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?

  • Barabas [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    6 days ago

    Are you sure that they are pronouncing Japanese words correctly as it is? Because mispronunciation is a lot easier to pick up if you’re a native speaker. The way that Japanese is romanised is also catered to English pronounciations.

    Anyway, a lot of Slavic names have a history of being pronounced a certain way. It is a bit like being the tedious guy that insists that Barcelona should be pronounced with a lisp or that you can’t pronounce the s in Paris. I don’t doubt that you could get droves of Germans in complaining that English people pronounce Adolf as Aedolff, Karl as Caerl, Luther as Loofah or Merkel as Murkul (4 Germans off the top of my head, there are many more). When it comes to Swedish names I’m shocked if it is pronounced anywhere close to correctly so it doesn’t even register to me.