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?
The problem is when the names are so ridiculously easy to pronounce but they don’t even try, for example, Ivan is like among the easiest and shortest names to pronounce and they menage to screw it up.
No, it’s easy if you speak a Cyrillic language, if you speak English it’s a complete guess based on it’s written form. This is what I mean by it being chauvinistic, you’re assuming your linguistic experience is the default and everyone else should just know the rules to your language, just like most Anglos do. It’s like complaining about you not pronouncing Siobhan or Aisling properly, despite them being spelt how they’re said if you speak Irish.
It’s not that hard to just say Ivan or to pronounce letter U, I can understand specific Cyrillic letters, but since Anglos at least give a shit about some other languages and try it while not giving a shit about Eastern European ones, complain is warranted. That’s like me not knowing how to say John and other most simple ass names in English.
As your post demonstrates, it is actually quite difficult to pronounce Ivan - your attempt at spelling it phonetically in English doesn’t work, because “aj” would be pronounced “ædʒ” or “æʒ” instead of “aɪ”, and you didn’t actually provide a correct pronunciation, you just expect everyone to know.
Anglos really don’t give a shit about other languages, and they get away with it because it isn’t like you knowing how to say John - English has had centuries of almost complete cultural hegemony, while the Slavic languages are very much confined to eastern Europe. We’re familiar with English from our schools and media, and use it to communicate on international websites like we’re doing now. We can’t avoid a familiarity with English, so we see and hear the names regularly, but almost never encounter Slavic names. People aren’t reading “Ivan” and ignoring what they’ve been taught about how to pronounce those letters, they’ve never been taught the Cyrillic pronunciations in the first place. You have been taught English pronunciations, so John is easy to you, but when we switch to normal names in a language you aren’t familiar with you run into the same difficulty Anglos do with Slavic names.
What’s the excuse for not saying U (while it’s clearly written) then?
Btw my stepfather from North Africa pronounces Slavic names better than 99% Anglos without any issue even if he didn’t hear a single Slavic word in his life beforehand.
It’s written “u”, so is assumed to be pronounced “ʌ” - the “skʌ” at the end gets shortened to “sk” with a glottel stop replacing the “ʌ”. To get the “uː” sound in english it would be expected to be spelt “ue”.
Good for him.
You read most Eastern European languages languages the exact way they’re written, which means no shortening of the letters and no French-ifying or Anglo-fying the names.
Just a further proof of how much Westoids don’t give a shit unless it’s a specific language or country they like, when someone who spoke Arabic and French the entire life knows to pronounce Slavic words without an issue. But I’m not surprised nor expect them to give any considering that they always portray Eastern Europeans as either: gopnik thugs, mafia/gang members, drunk wife beaters, buff violent boxers, supervillains/dictators bent on world domination, backward villagers or at best barely competent comic relief characters, which never changed nor will ever change.
So why would you want to even try to portray some backward grey Silent Hill hellhole full of vampires, mafia, alcoholics and bears even remotely accurately?
“You say it how it’s written (no, not like that)”
Did you really type that out and feel it contributes to the conversation?
“you just say it how it’s written, but make sure you don’t say it how it’s written in another lanaguge. Some of the letters literally don’t exist in your language, but don’t worry, you just say it how it’s written.”
I said good for him because I literally don’t care about the non-Anglo non-Slav in the conversation about Anglos pronouncing Slavic names
Ultimately this rounds back to my first comment where I said you’re a chauvinist - you’re a fairly bog standard reactionary with a leftward bias who hasn’t bothered with any critical analysis of their own views before trying to change everyone else’s. You have the soul of an Anglo.
U for example exists in most languages, as do most other letters unlike Ć, Č, Ž, Đ and the rest of specific Cyrillic ones etc, so Anglos should definitely have the ability to pronounce it. Also, there is a replacement for each of these letters, just write C, Z or DZ.
I brought up the example just to show how much Anglos don’t give a shit since they won’t even TRY to pronounce it correctly, meanwhile people who never had any contact with Eastern Europe spell it better right off the bat than 99% Anglos. From my experience Greeks and Chinese also do it without any issue.
I do have a huge problem with Anglos considering the way they always depict Eastern Europe(along with some other parts of the world) and not giving a shit about it so much to the point that they can’t even be bothered to spell few letters right, half-assing the pronunciation and just you know, always portraying Eastern Europeans extremely positively every chance they get (/s). So if having a problem with that is ‘‘chauvinistic’’ and same as Anglos portraying every part of the world they don’t like in that way, changing the other cultures they way they like and wanting to insert their bullshit in other countries then idk what to say.
So as far as I’m concerned, Westoids(Anglos) should stay clear of Eastern Europe as a whole and never even try to depict it in any conceivable way because they did more than enough damage already ever since like Medieval times until today.