese ones which are miles harder?
its mostly anglophones and francophones imo, since it is very hard for them because their language has a very strong accent. but also they dont even try most of the time. in german television at least they train to pronounce every foreign name correctly, doesnt matter where from, but they pronounce it so correctly that it almost sounds weird at times, i dont know how to explain it. i think the romanized transliteration also plays a big part, becuase mostly asian languages are transliterared in a way how you would write it in english, while slavic names either are in roman letters and dont get transliterated or just change the cyrillic with latin letters. I think it would be better if we would actually write russian Josef as Iosif in english, because that would imply a different pronounciation, while Josef is just a translation of the name Iosif.
for example, do you think anyone who doesnt know any polish would automatically know how to say Brzęczyszczykiewicz? 😂