I’ll admit I was rather ignorant growing up and the first time I had a conversation with someone and I pronounced Iran as “I ran” everyone roasted the shit outta me and shut me down, which like fair whatever. But my point is the pronunciation is secondary if you get the concept; that’s kinda the point of language and accents in general. If we have to pronounce every country or place as its residents call it then we should roast and ignore every English speaker that says “Germany” instead of Deutschland.
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Your comparison is only valid if 4% of the world decided to pronounce it “Yermany” in English while everyone else called it Germany as it had been for millenia.
Okay but Germany calls Germany Deutschland, France calls them Allemagne, the Finns call it Saksa, and so on. Also Germany has not existed as a country for millenia. It unified in the late 1800s. All this said I think we should call places by the names given to them by those that live there.
Edit: before you respond I reread op and realize I’m an idiot
I am pretty old, and i feel like the news cycle when i was a very young kid (this was during the iran hostage crisis in the early 80s) always pronounced it “eye ran”. I feel like that continued through the iran contra scandal, but by then some were pronouncing it “ee-ron”.
I try to get it right now, but its hard to erase that old programming. I also think anyone who “roasted the shit out of you” for it is a doucher. I think giving someone passive shit for that faux pas would be acceptable, but roasting the shit out of someone? Cmon… I don’t feel like it’s that big of a deal.
I’m Canadian and say eh-rawn.
pronunciation is secondary if you get the concept
That’s a really basic form of intellectual generosity, and intellectual generosity is one key to effective critical thinking.
The idea is the only thing that really matters.
People who reject an idea out of hand because they find fault with the presentation (for example) actually do themselves a disservice.
If you know you’re wrong but still don’t change, it’s also a sign of something
I guess maybe. But it’s not anything relevant.
Consider:
If someone says that 2+2=4, they’re right.
If someone says that 2+2=5, they’re wrong.
If the person who says that 2+2=4 is a blithering idiot and a compulsive liar, they’re still right.
If the person who says that 2+2=5 is a world-renowned mathematical genius, they’re still wrong.
And if you base your choice between those competing claims on the people who make them rather than analyzing the claims themselves, you’ll be wrong too.
2+2 is 5 for very large values of 2.
When I wrote that post, I was pretty sure that somebody would try to do an end run on “2+2=5 is wrong” to try to undermine the point.
There are just too many people , especially on the internet, who have based their self-affirmation on ad hominem for an illustration of its inherent failure to go unchallenged.
Do you also say Eyetalian instead of Italian?
Eyendia
I was wondering what country that was… God help me recover!
💀
Speaking as a German:
“Germany” is different, as this is a competely different word, so you are fine.But I would definitely judge you if you used the actual word “Deutschland” instead and competely mutilated it phonetically.
So, my take:
If your country developed its very own name for another country for some historic reason:
That’s kinda cool, keep using it!But if you are just using the country’s official name:
At least make some genuine effort to get the pronounciation right.
Unless perhaps you have already been using it for centuries already, then it’s part of the language and doesn’t make sense to change again.So as a Serb I’m wrong when I say Nederlandi instead of Nederland, Mađarska instead of Magyarország or Francuska instead of France?
I don’t think that is what they meant. The only one of those I think that comes close is Nederlandi. Using Mađarska is not the same as using Magyaroszag but pronouncing it Magaroša or something like that.
Agreed. As a half Iranian, it’s definitely Ee-raw’n for me.
Reminds me of the “kuh-TAR” vs “CUT-urr” thing with Qatar in American english. AFAIK neither is technically more correct than the other but there seems to be an ideological split? As in, conservatives tend to call it “kuh-TAR” and progressives tend to call it “CUT-urr”. I’ve been corrected in pronunciation both ways, so people seem to care a great deal about it. So puzzling.
If we have to pronounce every country or place as its residents call it then we should roast and ignore every English speaker that says “Germany” instead of Deutschland
The lowest hanging fruit here is probably Mexico
Or as Americans call it, America.
That makes sense, right? We changed The gulf of Mexico to The gulf of America, so naturally that means you have Canada to the north. The united states of America in the middle, and America (formerly Mexico) to the south.
And all of this on the continent known as North America. Which just above South America.
Earth is stupid.
“Columbus thought he was in India! And did he worry about being wrong? No! He just called everybody Indians, and we still do it today. Why? 'Cause. You want to be an American? You fill out that ballot because you don’t know what you’re doing. Just like when we named this country after the fourth or fifth guy who discovered it, Amerigo Vespucci. Who cares? America.”
– Tracy Jordan
We changed The gulf of Mexico to The gulf of America
Only on your own maps. The other 95% of the world doesn’t follow this capricious re-name.
Dont know who roasted you; thats just english
It was some Iranian embassy comparing American pronunciation of Iran (I ran) to running away.
Americans have a particularly weird relationship with anything foreign. If you suggested that you should pronounce country names the same way people in those countries do in any place other than the US, no one would take you seriously.
What if I pronounce it as “Aaron?”
Well that’s just the way American English works. Diphthongs are sprinkled everywhere. Pronouncing it as /aɪˈræn/ is just following the common practices.
It would be funny if we started to pronounce America as /eɪˈmeɪr.ɪ.kə/. I think that would be a completely consistent way to say it. Lots of words get butchered the same way, so it’s only fair.
And lots of countries have different names in different languages. Not just different-sounding, but entirely different sometimes.
Americans call it ‘Japan’, but Russians call it (a version of) ‘Nippon’.
Those are pretty interesting twists too. Just look up the etymology of “tea” and “chai”. It boils down to different trade routes and dialects.
Good post!
I tend to expand the concept further.
No pronunciation of a foreign word or name being said by a non native speaker is a problem. Doesn’t matter what the source language is, or the secondary. If a German says New York in a different way than a noo yawkah, who cares? It’s not a big fucking deal.
We all have an accent. And, we all have to encounter words as we find them. Iran, following the various us accents I’m familiar with could be pronounced a dozen ways, and just like I wouldn’t be bothered by some feriner mangling the name of my town, I ain’t all het up over my molasses drawl neighbor mangling their country/city name either. I mean, French and Spanish have their own way of saying London that ain’t very close to the English, and so what?
I’m not fucking french, and I’m not going to waste my time trying to honk out the French pronunciation of croissant. Ain’t gonna expect a Parisian to know the difference between grits and gree-its or gray-its either.
Now, if I’m trying to learn a language to speak it, rather than just using words as they drift across English, that’s a different thing. I’m going to work on my pronunciation as best I can, and likely apologize for mangling it. In that regard, I hold myself to a higher standard than others, because I tend to be happy when folks are learning English and keep their accents. I think it’s beautiful, and US English in particular is enhanced by a myriad of accents being used with it.
So, yeah, I agree with you. Once things are close enough that everyone involved knows what’s being discussed, worrying about exact pronunciations is a waste of time. That’s partly because of my ramble above, and partly because I know damn good and well that most countries are big enough that not everyone native to them says it exactly the same anyway.
There are exceptions though! When a given generic pronunciation in English follows a history of oppression, it’s a damn good thing to put in the effort to avoid that version. The most topical example I can think of is kiev vs kyiv. What with the fuckery going on over there, I tend to go with the Ukrainian spelling and as close to the pronunciation as I can get, as a token of support. I know I mangle the fuck out of it, but that’s beside the point.
American…
Ah-Merr-ick-an
Ah-merr-eek-an
Tomaytoes tomatoes.
Just make sure I don’t confuse it with Ayran, the salty yoghurt drink…
Ayran is good but have you had Doogh though. Mmh-mm.
The media couldn’t believe it,
every spectator became a fan.
No one thought it possible to
run as fast as this guy can.It was the New York marathon,
the best in the world had competed.
And then some Persian nobody
had everyone defeated.They asked him “What’s your secret?
Your nutrition and training plan?”
He looked at them, smiled and admitted:
“Ayran.”😄️👏️ Gotta love a good Ayran poem, huh!
No. Thx I’ll try
🇮🇷🫡
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Brings to mind the Afghanistan -> Offhkhahneestahn and Pakistan -> Bockuhstahn thing that people do to sound worldly. Better not say mozzarella as “matzarella” unless you want to hear about their trip to Italy. Again.
Ehhhhh… So yes, but actually no.
Ex: Bozo (this is a significant mispronunciation of your name) sure is racist!
If people understand I’m talking about you, good enough, right?
Two problems: 1) people may not know I’m talking about you, 2) people will likely assume I’m wrong… But as we’ll see, maybe not…
Names are important, and if you can’t bother to get someone’s name right, or call a group of people by their preferred demonym, I can’t be bothered to respect what you are saying.
While I respect that the idea being conveyed is the important bit, the idea being conveyed is going to sound racist as shit, and like you dont know what you are talking about.
