Pronunciation guides fail spectacularly
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ICYMI:
Jonathan Edwards, "Mispronunciations spoil graduation at Ta-mul-may Jefferson University", WaPo 5/13/2024:
The school is apologizing after viral footage showed a graduating Sarah announced as “Sigh-eer” while a Molly Elizabeth was pronounced “Mah-lee-nuh Zo-beth.”
Sarah Virginia Brennan had never heard her first name mispronounced before. Then she walked across the commencement stage after graduating from Thomas Jefferson University.
“Sigh-eer Oo-voon-jean-june Bree-nun,” a university official announced to friends and family of the graduates who had earned Bachelor of Science degrees from the university’s school of nursing.
Brennan hesitated at first, unsure whether it was her turn to walk or someone else’s, she told The Washington Post. “I didn’t process how poorly she could do mine,” Brennan said.
Then came Molly Elizabeth Camp.
“Mah-lee-nuh Zo-beth Cahmp,” the official said.
And finally there was Thomas Michael Canevari Jr.
“Ta-mul-may,” the official started before Canevari cut her off.
“Thomas,” he corrected her.
It was the end of a painful six minutes at the commencement ceremony at the Philadelphia university on Thursday. Clips of the ceremony went viral over the weekend, racking up more than 20 million views and comparisons to Key and Peele’s 2012 skit “Substitute Teacher.”
Anyone who's taught recently in U.S. post-secondary education will understand the reasons for adding pronunciation fields of some kind to the conventional spelling of student names. I could give dozens of examples from recent classes, where I had to ask how the name should be pronounced, and would have guessed wrong without asking.
But it's clear that Jefferson University managed to screw up seriously in this case, though it's not clear to me exactly how. Apparently there were no regular spellings, and either the pronunciations were incompetently rendered, or the reader had no training in interpreting them, or both.
The Tonight Show segment:
Update — here's an image of one of the student name cards, showing that the problem was mainly announcer incompetence, and partly the failure of U.S. culture to create and teach a standard phonologically-transparent orthography:
Julian said,
June 27, 2024 @ 6:53 am
At my son's Melbourne University graduation they had a dedicated name caller who had obviously taken great pains to research the "authentic" pronunciation of non-anglo names.
With the curious result that, for the second generation Australian born kids of Greek background (for example), her rendering was more "correct" [Greek-like] than they would ever say themselves.
Philip Taylor said,
June 27, 2024 @ 7:03 am
OK, the card did not display "a standard phonologically-transparent orthography" for the name in question, but it was reasonably transparent (if not necessarily accurate) with one exception : what was the significance of the apostrophe in "S’AIR-uh" ?
GH said,
June 27, 2024 @ 8:06 am
I'm guessing the apostrophe is a syllable stress marker left over from conversion from a different transcription format.
rosie said,
June 27, 2024 @ 9:46 am
Part of the blame must lie with the orthography used in the pronunciation fields. "ih" and "eh" mislead as to the sounds they are meant to represent, as is evident in the fact that they misled that announcer.
Mind you, the article quoted was a little dishonest as to what the announcer said. Her "yuh" was more like [dʒə], not "joon", and her "Camp" sounded OK.
Terry K. said,
June 27, 2024 @ 11:25 am
I think the apostrophe in S'AIR-uh is to indicate the AIR means pronounce it like the word "air".
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 27, 2024 @ 11:36 am
This is of course painful for a phonetician for the obvious reasons. But on top of that, I find it quite sad and disappointing that, given the over-the-top American graduation traditions, and the "cultural weight" of the ceremonies, there isn't more awareness of the fact that you need a trained individual for this kind of job. (And I absolutely don't mean a linguist; but someone who can deal with those transliterations; I would imagine that this is not beyond the capabilities of at least some people at a university?) You wouldn't have the lighting, or sound, or the catering, for that matter, delegated to some random dudes who haven't done it before?
Brian Ogilvie said,
June 27, 2024 @ 12:26 pm
I heard some of the recording, and my impression is that the announcer was a fluent but not native English speaker. For a non-native speaker, it might not be obvious how to pronounce those phonetic transcriptions.
David Morris said,
June 27, 2024 @ 1:47 pm
The announcer at my wife's niece's graduation managed to mispronounce her two-letter Korean surname, even though the correct pronunciation is the same as a common English word.
AntC said,
June 27, 2024 @ 3:45 pm
a dedicated name caller who had obviously taken great pains to research the "authentic" pronunciation of non-anglo names.
Yes, at my Citizenship ceremony for NZ, there was a wild variety of backgrounds for new Citizens: not only Polynesian Islanders, Indian names from Fiji, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, but also refugees from many world trouble spots. And the pronouncer worked really hard.
I do notice the Youtube/artificial engines are having a great deal of difficulty with 'Keir Starmer'.
JPL said,
June 27, 2024 @ 4:11 pm
It reminds me of a memorable (and important for me personally) graduation ceremony that turned into a fiasco when the dean, who was reading the names, messed up just about every name on the quite long list, familiar and exotic alike. After the event I asked the dean, "What happened?", and he said "I forgot my reading glasses".
Bloix said,
June 27, 2024 @ 4:20 pm
Apparently the author of this post and all the commentator seem to accept that literate English speakers at a university in Philadelphia should be handed phonetic spelling for names like Thomas, Virginia, Sarah, and Brennan in order to say them in public.
Can we please put the moronic political correctness of this in a box for a moment while we allow ourselves to acknowledge that there is a substantial English vocabulary of given and surnames that are in effect ORDINARY ENGLISH WORDS that are pronounced in a universally known standard fashion and don't need phonetical spelling, and that giving non-specialist English speaker the phonetic spelling of such names is worse than inane and can have no effect other than to cause a cascade of insulting mispronunciations that will bring humiliation on the students and ridicule on the institution?
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 27, 2024 @ 5:04 pm
@Bloix Even if it is political correctness (and the only aspect I can think of that could be explained that way would be the fact that all the names were apparently treated this way), a competent announcer would be able to judge which of the respellings could be safely ignored.
Gregory Kusnick said,
June 27, 2024 @ 6:59 pm
Suppose there had been a graduating student named Arthur Pearson, and that his native dialect is non-rhotic. What should be written on the card? If the announcer's dialect is rhotic, what should they say?
CD said,
June 27, 2024 @ 8:47 pm
At my university's graduation this tear, something new: each student had a card with a code that was scanned as they took the stage, triggering a recorded reading of the name. I assume they contracted with a business that makes these in advance. There were different voices.
Results on the whole better than live readers, but still lapses. Spanish accents all over the place, and Indian names read by someone clearly not desi.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 27, 2024 @ 11:24 pm
JPL referred to an incident where the mispronouncer gave the excuse of 'I forgot my reading glasses.' Everyone forgets things occasionally, but I've heard this said many times in a range of settings. It seems to me that some people have moved from forgetful to careless to even reckless about their reading glasses. However, I wear my glasses all the time, so perhaps there are considerations that I am not fully aware of.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 27, 2024 @ 11:43 pm
From the original article: 'Sarah Virginia Brennan had never heard her first name mispronounced before.'
I've heard the first syllable rhyming with 'chair' or 'car', so I'm a little surprised that this Sarah had only heard the first version. But perhaps there is more pronunciation variation here in Australia. Also, some websites I looked at suggested that it is only the 'Sara' spelling that gets the 'car' pronunciation. It seems odd that the presence or absence of a final H could affect the pronunciation of the previous syllable. Other websites gave other advice and I couldn't get a definitive answer on the pronunciation of 'Sarah' and 'Sara'.
Philip Taylor said,
June 28, 2024 @ 3:37 am
Michael — « I couldn't get a definitive answer on the pronunciation of 'Sarah' and 'Sara' » — I would suggest that that is because there is no definitive answer. Statistically I would agree that "Sarah" is more likely to be pronounced /ˈseər ə/ than /ˈsɑːr ə/, and vice versa for "Sara", but I am certain that there are exceptions.
Jamie said,
June 28, 2024 @ 3:40 am
@Mchael Vunk That raises the interesting question of what mis pronunciation means. I would regard those two pronunciations of Sara[h] as alternative correct pronunciations. I don’t know whether someone with the name would consider the other pronunciation wrong or just different
Pedro said,
June 28, 2024 @ 4:50 am
There are few things I hate more than that "phonetic" spelling system. The rule seems to be to insert a H after a few of the long vowels and most of the short vowels, then add the word EYE into a few syllables.
Why anyone would think the syllable /dʒ ɪn/ as in Virginia should be spelt JIHN rather than JIN has always been beyond me.
Let me have a go at how the other students' names might have been rendered:
– Molly Elizabeth Camp: MAH-lee uh-LIH-zuh-beth KAMP
– Thomas Michael Canevari Jr: TAH-muhs M’EYE-kuhl KAH-nuh-VAHR-ee JOO-nyuhr
– Allison Nicole Bishop: AL-ih-suhn nuh-KOHL BISH-shuhp
– Maeve Elizabeth Brotoski: MAY'V ul-LIH-zuh-beth bruh-TAH-skee
Jenny Chu said,
June 28, 2024 @ 5:02 am
One time, I was singing with a chorus named the "Bach Choir" (a common name for choirs that sing classical music). We are located very far from Germany. However we were once lucky enough to sing at an event hosted by the German Consulate, just after the Consul General's speech. He made us a key subject of his speech, waxing rhapsodic about how German cultural traditions are shared all over the world, including this wonderful BACH Choir. He pronounced "Bach" perfectly in German each time he said the name, kind of shaming us because we had been prone to say it more like [bak].
When he concluded, the emcee, a bored German woman from the consulate who had clearly been dragged into this job, read from her cue cards in a thick German accent. "Sank you Herr Consul General for zis speech. Now, ve vill have a song from the …" [reading cue cards] "… Beach Choir."
…
Pedro said,
June 28, 2024 @ 5:14 am
Correction:
– Allison Nicole Bishop: AL-ih-suhn nuh-KOHL BIH-shup
I've tried to render all these names with correct pronunciation but using respellings similar to the one shown on the card, taking into account the particular mispronunciations that can be heard in the clip
GH said,
June 28, 2024 @ 6:29 am
@Bloix:
Obviously there are some names that are so familiar that a phonetic transcription is unnecessary and even confusing (as seen here). But at the same time there are names that you cannot expect everyone to know how to pronounce without a guide.
So where do you draw the line for which names require a phonetic guide? And who makes the determination?
Thomas, sure, but what about Tomas? Is Graham transparent? What about Graeme? If half the graduating Martins are French-Canadian, do only they get a guide? What do you do about Mckayla/Mackayla/McKella/Mikayla/Micheala/Mikaela/Michaella/Mikaylah/Makaela/Micaela/Mikala?
What about Evelyn? Delilah? Leah? José? Jorge? Quanesha? Shimon? Hakim? Hans? Saoirse? Ioan? Malin?
Any subjective policy is ultimately going to be based on assumptions about which names—and which types of names—the person reading them will be familiar with, and will (very reasonably) be seen as signaling "these names are normal, while these names are weird."
Better to just be consistent and provide a phonetic guide for all.
Philip Taylor said,
June 28, 2024 @ 7:05 am
[…] and will (very reasonably) be seen as signaling "these names are normal, while these names are weird" — I disagree. What is signalled is simply "these names are likely to be pronounced correctly without a phonetic transcription, whilst these names are unlikely to be pronounced correctly and therefore would benefit from a (good) phonetic transcription. Nothing to do with "normal" or "weird" at all.
GH said,
June 28, 2024 @ 8:35 am
@Philip Taylor
But this likelihood is based to a very large extent on presumed familiarity. ("Thomas," for example, is not pronounced as you would expect from general English pronunciation patterns.) In other words on an assumption about which names are normal and which are weird.
Philip Taylor said,
June 28, 2024 @ 8:40 am
No, still, not "normal" or "weird", merely which are "regular" and which are "irregular". Incidentally, I cannot recommend too highly Greg Brooks’ Dictionary of the British English Spelling System, which is second-to-none in this field.
Benjamin E. Orsatti said,
June 28, 2024 @ 8:49 am
David Morris said,
Oh?
(Sorry, I'll see myself out now…)
GH said,
June 28, 2024 @ 8:55 am
So then you are arguing that "Thomas" needs a phonetic transcription, since it is irregular?
What about "Hakim"? Without consulting a dictionary I would argue that that's regular, but I can still easily imagine it mispronounced, e.g. as /ˈheɪkəm/.
Incidentally, I included "Malin" in the list because I once listened to an audiobook where I thought the main character's name was "May Lin" (and I assumed her to be Asian-American) until she mentioned her Swedish roots. (It's a version of Magdalene with /ˈmɑː.lɪn/ as the standard pronunciation.)
Jonathan Smith said,
June 28, 2024 @ 8:57 am
This is old but never gets old. How did the announcer get through so many cards without taking a cue from the apparent sheer f—d-up-ness of literally every student's name? Was the announcer seeing cards as in the image — with the standard orthographic versions shown at top? If so, again WTF? Did someone not the announcer create "phonetic" spellings of every student's name off the cuff and then expect someone else to read them cold correctly? W…T…F…
Anyway some name databases now contain a field where person records self saying own name, which is clearly what is needed here and elsewhere… use the recordings or listen, learn, and re-read properishly.
Philip Taylor said,
June 28, 2024 @ 9:09 am
GH — So then you are arguing that "Thomas" needs a phonetic transcription, since it is irregular? — No ! I am saying that those names that could reasonably be expected to be pronounced correctly would not warrant a phonetic gloss; those names that could reasonably be expected to be pronounced incorrectly in the absence of a phonetic gloss should be afforded a phonetic gloss. Nothing more, nothing less, and nothing at all to do with whether a particular name is regular or irregular as far as spelling v. pronunciation are concerned. No names are "normal", no names are "weird".
GH said,
June 28, 2024 @ 9:45 am
@Philip Taylor
That's just saying the same things in different words. "Reasonably expected to be pronounced correctly" begs the questions: reasonably expected of whom, by whom, and on what basis?
In reality, you're instituting a subjective criterion that must unavoidably be evaluated based on the biases of the individual making the determination, based in large part on what names and what kind of names are familiar to them. (Is Nigel or Miguel more likely to be mispronounced? What makes that determination "reasonable"?)
So again it comes back to distinguishing "normal" names from "weird" ones.
Philip Taylor said,
June 28, 2024 @ 9:50 am
" reasonably expected of whom ?" — the person introducing the graduands; "by whom ?" — the person responsible for producing the name cards; "on what basis ?" — common sense.
Terry K. said,
June 28, 2024 @ 10:41 am
I do feel like, with the particular names that were mispronounced, anyone who can easily make sense of the phonetic spellings very likely isn't going to need them for those particular names.
More generally, when giving phonetic spellings of any sort, make sure the person reading is familiar with the system (or systems) used.
Martha said,
June 28, 2024 @ 1:11 pm
I'm assuming the card pictured is the same one that the announcer read from. I don't understand why she completely disregarded the actual name written above rather than also using it as a guide.
At my graduation, we were given notecards to write out the "phonetic" spelling of our names. (Of course, the ling graduates joked "Oh, so we write it in IPA?") As I recall, that's all we were supposed to write on the cards. I just wrote my first name as-is and rewrote my last name.
Alyssa said,
June 28, 2024 @ 3:19 pm
At my graduation as well, we wrote our own phonetic transcriptions for our names. I don't think schools have a database of pronunciations sitting around to generate their own, so I'd be surprised if it wasn't the same thing here. Which is likely part of the problem – there's no system for the announcer to train on, every student is using their own ad-hoc system.
I feel for the announcer here, it's pretty clear that for whatever reason she decided to try and sight-read the transcriptions without referencing back to the spellings and that's a tough task. Especially if they are inconsistent and don't indicate word boundaries.
maidhc said,
June 28, 2024 @ 7:44 pm
A simple though not foolproof system is to have the student walk up to the person announcing the names and say their name, which the person then repeats into the microphone.
Allowing students to write their own phonetic versions doesn't work very well because there's no way to get them to follow a consistent system.
The suggestion of having students record a pronunciation of their own name and play it back is the best. But it requires having the necessary equipment set up.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 29, 2024 @ 3:45 am
@Jonathan Smith, @maidhc: Recordings are far from foolproof. A non-native speaker at one end (student or announcer) can lead to an inability to repeat what is heard. That's why, in an L2 setting, we still teach transcription.
BTW @maidhc it's 2024 and no special equipment is needed. The best results can be achieved using your phone.
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 5:42 am
Jarek — "it's 2024 and no special equipment is needed. The best results can be achieved using your phone" — which then needs to be connected (via Bluetooth, or whatever) to the PA system, and the "play" button pressed at exactly the right moment. Almost certainly better than the system that was used at Thomas Jefferson, but still not foolproof …
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 29, 2024 @ 6:03 am
Oh I was thinking more of the recording side. For playback, well, apparently we can have more certainty that there will be competent PA people (than announcers) at an event like this, and they will surely have ways of playing back content, because they play back content anyway (music etc.).
In general it's a great idea for a mobile app: Collect names from students on phones, make a database, and an easy interface for playing this back. If this doesn't exist (I suspect it does in fact, or someone else is writing the app as we speak), then I hereby copyright this. Contact me for a quote ;)
Andrew Usher said,
June 29, 2024 @ 6:58 am
First, this isn't rocker science and there should be no need to be too clever.
Second, this is a ceremony and to me, certainly, that would be diminished if the names were recorded instead of read by a person.
The solution in this case was simple: just practice it in one prior session, and that would quickly reveal any problems. How could you expect it to go right when the announcer had not encountered this before, as evidently was the case?
No one mentioned using IPA for the transcription; reasonably, as that would be a bad idea here. And giving a transcription for _every_ name, not just 'hard' ones, should, beside the problems already identified, also help the announcer in not having to try to second-guess that decision or switch between the normal and phonetic spellings.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 29, 2024 @ 7:25 am
How could you expect it to go right when the announcer had not encountered this before, as evidently was the case? With a trained competent announcer who knew what they were doing, it absolutely could go right.
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 7:51 am
Andrew — "No one mentioned using IPA for the transcription; reasonably, as that would be a bad idea here" — why would it be a bad idea ? OK, the IPA is not really first-language-neutral, but it is a darn sight more first-language-neutral than (e.g.,) the system used to generate "S'AIR-uh vuhr-JIHN-yuh BREH-nuhn", and provided that the IPA transcription was a broad phonemic one rather than a narrow phonetic one, it should provide all the information necessary to allow the graduand’s name to be pronounced in an acceptable way.
Adrian Bailey said,
June 29, 2024 @ 9:28 am
What Bloix said.
Rodger C said,
June 29, 2024 @ 10:02 am
With a trained competent announcer who knew what they were doing, it absolutely could go right.
This is not a description of a typical university official.
Gregory Kusnick said,
June 29, 2024 @ 10:49 am
Philip: "why would it be a bad idea ?"
Because the number of competent IPA users at a typical high school is effectively zero. Certainly the students can't be expected to render their own names in IPA with any consistency. (Somewhere in the multiverse there may be a world in which IPA competency is a requirement for high school graduation, but not here.)
So the school would most likely be obliged to hire an outside consultant to interview all the students, transcribe their names, and read them back at the ceremony. I don't see how this is any less impersonal than having the kids say their own names.
Gregory Kusnick said,
June 29, 2024 @ 11:15 am
OK, so having hit Submit and scrolled back to the top, I see that I've misremembered the original post and that in this instance we're talking about university students, not high school students. Nevertheless, using IPA for this purpose doesn't scale or generalize well since it requires an individual interview with each graduate as well as expertise that may not be available in house.
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 11:16 am
But we aren't discussing a high school, are we Gregory ? Unless the name "Thomas Jefferson University" is a serious misnomer, we are discussing a university are we not ? And no, I would not "[expect] the students […] to render their own names in IPA", but I would expect there to be at least one faculty member able to do that, and then to present the students by name. Would you not ?
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 11:17 am
Sorry, posted my comment before you posted your correction.
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 11:31 am
But if I may, I would like to pursue the question of familiarity (or otherwise) with the IPA a little further. In the UK, by far the most authoritative dictionary is generally considered to be the OED, and taking a word not at random but rather selected for its potential difficulty in pronunciation, I consulted the OED concerning "apothegm". And it offered me as its pronunciation guide /ˈapəθɪm/. What, may I ask, is the equivalent dictionary in the United States, and what pronunciation does it offer for "apothegm" ?
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 29, 2024 @ 12:18 pm
@Philip Taylor
As I'm sure you know, American dictionaries prefer respelling to IPA. There are different systems, and you need to be acquainted with each one to use it with confidence.
Merriam-Webster, for example, gives ˈa-pə-ˌthem.
The equivalent solution in the UK is the BBC respelling: AP-uh-them. (Which, BTW, looks quite like what they did at that graduation ceremony.)
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 1:21 pm
No, I was not aware of that, Jarek. Although I am reasonably well-travelled, my exposure to North American culture has almost entirely been confined to Ontario (Canada), and the only dictionary to which I needed access whilst there was a French one. So, it would seem that therein lies the problem — if American dictionaries eschew the IPA, how can we hope for faculty members (other than in departments of linguistics) or staff members to be familiar with it. Way back in 1978–1982, Professor Donald Knuth developed TeX, arguably the most powerful typesetting system available then or now [1]. But the input language was 7-bit, and almost all non-US characters had to be composed of a diacritic and a base letter (e.g., \'e for é). It was not until 1990 (or the years leading up thereto) that a group of European TeX users, led by Frank Mittelbach, persuaded Don that TeX needed to support pre-composed accented characters, and it was not until 2004 that Jonathan Kew released XeTeX, which allows full UTF-8 input. It therefore seems to me that American academia needs to bring pressure on American dictionary publishers to eschew their idiosyncratic "re-spelling" systems, and adopt the IPA as the way to represent the sounds of words.
[1] http://www.practicallyefficient.com/2017/10/13/from-boiling-lead-and-black-art.html
Philip Taylor said,
June 29, 2024 @ 1:41 pm
The hyperlink from the document at practicallyefficient.com to "comparison.pdf" has suffered from bit-rot; it is (of course) archived at web.archive.org — http://web.archive.org/web/20171113084528if_/http://www.zinktypografie.nl/comparison.pdf
And TeX is not pronounced “tek”, as stated by Eddie Smith — it is pronounced /tex/, although Knuth did not use the IPA to explain this, as a result of which many (most ?) Germans ended up pronouncing it / teʃ/.
Martha said,
June 29, 2024 @ 5:43 pm
I'm actually curious as to whether Sarah pronounces her name BREH-nuhn and not BREH-nihn.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
June 30, 2024 @ 7:56 am
@Philip Taylor: Although I am reasonably well-travelled, my exposure to North American culture has almost entirely been confined to Ontario
I would suspect that one does not at all need to travel anywhere at all from their current location to be inundated with American culture on a daily basis. (That's why people on here tend to be surprised whenever you claim you're not familiar with it…) So apologies but hmmm.
And you certainly don't need to use a dictionary to be acquainted with the respelling approach to representing pronunciation. Images like these have been an advertising/marketing/graphic design trope for quite some time, e.g. here or here.
Philip Taylor said,
June 30, 2024 @ 8:57 am
Well, Jarek, I do not know how I might reasonably "be inundated with American culture on a daily basis" — I have no television licence (by choice), I read the Guardian and the Economist and the last film that I watched at the cinema was 1917 (a British war film), so compared to most I imagine that my exposure is pretty minimal. Yes, your "images such as these" shew some re-spellings, but primarily they shew syllable breaks and there is clear evidence of the IPA in some — however, as I had never seen them before I followed your hyperlink, I was unaware of their content.