Authenticity of pronunciation
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[This is a guest post by M. Paul Shore]
Because my January 19th post about the pronunciation of "Davos" has attracted a number of comments on the general question of what degree of pronunciational authenticity mainstream and semi-mainstream broadcasters should attempt for foreign proper nouns and, occasionally, common nouns, and under what circumstances, I've decided to submit this new post on that general question rather than have my thoughts about it buried in that previous thread.
Because discussions of the question tend to stagnate and become nearly meaningless as a result of the assumption or near-assumption that there can be only two categories of authenticity, namely "authentic" and "inauthentic", I’d like to take a stand against that binary thinking and propose that four basic levels of authenticity be recognized:
Zero Attempted Authenticity (ZAA): Broadcaster simply pronounces foreign nouns, or their conventional alphabetical transcriptions, according to the typical alphabet-letter sound values of his or her native language. Generally not an honorable way to go. Also placed in this category would be longstanding alternative versions of foreign nouns, however justifiable or unjustifiable, such as "Brunswick" for Braunschweig, or "Florence" for "Firenze".
Non-Xenophonetic Authenticity (NXA): Broadcaster pronounces foreign words as closely as possible to the foreign original while staying within the phonetic repertory and normal sound-patterns of his or her native language, but not being bound by that native language's typical alphabet-letter sound values. For example, an English-language broadcaster could follow Venezuelan pronunciation and say "Benesuela" for "Venezuela" (while not affecting a Venezuelan accent) because that uses no non-English sounds and no non-English sound patterns, though it doesn't follow the typical alphabet-letter sound values. This is the level all broadcasters should aim for, in my opinion, particularly because it respects the self-consistent, self-contained phonetic integrity of the native language (whatever that may be), and strikes a compromise among the often fervid proponents of the various possible approaches.
Partial Xenophonetic Authenticity (PXA): Broadcaster pronounces foreign words using some sounds and/or sound-patterns outside his or her native language's repertories. This can be as simple and semi-inconspicuous as, say, tossing in a nasal vowel for the name "Emmanuel Macron"; or it can be considerably more elaborate, with a concomitant increased risk of irritating the viewers and listeners. PXA can be done either advisedly or naïvely. Ideally, the broadcasters doing it advisedly should have a little linguistics knowledge so as to understand that all languages have limits to their repertories of sounds and sound-patterns, fostering a sense of how far it might be appropriate for them to go. Those who do it naïvely can be rather toxic, because they often imagine their pronunciations to be much more authentic than they actually are, and they seem to have no idea of what a huge variety of sounds there are in the languages of the world and how hard it would be to master them even for the few dozen most common languages; and they tend to be remarkably self-righteous about it all.
Full Xenophonetic Authenticity (FXA): Broadcaster pronounces the foreign words exactly as a native speaker would (though, perhaps hypocritically, ignoring the existence of dialectical variants), in effect momentarily stepping out of the broadcasting language and into the foreign language. Generally achievable only by native-bilingual broadcasters, though PXA types are often gripped by the fantasy that they can achieve it too. Frequently irritating to viewers and listeners even when done perfectly.
In addition to these four categories, I dream of an even higher fifth category, namely Xenogrammatical and Xenophonetic Authenticity (XXA), in which broadcasters would be forced, upon pain of being accused of racism, to inflect the foreign nouns they use according to the foreign language's rules. For example, you could have a broadcast news report that went something like the following: "Moskva has been at the top of today's news. President Trump went to Moskvu amid hopes for an agreement with President Putinym, even as critics speculated that he was merely trying to improve relations with Moskvoy as a counterweight to Běijīng. As soon as Trump was in Moskve, he made a short speech reiterating that he considers himself a friend of President Putina, and mentioning that he had brought President Putinu a gift of Idaho caviar as a symbol of the cultural links between the United States and Rossiey". I can't describe the glee with which, if I were the newly appointed president of PBS or NPR, I'd confront my news staff with this requirement. And to their objection "We're speaking English, not a foreign language", I'd reply "Oh, really? Then what's with all the put-on Spanish accents?" Hopefully a de-escalation down to NXA would soon follow, though that's probably being absurdly overoptimistic.
Non-U.S. readers of the preceding should understand that the nonprofit networks PBS (Public Broadcasting Service, so-called; not actually a government-run operation as the name might be taken to indicate) and NPR (National Public Radio, similarly so-called) are particularly frequent offenders of the excessive-PXA and overused-FXA types–especially, and wildly disproportionately, when it comes to Spanish–accounting for my preoccupation with them.
Selected readings
- "A better pronunciation of 'Davos'" (1/19/26)
- "Why we say 'Beizhing' and not 'Beijing'" (5/2/19)
- "How they say 'Beijing' in Beijing" (8/18/08)
Jonathan Smith said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:02 am
Well I agree in the sense there is a popular perception that say a non-Anglospheric personal name can be pronounced either "correctly" i.e. a la the original language or "incorrectly" and so naturally we should aim for "correctly." There is even a semi-sophisticated view that "we" "code-switch" for such names, when actually (1) "we" just pronounce them various kinds of wrong, and (2) "code-switching" for such names is in fact neither practical nor desirable: instead, if available, one would be well-advised to use as model the versions of heritage speakers of the pertinent language, which are of the English-phonology-normalized, uncontrived "NXA" type (note: ignore the fact these these people naturally think their pronunciations are "correct" in the sense up above.)
ajay said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:09 am
There is another option, which is "use whichever version makes your meaning clearest to your audience, however wildly inconsistent this may be". For example, I am fully aware that "Chiang Kai-shek" is not a very good way of representing how most L1 Mandarin speakers pronounce the name of the former Generalissimo. However, if I am writing about him for a generalist audience in the UK, I emphatically do not care. The important thing is for me to use the term that they are familiar with, so they know who I am talking about. Similarly, I know it's pronounced "Meh-hee-co" in Spanish. I know that's what the inhabitants call it. I don't care, I am not going to call it that if I am speaking to a load of English-speakers who know it as "Meck-sick-o". I am trying to communicate here, and I will do whatever is most likely to get my message across to my intended audience.
VVOV said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:33 am
Since this discussion has been moved to a new thread, and both versions of the OP have specifically complained about the treatment of Spanish in U.S. broadcast media… I'll restate my view that Spanish in the U.S. context has a special status that other non-English languages don't. About 45 million Americans speak Spanish at home, which is about 15% of the entire U.S. population and over 10x more than the next most widely spoken non-English language (Mandarin). It is a reasonable assumption that many viewers/listeners (and the broadcasters/journalists/content creators) for a given piece of English-language media in the U.S. will also speak/understand Spanish, to an extent that simply doesn't hold for any other language (e.g., Swiss German in the "Davos" example).
The OP imagines, in quite politically inflected terms by the way, that the use of "xenophonetic" Spanish pronunciations in U.S. media is always a self-conscious affectation aimed at complying with an imagined woke agenda or avoiding accusations of racism. I think they underestimate how widespread English-Spanish code-switching and bilingualism is, and that many broadcasters may be reflecting usage that occurs more widely in their own idiolect and speech community, not only in the artificial context of a radio/TV broadcast.
VVOV said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:41 am
To addend the second paragraph – I acknowledge that these pronunciation choices do sometimes act as political shibboleths. But I think the OP overstates the influence of that as a motivating factor.
Victor Mair said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:44 am
I would also like to mention that, when you use ATMs, want to register for a hotel, call a business or other organization over the phone, interact with government agencies, etc., Spanish is almost always offered as a option.
It's almost like French for anything you do in Canada.
Mai Kuha said,
January 22, 2026 @ 10:04 am
Four things:
I'm just one data point, but for me personally switching to Spanish phonology (and occasionally the phonologies of other languages) for proper nouns in Spanish is largely not performative. Rather, I have often felt strangled, trapped, and diminished by the relentlessly U.S.-centric perspectives that I tend to be engulfed in, and those "Benesuela" moments restore me to the sanity of regaining access to other perspectives.
In the aftermath of recent events, I could swear I heard some non-Spanish-speaking supporters of the current administration refer to Nicolás Ma[ð]uro — can anyone confirm? If they did, I don't understand that at all.
"Afghanistan" pronounced by Amna Nawaz and Joe Biden:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aw_znzQQyHA
This article unpacks some of these complexities:
Hall-Lew, Lauren, Elizabeth Coppock, and Rebecca L. Starr. "Indexing political persuasion: Variation in the Iraq vowels." American Speech 85, no. 1 (2010): 91-102.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Lauren-Hall-Lew/publication/238440040_Indexing_political_persuasion_Variation_in_the_Iraq_vowels/links/02e7e531f2756871b1000000/Indexing-political-persuasion-Variation-in-the-Iraq-vowels.pdf
sam said,
January 22, 2026 @ 10:55 am
There's a further fun nuance with approximational xenophonetics, namely that the donor and receiver languages might disagree about what's the 'closest'/'best' approximation. For example, most native speakers of most languages lacking dental fricatives seem to hear those as closest to /s/ and /z/ and would render an English loanword using them, but a native English speaker might prefer to map the dental fricatives to /t/ and /d/ or even /f/ and /v/, on the basis that there exist well-known native English lects that do just that but very few that map them to /s/ and /z/.
Another wrinkle is where one receiving speaker has a great approximation, but it causes trouble for another speaker due to lect differences, e.g. 'Myanmar', which has no /r/ in the final syllable in the donor language but rather an open vowel, which a non-rhotic speaker will produce ~acceptably from the spelling, but which causes disaster for rhotic speakers either reading from the spelling or trying to correctly map non-rhotic phonemes to their lect.
Scott P. said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:02 am
I think it perfectly reasonable for a speaker of a language to use place names from that language for foreign words. Folks of whatever language don't agonize about Spanish speakers referring to "Londres" or "Nueva York," or the French calling it "Edimbourgh". It's just what those places are called in those languages.
Viseguy said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:14 am
I agree with @Scott P. "Benesuela" is not English; "Venezuela" is. English-language broadcasters may reasonably be expected to speak English.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:16 am
I agree with Scott P., and find the first two sets (avoid Brunswick and do Benesuela) contentious.
Countries in particular, and many major cities, have native names in most major languages (maybe even all — I don't know). Venezuela is an English word composed of English phonemes. You may adopt NXA or the upper levels for lesser-known names but not for countries and those other locations that have native names in the "recipient" language. Like Brunswick.
But this has been said on LL many, many times.
On the other hand, to say that Spanish /beneˈswela/ contains no non-English sounds or patterns is simply factually wrong. English would not have full vowels in the unstressed syllables, and /a/, which would have to be done as TRAP for "authenticity", is not allowed word-finally.
Victor Mair said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:21 am
Chinese speakers transform all place names, no matter where, into Chinese: Niuyue = New York, Kashi = Kashgar, Mosike = Moscow / Москва, etc.
wgj said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:43 am
What is the objective of those kinds of suggestions? Language is not a plaything (to most people), but serves to communicate. Whenever I refer to my hometown while speaking in a foreign language, I always use the pronunciation typical for that language instead of pronouncing it natively, because that's the most effective way to communicate. My late father went even a step further and would sometimes mispronounce his own name in a way that helps the other person understand how it's spelled. I also have a friend named Michael who would introduce himself using different pronunciation of that name depending on what language he's speaking.
The various proposed level of pronunciations in this post goes the opposite way. Even NXA, the second level on this list, risks leaving the listener not understanding what is referred to by "Benesuela". That's an unacceptable cost for the authenticity, which has no communicative value (other than showing off, which is a negative value).
Stay with Zero Attempted Authenticity, I say.
Philip Taylor said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:51 am
M. Paul Shore (hereinafter and elsewhere "MPS") certainly demonstrates that one can easily overdo the use of inflection, but I believe that a certain level of inflection is required out of politeness. Let us suppose, for example, that Petr Zlatuška's wife's given name is Bĕla— to refer to her as "Bĕla Zlatuška" would (to my mind) verge on rudeness (unless explained by ignorance) whereas to refer to her as "Bĕla Zlatuškova" would be both polite and correct. N'est-ce pas ?
Ryan said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:12 pm
It's worth noting for those who may not have followed American political discourse that PBS and NPR while not literally government-run, have been substantially government-funded.
The networks offered up the misleading sound bite that "only about 2%" of funding came from the government. The theme was that GOP efforts to cut funding were silly, since it would have little impact on public radio and television.
The sleight of hand comes from the fact that 30% of NPR direct funding came from member station fees, and the member stations receive huge amounts of large amounts of government funding. And the production of many NPR programs is outsourced to locals or other non-profits that are likely heavily subsidized. So when the cuts were actually made, NPR had to admit that it made a huge difference. The head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting called the cuts 'devastating', and some NPR affiliates have been laying off a third of staff.
And, it has undercut trust in NPR news as I and others have realized they were reporting half truths about themselves.
Daniel said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:17 pm
I agree with ajay and Scott P. You want to make it most clear for those in your audience. What Victor derides as ZAA is generally best for that, especially as it helps to connect the spoken pronunciation to the accepted spelling.
The NXA proposal to pronounce Venezuela as if it were spelled Benesuela would be a bit confusing for those unfamiliar with the sound changes V->B and Z->S which are present in Spanish, but not in English. One place where there is appetite (pun intended) for NXA pronunciations would be in food words. "Pizza" is pronounced as "peet-sa", not "pizz-a". It would be interesting to consider why that is true for those, but not so much for place names.
I do also agree with VVOV that not all deviations from the typical pronunciation toward a more native-like pronunciation are affected. I think many listeners appreciate the chance to learn a little bit more about a speaker's background through their pronunciation if it is an authentic connection. (You have a right to speak with a more native-like pronunciation if you belong to a speech community that uses that pronunciation, as it reveals something true about you.) Of course, you should be aware that you are doing a bit of extra teaching here, so you may need to help unfamiliar listeners catch on and not just leave them in confusion.
I think most speakers do not appreciate being told they must change their pronunciation or else they are either racist/xenophobic on the one hand or too-foreign/affected on the other.
Daniel said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:21 pm
My mistake. The author of the post is M. Paul Shore, not Victor. I see that now.
Well said, wgj.
VVOV said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:24 pm
Responding to several other comments– I think we can draw a distinction between the treatment of foreign-origin names *that have a widely known and standardized English equivalent*, and those that do not.
My n=1 intuition as an L1 American English speaker who uses my Spanish L2 frequently in daily life, and is not a journalist or broadcaster… is that if I were tasked with reading an English-language text on the radio that contains the word "Mexico", I'd certainly pronounce it [ˈmɛksɪkoʊ]. However, if the text contained the name of a Mexican place that is not well known in English – say, "Aguascalientes" – I probably would say something closer to [aɣwaskaˈljentes].
To paraphrase Jarek Weckwerth's comment, "Mexico" in the above context is an English word pronounced with English phonemes. But "Aguascalientes" isn't in the lexicon for most English speakers, and if the English reader/speaker also speaks Spanish, then it's more natural to mention of that place-name in its Spanish phonology. To echo Mai Kuha's comment, this would not be "performative" for me, but rather it feels "easier" to say it this way than to attempt to transform the word into the American English sound system.
The fact that some languages like Japanese and Mandarin Chinese *always* transform foreign loanwords into the target language phonology, doesn't imply that American English speakers or any other speech community ought to do the same.
Philip Taylor said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:25 pm
Daniel — "(You have a right to speak with a more native-like pronunciation if you belong to a speech community that uses that pronunciation" — I believe that everyone"ha[s the] right to speak with a more native-like pronunciation". Whether they choose to exercise that right is, of course, entirely up to them, and their choice could well be affected by the intended audience.
HTI said,
January 22, 2026 @ 12:53 pm
This also assumes that there is “the foreign original”. Sometimes that’s true, but e.g. a city may have different names in different languages, all of which languages are spoken there. Usually nationstates choose at least one Official Language™, but what if they choose more than one? Or if the official language isn’t dominant in that city anyway?
ChrisG said,
January 22, 2026 @ 1:24 pm
Several commenters – and the author of the original post(s) – claim that if journalists do *not* affect a Spanish accent they are accused of racism or xenophobia. Can they offer a single example of this? Or is this just another baseless "anti-woke" talking point?
VVOV said,
January 22, 2026 @ 1:37 pm
@ChrisG, thank you for calling out that portion of the OP. I personally think it is a baseless "anti-woke" talking point.
Ted McClure said,
January 22, 2026 @ 2:40 pm
Sometimes one must be careful trying to affect a "correct" pronunciation of a place name of non-English origin in the United States. There is a town in southern Arizona that the sign on the nearby Interstate Highway spells "Sonoita". I thought it should be pronounced "Son-oh-EE-ta", using Spanish phonemes. But I kept hearing it on the local radio as "Son-OY-ta", which sounded like the speakers were not even trying to approximate a proper pronunciation. I judged too soon and too harshly. Speaking with a person from Sonoita, I learned that it was not from Spanish but from the local Uto-Aztecan language and the broadcasters were correct. Doh!
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 22, 2026 @ 6:13 pm
@ Daniel You have a right to speak with a more native-like pronunciation if you belong to a speech community that uses that pronunciation, as it reveals something true about you. — I have to support Philip on this one. I certainly have a right to use a native-like pronunciation of those words I can do because it reveals something true about me: That I can do those native-like pronunciations, and it has nothing to do with whether I belong to a speech community. That community does not own those pronunciations.
Not that that's something I would normally do in the stream of another language, but the talk of having "a right" to do that puzzled me thoroughly.
katarina said,
January 22, 2026 @ 7:58 pm
I am always amused at American broadcasters pronouncing "Beijing" with a French j instead of the correct English j of Mandarin.
Language Log has discussed this but the French j persists.
Nat J said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:47 pm
I just want to resist the assertion made a few times that the only value in language is clarity or transparency of communication (or perhaps that this value is the only one worth considering). Of course there are many registers and tones in which you we communicate (think of the widely discussed phenomenon of code-switching) and I don’t think the choice of register can or should be reduced to simple ease of communication. Language can convey respect. Language can display aesthetic flourishes (should poems be judged purely on how trivial they are to interpret?) . Of course it can be used to signal allegiance. These all run the risk of rubbing members of the audience the wrong way. But navigating those risks requires sensitivity, delicacy, careful thought, and sympathy. I don’t think we can simply sweep aside those considerations in the name of ease-of-communication. Consider the importance of showing respect to an individual’s pref erence for how their own name is pronounced. I don’t think the correct attitude is simply to say “We’re going to do what’s easiest for everyone to understand.” I think there’s an ethical obligation to endeavor to correctly pronounce a person’s as judged by that individual. Although, when it comes to place names and foreign words I don’t think there’s a simple answer and I don’t really know what’s best. But I think, at least sometimes, it’s got to be more than just “whatever is easiest for my audience.”
dainichi said,
January 22, 2026 @ 9:59 pm
@Ted McClure
Even if it were Spanish, the pronunciation would be closer to English "Son-OY-ta". The penultimate syllable is "noi", since 'i' doesn't carry an accent mark.
Jonathan Smith said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:07 pm
From the "the more things change" department, epic 1908 peeve about pronunciations of "Los Angeles" by Charles Fletcher Lummis…
"It is a curious predicament when the very Inhabitants of an American city call its name in no less than twelve different ways, which eleven are wrong and five are barberous. This unhappy and probably unique distinction belongs to Los Angeles, Cal. […] The commonest and worst atrocity sounds like "Lost Angie Lees" […] Other pronunciations current even here–besides the "Loss Anjeloss" practically confined to a few unacclimated persons–are: Loss Angie Less, Loss Ang-el-eez, Loss Ang-el-ess, Loss Ann-hell-eez, Loss Ann-hell-ess, Loss Ann-haylace, Loce Ann jell-eez, Loce An-jell-ess, Loce Ann-hay-lace, Loce Angel-eez. [etc., etc.]"
wgj said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:20 pm
@Nat J: I want to push back on your push-back. The communicative values you've listed beyond clarity all appear secondary to me, and should only be considered if they don't significantly impact clarity. In other words, consider it if the level of clarity can be maintained, otherwise there shouldn't be a tradeoff between them and clarity, because clarity must be the overwhelmingly dominant goal.
If someone is my friend, I would try to learn their own pronunciation of their name, and use it with them and their family and friends. But I wouldn't use that pronunciation when referring to him with others who are not familiar with that native pronunciation. I don't consider this disrespectful at all.
I myself have a name that basically nobody can pronounce correctly if they don't speak my native language. I went to school in a foreign country, and nearly everyone in my class had a different pronunciation of my name, or a different nickname for me based on a distorted pronunciation of my name. I never felt disrespected, because I understood their intent was playful and inclusive – rather exclusive. The mispronunciation-turned-nickname is no different in its nature than someone name William being called Billy by his friends.
I recently had an interesting exchange on name pronunciation with a fair well-known elected official. He's from an immigrant family and has a name that is foreign to people in his country, so he's used to the same thing I'm used to – having his name pronounced every imaginable way. And he has the same attitude about it as me – he doesn't care how people pronounce his name as long as there's no ill intent. As we were talking, a colleague of his (a fellow elected official) interjected and asked him, "So what *is* the correct pronunciation of your name?"
His answer was quite stunning: "I don't known there is a correct pronunciation of my name – because my own father and mother pronounce it differently." He explained that his parents were from different ethnicity and spoke different native languages. His name was given by his father and a fairly common name in the native culture of his father's, but his mother never bothered to get the native pronunciation, choosing instead to pronounce it her own way. Obviously, his mother didn't love him any less for it, and nobody in his family – neither his father nor he or his siblings – found it problematic of the mother not to pronounce his name "as it should be". And he was saying to us, "Who am I to tell my own mother that she's pronouncing my name wrong?" To him, his mother has equal right as his father to decide how to pronounce the name of her child, regardless the fact that the name was given by the father.
M. Paul Shore said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:20 pm
Ted McClure: For you and others who might be interested, the place name "Sonoita" comes from the Tohono O'odham (a.k.a. "Papago") dialect of Upper Piman, a language of the Tepiman subfamily of the Uto-Aztecan family. According to linguist William Bright's Native American Placenames of the United States, the original is son 'oidag "spring [in the hydrological sense] field", from son "a spring" plus 'oidag "field".
Chester Draws said,
January 22, 2026 @ 11:23 pm
Once you head into NXA you open up a can of worms.
The discussion so far has revolved around places most educated people know the "correct" pronunciation of. So we are comfortable with the PXA versions even. But when travelling you soon discover that a great number of places have names that, if pronounced even NXA, are just going to confuse the target English speaker.
Rheims is [raaz]. Bulgarian Sofia is not pronounced like the girls' name, even in Bulgarian, being [soff-ya]. Famagusta, Cyprus, is something like [ma-usa]. If you read any of those in NXA on the news, people would have no idea where you were talking about.
So people are actually advocating NXA/PXA for those places they know. They aren't really interested in it when it comes to smaller places in Eastern Europe or China, where it would be a meaningless noise in many cases.
I do agree with those who propose PXA for second languages of a country. In New Zealand there is a move to correctly pronounce Maori place names, which account for about half the country. Some of them are quite tricky for mono-glot English speakers (and it isn't the long ones: Waikenae and Waikaremoana are easy, but Ohaupo is not). Maori is only spoken by 5-15% of the population, depending on how much fluency, but it is an official language and should be spoken well.
But foreigners aren't helped by that. They need the one they think they read on a map.
wgj said,
January 23, 2026 @ 12:28 am
It is common for people in many parts of the world, including my home country, to give themselves an English name once they start to learn English. Often, it's given or suggested by the English teacher, as a part of the learning process, and it does serve a pedagogical purpose: to give you a sense of belonging in the new language. That's why the practice isn't just common to English – basically everyone learning Chinese will soon get a Chinese name.
But I've never like the practice, or at least the fact that the practice is so wide spread. It comes back to intent: The primary reason most people are using their English names, at least in my home country, is not to make it easier for foreigners to pronounce their names – they don't have any encounters with foreigners most days of the year. Rather, their intent is to parade their exotic English names as a status symbol – being part of the global community, although they really aren't in any meaningful way.
I've never like this, and I've never given myself an English / Indo-European / Judaeo-Christian name (I do have pen names and pseudonyms of that kind, but I don't use them when I meet people face to face). I do think people who want to interact with me have an obligation to learn my actual name, but they don't have an obligation to learn it well – (barely) recognizable is good enough for me.
Language belongs to everyone, and a name belongs not only to the owner, nor the people from the same cultural-linguistic community, but all who (need to) use that name in communication – though not equally. The share of this ownership should be proportional to the frequency of usage, rather than cultural-linguistic affinity.
Disrespect is real and should be addressed. But when it comes to names, in overwhelming majority of cases, there is no actual disrespect – rather, it's just an unfounded perception of disrespect. The problem then lies squarely with the perceiver – they should just chill.
John Swindle said,
January 23, 2026 @ 1:00 am
Is there a difference between British and American broadcasters' treatment of foreign place names? I thought the former tended to make them sound like English words and the latter tended to make them sound, you know, foreign, with both agreeing to mispronounce "Beijing."
@VVOV: I think I'd expect a American English "g" in "Aguascalientes" in a US broadcast in English, especially if the broadcaster were a native English speaker.
I am however happy not to have heard the pronunciation "ven-zoo-EE-la" in American English recently. Doesn't mean it's not there, I guess.
ajay said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:08 am
Let us suppose, for example, that Petr Zlatuška's wife's given name is Bĕla— to refer to her as "Bĕla Zlatuška" would (to my mind) verge on rudeness (unless explained by ignorance) whereas to refer to her as "Bĕla Zlatuškova" would be both polite and correct.
I was struck on my first visit to Prague that the Czechs did this to all women's names at all times. Film posters advertising stars like "EMMANUELLE BEARTOVA" and "SIGOURNEY WEAVEROVA". Even, as far as I remember (though this was a while ago) newspaper stories that mentioned former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcherova.
In New Zealand there is a move to correctly pronounce Maori place names, which account for about half the country. Some of them are quite tricky for mono-glot English speakers
Scotland has something similar with regard to Gaelic placenames – Gaelic spelling is much more consistent than English spelling, but extremely different. Fortunately Scotland has been majority English- or Scots-speaking for long enough that most major placenames have been Scoticised – "Corrour", which is easy for a naive English-speaker, rather than "Coire Odhar". Minor and remote places like mountains are still only available in the Gaelic spelling – Sgurr a'Chaorachain, for example – but not many people need to use those very often. Thanks to our relatively sedate geology, we won't even have an Eyjafjallajokul situation where everyone in the world suddenly needs to learn how to pronounce Sgùrr nan Ceathramhnan because it's erupted.
Pedro said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:39 am
What a wonderfully neat classification of the spectrum.
I do wonder, though, if it's fair to put "Brunswick" and "Florence" in the ZAA category, which is below the minimum expected authenticity. Would it not make more sense to say that these are native names in the broadcasting language for foreign places and therefore require no attempt at authenticity (or no modification to fit the broadcasting language), and therefore don't belong in this scheme?
Surely we don't expect English-language broadcasters to pronounce "Paris" /pə'riː/? They could of course decide to import the French name for the city and would then be forced to choose how far to nativize it, but in practice the problem is avoided by using the English name. Same for "Florence", "Moscow" and arguably even "Venezuela" (pronounced /vɛnəz'wɛılə/).
wgj said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:40 am
@ajay: That's a great point. If the speakers of Slavic languages are allowed to add "-ova" to family names of all women (which they should be allowed to), then speakers of other languages should be equally allowed, in turn, to leave out the "-ova" extension to family names or Slavic women while speaking a no-Slavic language.
Pedro said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:06 am
What a wonderfully neat classification of the spectrum.
I do wonder, though, if it's fair to put "Brunswick" and "Florence" in the ZAA category, which is below the minimum expected authenticity. Would it not make more sense to say that these are native names (in the broadcasting language) for foreign places and therefore require no attempt at authenticity (or no modification to fit the broadcasting language), and therefore don't belong in this scheme?
Surely we don't expect English-language broadcasters to pronounce "Paris" /pə'riː/? They could of course decide to import the French name for the city and would then be forced to choose how far to nativize it, but in practice the problem is avoided by using the English name. Same for "Florence", "Moscow" and arguably even "Venezuela" (pronounced /vɛnəz'wɛılə/).
Peter Cyrus said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:40 am
Just to inflame the debate, Brunswick is the correct Low German pronunciation, and Braunschweig is the HIgh German ZAA :)
Likewise, the in Mexico is pronounced like English , and the Spanish [x] is just as wrong as the English .
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:45 am
But the point is, that as soon as they say "Bĕla Zlatuškova" (or "Bĕla Zlatuška"), they are "speaking a Slavic language" (or trying to), even if the context is otherwise 100% English. In the first case they are speaking it correctly, in the second case they are speaking it badly.
However, when you say "It is common for people in many parts of the world […] to give themselves an English name […]. But I've never like the practice", I completely agree. My wife, Lệ Khanh (/li ˈkæn/ after Anglicisation, or more commonly just /ˈkæn/) insists on being "Le" (/liː/), despite the fact that Lệ is the generational name which she shares with her sister Lệ Hoa — this because when she first moved to the UK she found that most L1 English speakers would pronounce her name as if it were "Khan" (/kɑːn/). But far worse, her sister Hoa has (¿ had to ?) become "Lily" since moving to the U.K. because (some of) her new colleagues found "Hoa" (/hwɑ/) too difficult. Can it really be difficult for some L1 English speakers to say /hwɑ/ ?
By the way, as you tell us that you "have a name that basically nobody can pronounce correctly if they don't speak my native language", and as this is a linguistics/language forum, would you be willing to share your given name with us ? I for one would be very interested to know what it is, and perhaps even attempt to pronounce it …
ajay said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:47 am
speakers of other languages should be equally allowed, in turn, to leave out the "-ova" extension to family names or Slavic women while speaking a no-Slavic language.
But they tend not to, in my experience – the model Eva Herzigova should have been Eva Herzig if that were the case. The dancer Anna Pavlova should have been Anna Pavlov. I think the answer is that most people in the west just don't know very much about how Slavic names work.
I can't think of examples of famous Slavic women with well-known sons off-hand, so I don't know if there would be any confusion there about why Eva Herzigova's hypothetical son Michal was Michal Herzig rather than Michal Herzigova.
ajay said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:49 am
But the point is, that as soon as they say "Bĕla Zlatuškova" (or "Bĕla Zlatuška"), they are "speaking a Slavic language" (or trying to), even if the context is otherwise 100% English. In the first case they are speaking it correctly, in the second case they are speaking it badly.
What? No.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:54 am
« and arguably even "Venezuela" (pronounced /vɛnəz'wɛılə/ » — my geography master at school, "Joe" Davies, clearly Welsh by birth from his accent, invariably pronounced "Venezuela" as 5 syllables (/ven ez ju 'elə/), a pronunciation which I then retained for much of my adult life …
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 6:06 am
"What? No." — well, clearly we must agree to differ.
But are you really telling us that when they say "Bĕla Zlatuška" they are speaking English ? It seems to me that if they were to say /ˈbelə zlætʌskə/ then it might legitimately be argued that they are speaking English, but if they say /ˈbjɛla ˈzlatuʃka/ then they are definitely trying to speak Czech (but doing so badly), whereas if they say /ˈbjɛla ˈzlatuʃkova/ they they are not only trying to speak Czech, they are succeeding, even if every other word in the utterance is English.
David Morris said,
January 23, 2026 @ 6:10 am
Several FIFA world cups ago, a commentator on Australia's multicultural television station gained attention, most of it very negative, for pronouncing foreign players' names 'correctly'. The fact that she's a woman probably had something to do with the negative attention.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 6:10 am
Sorry, the /u/s in the Czech version should perhaps be closer to /ʊ/s.
ajay said,
January 23, 2026 @ 6:50 am
But are you really telling us that when they say "Bĕla Zlatuška" they are speaking English ?
Of course they are! "This woman's name is Bĕla Zlatuška" is a sentence entirely in English. I don't speak Czech and I can still hear that and understand it perfectly. The English for the Czech name "Bĕla Zlatuška" is "Bĕla Zlatuška". Same in both languages.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 23, 2026 @ 7:04 am
@ ajay: The mandatory feminisation is a Czech practice (well, maybe Slovak too). Other Slavic languages don't do that to people who don't already have a name ending in -ova or -ska etc. In Polish, for that matter, the practice of feminising names other than -ski is moribund, since Nowakowa essentially means 'wife of Nowak' and as such is politically incorrect. The last generation that did this a little more was that of my grandma, born in the early 20th century.
@ Philip Taylor if they say /ˈbjɛla ˈzlatuʃka/ — They probably say /ˌbjɛlə zəˈlatʊʃkə/ which means they are not speaking Czech. But even if they are more successful, code-switching of this type (where actually we are dealing with something that Shana Poplack calls Lone Other-Language Items) has all kinds of limitations. As someone noticed upstream, you wouldn't require (I hope) correct Czech case endings in a sentence otherwise in English, and if you don't do them, you aren't speaking Czech either (because you aren't). Etc.
@ wgj speakers of Slavic languages are allowed to add "-ova" — Allowed? There's no allowing here. They just do it because that's how the language works. Are you suggesting there should be UN language commandos parachuting into Prague and making sure no one says Weaverova? And in order to drop the ending, as ajay correctly points out, they'd have to know how to do it. The fact that second-generation female Slavic immigrants into other cultures usually end up with names in -ski demonstrates that rather well.
(I'm familiar with a case of the son of a Czech woman born in Germany who ended up with a name in -ova for that reason…)
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 7:04 am
But there (probably) is no Czech name "Bĕla Zlatuška", Ajay — the Czech name is "Bĕla Zlatuškova". So what is the English for the Czech name "Bĕla Zlatuškova" ?
But let me take this a little further, if I may ? If someone were to say "This woman's name is 张欣", in what language would you say they were speaking ? English, or English + Chinese (or a third option). Because if you say "Clearly English + Chinese, because of the Hanzi", I will ask "What difference does it make that the Chinese language uses Hanzi while the Czech language uses (basically) Latin letters in determing in which language someone is speaking ?".
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 7:09 am
"They probably say /ˌbjɛlə zəˈlatʊʃkə/" — I agree about the /ʊ/, Jarek, but not about the /zəˈla/ — I have never encountered that variant, and I have heard many non-Czech speakers use the name (one person of that name is a well-known Czech computer scientist, of whom I have many non-Czech speakers speak).
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 23, 2026 @ 7:17 am
Other Slavic languages don't do that to people who don't already have a name ending in -ova or -ska etc. — That's some really weak logic, sorry! What I wanted to say was that other Slavic language will have use these two types of forms as feminine surnames (with, loosely, masculine equivalents in -ov and -ski) but will not actively add them to other surname forms, e.g. Weaver etc.
Sljaka said,
January 23, 2026 @ 7:41 am
M. Paul Shore’s taxonomy of authenticity levels provides a much-needed framework for discussing toponymy and pronunciation beyond a simple binary. The proposal for Non-Xenophonetic Authenticity (NXA) is particularly relevant in the context of the modern global workforce. In professional networking and international recruitment, we often see the tension between 'Zero Attempted Authenticity,' which can feel dismissive, and 'Full Xenophonetic Authenticity,' which can be performative or alienating. Establishing NXA as a baseline for professional communication strikes a respectful balance that acknowledges a person's heritage without disrupting the flow of the primary language. It is a practical solution for cross-cultural competence in 21st-century professional environments.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 8:24 am
I cannot agree that NXZ is optimal, Sljaka — consider MPS's example : " [saying] Benesuela" for "Venezuela" (while not affecting a Venezuelan accent)", is, to my mind, ludicrous. Either say ven ə ˈzweɪl |ə/ while not affecting a Venezuelan accent or say /be.neˈswe.la/ while doing your d@mndest to sound Venezuelan.
ajay said,
January 23, 2026 @ 10:18 am
In Polish, for that matter, the practice of feminising names other than -ski is moribund, since Nowakowa essentially means 'wife of Nowak' and as such is politically incorrect.
Interesting – so how do surnames work for unmarried women? Is the daughter of Mr Nowak "Nowak" or "Nowakowa"?
If someone were to say "This woman's name is 张欣", in what language would you say they were speaking ?
They are speaking English. The fact that you've written one of the words in the wrong script is a red herring, because when people speak they don't use script, they use sounds from their mouths.
In response, can I ask you this: If I were to say "This man's name is Robert Lee", what language would I be speaking?
Ned Mantei said,
January 23, 2026 @ 11:31 am
On Swiss maps (see maps.geo.admin.ch), many places are shown with 2 names, one in the local language and then in another national language used nearby. For example: Delèmont and Delsberg; Kleinlützel and Petit-Lucelle; Nufenenpass and Passo della Novena. At leaset here there isn't a problem with "longstanding alternative versions of foreign nouns".
David Marjanović said,
January 23, 2026 @ 11:32 am
German draws a pretty sharp line between cases where established German exonyms exist (e.g. Paris /paˈriːs/ with your own values for /p/ and /r/) and all others. For the latter, the goal is FXA, and all PXA (if recognized) is considered a failed attempt at FXA.
The latter.
Lithuanian (not Slavic) has separate suffixes for married and unmarried women, so every last name exists in three forms.
Jarek Weckwerth said,
January 23, 2026 @ 11:40 am
@ ajay Interesting – so how do surnames work for unmarried women? Is the daughter of Mr Nowak "Nowak" or "Nowakowa"? — In modern Polish, Nowak. There used to be a three-form system of the type described by David: -owa for married women, and -ówna for unmarried women (in a sense, a little like Icelandic -dóttir), but the unmarried form has been obsolete for about the same time as -owa. I can think of examples from the 1960s perhaps. Very certainly not in use today. My daughter's name is XX-Weckwerth.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 12:25 pm
Ajay — If I were to say "This man's name is Robert Lee", what language would I be speaking? — I would guess English, unless you were (for example) to pronounce "Robert" as /ʁɔbɛːʁ/, in which case I would tend to assume that you were speaking primarily English with a French name at the end.
Michael Watts said,
January 23, 2026 @ 2:21 pm
Something seems to have gone wrong here; the standard pronunciation of "Venezuela" uses /s/, not /z/. There is no risk of confusing people by pronouncing the "z" as /s/.
Yes. For example, the onset /hw-/ does not exist in modern standard American English, and where another language calls for it it is very likely to be reduced to /w-/. I have been reprimanded for this by a Chinese instructor.
I'm capable of producing /hw-/, but that would require specific effort on my part. Which means that the pronunciation is "difficult" for English speakers, as opposed to "impossible".
Philip Taylor, I would say that in all of your examples you're only speaking English. You may include foreign words, but you are never speaking a combination of English and a foreign language. In particular, given the frame "This man's name is ________", the foreign words are quoted, not used.
It's not rare that I will conduct a conversation partially in Chinese and partially in English, which avoids the issue of quoting. There are three major ways this could happen:
1. I might include an isolated English word in an otherwise Chinese sentence because I failed to translate the word to my own satisfaction. Here I would say that I'm speaking Chinese, but with a failure in part of the sentence.
2. I might break into a fully English sentence where a conversation has previously been in Chinese, because I need a grammatical concept that I failed to translate into Chinese to my own satisfaction. Here I'm speaking English and there are probably no Chinese words involved in the English sentence.
3. I might include a Chinese word in an otherwise English sentence for one of two reasons:
(a) Because no translation is available for the Chinese word. This would be common if I'm referring to a Chinese name, or if I'm referring to something that exists in Chinese culture but not in Anglophone culture such as a 咸大饼. Here I'm speaking English and could be viewed, if you really wanted to, as coining an English word.
(b) Because I expect the Chinese word to be easier for my interlocutor to understand than the corresponding English. (Which might be a word or something more complicated.) This is basically analogous to case (1) except that I'm making the sentence easier for them (subject to my own potentially-mistaken judgment) rather than making it easier for me (where I have perfect judgment).
There is no mode where it isn't clear that I'm speaking one language and not the other language. It would be very difficult to produce a sentence that might be interpreted as belonging to either language – even if I were to use approximately equal amounts of English vs Chinese vocabulary, the basic layout of the sentence will have to be either recognizably Chinese or recognizably English.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:43 pm
« Something seems to have gone wrong here; the standard pronunciation of "Venezuela" uses /s/, not /z/ » — in which language/topolect/dialect, Michael ? As an L1 speaker of British English, the "standard" pronunciation of "Venezuela" is /ˌven ə ˈzweɪl |ə/, in support of which statement I adduce the LPD entry.
Philip Taylor said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:45 pm
Sorry, the "[loud]speaker with three sound waves" (U+1F50A) and "microphone" (U+1F3A4) Unicode icons have disappeared from the preceding.
Anthony Bruck said,
January 23, 2026 @ 4:46 pm
https://bruck.zenfolio.com/p586171626#h4ae3ae44
Michael Vnuk said,
January 23, 2026 @ 5:53 pm
An example name being discussed here is ‘Bĕla Zlatuška’, and it has been described as Czech. However, when I look closely at the letters, I see that the E and the S have different symbols above them, a breve (˘) and a caron (ˇ) respectively (using Unicode terminology). Wikipedia on Czech orthography makes no mention of ‘ĕ’ (Unicode 0115). Perhaps it should be ‘ě’ (Unicode 011B), which is listed as a letter in the Czech alphabet.
My quick search for book covers of Czech and Slovak versions of Harry Potter finds the author listed as J.K. Rowlingová.
V said,
January 23, 2026 @ 9:02 pm
@Sam : :There's a further fun nuance with approximational xenophonetics, namely that the donor and receiver languages might disagree about what's the 'closest'/'best' approximation. For example, most native speakers of most languages lacking dental fricatives seem to hear those as closest to /s/ and /z/ and would render an English loanword using them, but a native English speaker might prefer to map the dental fricatives to /t/ and /d/ or even /f/ and /v/, on the basis that there exist well-known native English lects that do just that but very few that map them to /s/ and /z/.:
dental fricatives from English and Greek are /t/ and /d/ in Bulgarian, but /f/ in Russian. [v] is not a native phoneme in either language.
dainichi said,
January 23, 2026 @ 9:33 pm
@Philip Taylor
From a (non-English-native) nitpicker:
> ven ə ˈzweɪl |ə/
Is the /zw/ onset phonotactically allowed in English? I would have thought the /z/ moves to the previous syllable.
John Swindle said,
January 24, 2026 @ 3:28 am
@dainichi: Vinnie's waiting, Venezuela! Perfectly sayable, and the z and w are indeed interpreted as breaking between syllables. That works for writing, but to me it feels inadequate as an account of what we hear. That could just be my ignorance.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 4:27 am
I defer to the inestimable Professor Wells, Dainichi — if he says it is /ˌven ə ˈzweɪl |ə/ (which he does), then who am I (a mere mortal) to contradict him ? And from the perspective of an L1 speaker of British English, a /zw/ onset doesn't feel in any sense "wrong" to me, and seems the most natural way to pronounce the word in question.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 5:02 am
« An example name being discussed here is ‘Bĕla Zlatuška’, and it has been described as Czech. However, when I look closely at the letters, I see that the E and the S have different symbols above them, a breve (˘) and a caron (ˇ) respectively (using Unicode terminology). Wikipedia on Czech orthography makes no mention of ‘ĕ’ (Unicode 0115). Perhaps it should be ‘ě’ (Unicode 011B), which is listed as a letter in the Czech alphabet. »
Very well spotted, Michael — they render seemingly identically on my 4K monitor, but Babelstone's "What Unicode character is this" identifies the same differences as you. In my defence, I took the forename of one of my Czech friends and the surname of another to minimise the risk of appearing to be writing of a real person, but as both were entered into my database more years ago than I can remember, it is more than possible (indeed, almost certain) that they were entered using different methodologies — bear in mind that I do all my typing on a 40-year-old IBM 1391406 "clicky" British English keyboard that wouldn't know a caron from a breve if both were biting its legs at the same time.
V said,
January 24, 2026 @ 7:28 am
Chester Draws : "Bulgarian Sofia is not pronounced like the girls' name, even in Bulgarian, being [soff-ya]."
It's more like SOFF-ee-yah, in Non-Xenophonetic Authenticity.
V said,
January 24, 2026 @ 7:38 am
[soff-ya] verges on Partial Xenophonetic Authenticity
wgj said,
January 24, 2026 @ 7:54 am
@Philpp: To know how difficult /hwɑ/ is for native English speakers, you only need to listen to them pronounce the brand name Huawei – the "h" simply disappears.
VVOV said,
January 24, 2026 @ 8:17 am
@wgj, Huawei is an interesting case in that the company has actually decided its “official” English pronunciation is [wɑ]-wei, with no initial [h]. I don’t immediately have a source link at hand, but the company promulgates videos and other materials telling English speakers to say “WAH-Way”.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 8:54 am
Ah, well, if Huawei-UK tell Britons to say "WAH-Way", then I imagine that some will / do. However, Lidl-UK try to tell me that "Lidl" rhymes with "middle", but I ignore them and pronounce it as I have always done. But let me ask (this question for wgj) — why might some Britons have difficulty pronouncing /hwɑ/ ? I was raised in a fairly typical monolingual working-class British family and although I studied French and Latin for a few years at school (and also spoken French for a couple of years when I started work) I don't think that made it any easier for me. But as soon as I was introduced to [Lệ] Hoa, I spoke her name and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me.
V said,
January 24, 2026 @ 9:21 am
Philip Taylor : how _do_ you pronounce Lidl? I think I pronounce it /lɪdɯɫ̪/
V said,
January 24, 2026 @ 9:23 am
Forgot to put the dental diacritic under the d.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 9:35 am
As my late German friends Christa and Ewald did when they were alive — /ˈliː d${}^{ə}$l/.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 9:41 am
Think more about "why might some Britons have difficulty pronouncing /hwɑ/ ?", I now realise that my seeming lack of difficulty in so doing might be related to the fact that I habitually pronounce the "wh-" group (when, where, whence, which, why, …) using the pre-aspirated variants /hwen, hwen${}^{t}$s, hweər, hwɪtʃ, hwaɪ, ../
V said,
January 24, 2026 @ 10:10 am
I find that fascinating, considering that as a non-native speaker I have no problem whatsoever with wh/hw, even though Bulgarian does not have that. When I was in Glasgow it came to me completely naturally.
Victor Mair said,
January 24, 2026 @ 10:15 am
Now that we've nailed down "Lidl", "Aldi" should be a snap.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 10:24 am
For me, /ˈæl di/, Victor — for you ?
Rodger C said,
January 24, 2026 @ 10:41 am
American, West Virginian, born 1948: I always say "hwat, hwen, hwere," etc., and "huawei," if I ever had opportunity to do so.
Victor Mair said,
January 24, 2026 @ 10:48 am
all-dee
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 11:00 am
Now the very last publication I would regard as "authorative" is the U.K's Sun newspaper, but I must nonetheless draw readers' attention to this page — https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/food/6252189/youve-been-pronouncing-aldi-all-wrong-and-heres-the-final-word-from-the-store-itself/
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 11:01 am
or even "authoritative" …
Victor Mair said,
January 24, 2026 @ 11:05 am
oh, mein Gott!
David Marjanović said,
January 24, 2026 @ 11:45 am
The point here seems to be Irina Shostakovich. She bears a male patronymic that was turned into a last name in Polish and then imported as such into Russian, where it is marked as a woman's last name as opposed to a man's patronymic by being indeclinable. (It keeps Polish-style penultimate stress, too; a Russian patronymic of this sort would have antepenultimate stress.)
My last name, too, is a frozen patronymic (but frozen in place without borrowing from elsewhere); it is declinable for men but not for women.
Philip Taylor said,
January 24, 2026 @ 12:53 pm
And more than a little timely, Victor — https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/24/aldi-us-expansion-inflation
KJK::Hyperion said,
January 24, 2026 @ 8:54 pm
Paul, this sounds like academic rationalization of classic – even stereotypical – conservative grievances, to me. Spanish is an official language of the USA and it's silly (and patently racist, yes) that American conservatives pretend otherwise. Inconceivably petty that one would come up with elaborate fantasies to punish those guilty of defiling the airwaves with its sound, too
I know it's a conservative grievance both because I know enough about American politics to know what's the meaning of attacking PBS and NPR and the Spanish language, and because you don't mention what's, to me, Americans' greatest sin in attempts at being multilingual (although it might be dying down?): translating a person's salutation into their native language. Monsieur Macron, Señor Chavez, Signor Berlusconi etc. I've had to eradicate it from many Wikipedia articles
(In fact, I know enough about American politics to remember the ridiculous, multi-news cycle criticism of some TV personality for pronouncing "prosciutto" correctly – anyone remember what I'm referring to? Reminds me of trying to order "fettuccine Alfredo" in a restaurant in the USA, and having to ask the waiter to incorrect me on my pronunciation)
You joke (surely?) about XXA, but in Italy, we have an infamous Japanese-to-Italian localizer, Gualtiero Cannarsi, who, after an early career of reliable and straightforward work, has been put in charge of the entire Studio Ghibli catalog, and promptly vandalized it with new dubs where he localized all dialog to be in Italian, but with Japanese grammar and literal translations of figures of speech etc. He even demanded that the Italian voice actors perform the vocalizations that accompany head gestures in Japanese. It was in many ways a heroic effort, where he had to dig up archaic words (like the infamous "recalcitranza") or even coin new ones ("pochitto"!) to match the grammar and tempo of the original language, but the end effect is comical. People love to collect their favorite Cannarsisms in compilations like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eILaEqtDHLo
He only received some belated pushback in 2019, when he re-adapted the immensely more popular Neon Genesis Evangelion for Netflix, and it was so poorly received that they had to apologize and re-dub it. The full story here (in Italian): https://www.dimensionefumetto.it/gualtiero-cannarsi-nel-di-lui-caso-reazioni/
A particular absurdity was that he named the giant monster antagonists of the series – universally known as "Angels" – "Apostles", the literal translation of the name they had in the original Japanese – except that all on-screen text that refers to them is in English and names them "Angels". So, you'd have a close up shot of a computer screen saying "ANGEL" in huge all-caps, and the characters would say out loud "it's an Apostle!". Even more absurd is that he had worked on the original adaptation of the series back in 2000, delivering a flawless output
Philip Taylor said,
January 25, 2026 @ 6:32 am
"Americans' greatest sin in attempts at being multilingual (although it might be dying down?): translating a person's salutation into their native language. Monsieur Macron, Señor Chavez, Signor Berlusconi etc. I've had to eradicate it from many Wikipedia articles" — You've had to eradicate it, KJK::H ? No, you chose to eradicate it, providing yet another reason not to trust anything one reads on Wikipedia.
Bob said,
January 26, 2026 @ 1:34 pm
If Non-Xenophonetic Authenticity (NXA) is “is the level all broadcasters should aim for”, so that one “pronounces foreign words as closely as possible to the foreign original while staying within the phonetic repertory and normal sound-patterns of” English, we should say [dɪˈmæʃk] for Damascus, and [bʌgˈdɑd] instead of [ˈbægdæd]. For Jerusalem we’ll have to choose between [jəɹuʃəˈlɑjɪm] and [ælˈkʊds]. How about [ˈmɪsɚ] for Egypt?
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 2:55 pm
Bob : This is the second time I have noticed "repertory" for "repertoire" in English this week, and I have not before. Is that an example of rapid spelling change? Or something weirder?
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 2:59 pm
Maybe English-speaking people always spelled it like that, and just stated using the word more frequently?
Philip Taylor said,
January 26, 2026 @ 3:19 pm
Well, obviously I cannot speak for any "English-speaking people" other than myself, but for me, "repertory" is something I associate with the theatre and "repertoire" with (e.g.,) the pieces of music than (some)one can play with confidence. The OED does admit of "repertory" as a possible synonym of "repertoire", but that is not a sense that I recall encountering in real life.
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 3:39 pm
Philip Taylor : I don't remember encountering the spelling "repertory" before this year — it was always "repertoire" for both meanings. It's probably a recency illusion.
Philip Taylor said,
January 26, 2026 @ 4:03 pm
Well, obviously I have no idea where you live, V., but do you not have "repertory theatre" or "repertory companies" there ? We have both in the U.K., and even though I have been to the theatre only once in my life (Eltham Little Theatre, became the Bob Hope theatre in the early 1980s) I am aware of the existence of both.
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 4:14 pm
I've only been to the UK once, and I got more of Scotland than of England.
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 4:21 pm
I did get to see some rivership houses in England, though, always wanted that.
Philip Taylor said,
January 26, 2026 @ 4:22 pm
Och, weel, in thon case ye’ll already ken whit comes neist
Philip Taylor said,
January 26, 2026 @ 4:23 pm
But you'll have to gloss "rivership houses" for me —not even Google appears to know what they are …
V said,
January 26, 2026 @ 8:29 pm
Sorry, I was falling asleep and I couldn't remember what they were called. I meant narrowboats.
Philip Taylor said,
January 27, 2026 @ 9:17 am
Ah, thank you, all now understood. I had a vague idea that narrowboats might be to what you were referring, but the idea came as an image, not as a word, so I could not ask if it was indeed what you had meant.
David Marjanović said,
January 27, 2026 @ 5:00 pm
Nothing is an official language of the USA; like Germany, the USA doesn't have one.
On the US extreme right, proposals to make English the (only) official language of the US bubble up regularly; they've all gone nowhere on the federal level, though I think a few states have made English their official language.
Andrew Usher said,
January 27, 2026 @ 5:57 pm
> Nothing is an official language of the USA; like Germany, the USA doesn't have one.
Correct, no law declaring an official language exists in the US (a historical accident). There may be some local jurisdictions with Spanish an official language; this is unobjectionable if reflecting demand; and the only reason language policy is an issue in Canada is that the French go farther, in particular insisting on their language being official at the federal level – which seems as silly as giving Spanish that status in the USA.
> On the US extreme right, proposals to make English the (only) official language of the US bubble up regularly; they've all gone nowhere on the federal level …
This is purely political on both sides. Passing such a bill (or not) would have no effect on the actual and indisutable predominance of English. I however would favor one, not to pick a side or make a statement, but simply to put the issue to rest by acknowledging reality, a reality not likely to change, given that it is and has been for centuries the case that one must learn English to get anywhere in America.
k_over_hbarc at yahoo.com
VVOV said,
January 27, 2026 @ 6:37 pm
> one must learn English to get anywhere in America
As the youths say, tell me without telling me that you’ve never been to Miami
V said,
January 27, 2026 @ 7:51 pm
David Marjanović : "On the US extreme right, proposals to make English the (only) official language of the US bubble up regularly" — isn't that slightly ridiculous? I mean why would you even do that? Even If Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria, a most people speak it, it's still stupid to demand people to speak it to communicate with the government.
ajay said,
January 28, 2026 @ 5:32 am
But let me ask (this question for wgj) — why might some Britons have difficulty pronouncing /hwɑ/ ?
Because, especially for the English, it isn't a sound they use. Scots and a few others make a distinction between pronunciations of "when" (hwen) and "wen", "whales" (hwales) and "Wales", and so on. The English do not – it is all "wen" and "Wales". So even if you say the word "Huawei" to an English person, he will repeat it as "wawei".
Spanish is an official language of the USA and it's silly (and patently racist, yes) that American conservatives pretend otherwise.
If you go by the definition of "official language", it's "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." – the US court system, as far as I know, functions entirely in English, like the rest of the US government does internally.
ajay said,
January 28, 2026 @ 8:42 am
It's true that there is no law saying "English is the official language of the US", but I would argue that it is the de facto official language – if I am asked for a response by any part of the government and I provide it in English, it won't cause a problem. If I provide it in Spanish, it might.
I could use the analogy of currency being "legal tender" – which means that, if you offer to settle a debt with currency, the law will consider that you have attempted repayment. If you offer to settle a debt with anything else of value, like gold bars or Microsoft shares, the creditor is within his rights to refuse them, and the debt will stand.
Rodger C said,
January 28, 2026 @ 10:55 am
V, of course it is. The extreme right of any country is worse than slightly ridiculous.
Philip Taylor said,
January 28, 2026 @ 12:56 pm
« Because, especially for the English, it isn't a sound they use. Scots and a few others make a distinction between pronunciations of "when" (hwen) and "wen", "whales" (hwales) and "Wales", and so on. The English do not – it is all "wen" and "Wales". So even if you say the word "Huawei" to an English person, he will repeat it as "wawei" » — I'm sorry, Ajay, that is demonstrably wrong. I am English, was born in the south-east of England, now live in the south-west of England, both about as far as you can get from Scotland, yet I say /hwen/ for "when" and use the same onset for "while", "whence", "where", etc. But not for "Wales". There were, to the best of my recollection, no Scots in my early life on whom I might have based this pronunciation, so I must have learned it from my fellow Englishmen. Now I have met Englishmen who not only do not say /hwen/, they do not even believe that it is an attested English pronunciation, and on one occasion I had to get one to accompany me to the college library in order to show him the relevant entry in the OED, but "one swallow does not make a summer", and I am certainly familiar with fellow Englishmen who also say /hwen/, etc.
Philip Taylor said,
January 28, 2026 @ 2:57 pm
Sorry, "not for whales", I (obviously) meant to say.
Philip Taylor said,
January 28, 2026 @ 3:01 pm
"Even If Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria, a[nd ot s] most people speak it, it's still stupid to demand people to speak it to communicate with the government" — Why ? Should the Bulgarian government be required to provide translation or interpretation faciliies for all the attested natural languages of this planet ? I don't think there is a single government in the world that would allow its citizens (or even non-citizens) to communicate with it in any language they chose …
Andrew Usher said,
January 28, 2026 @ 7:39 pm
That seems obvious. Whether a government will provide service or communicate in a non-official language has to be a case-by-case matter, in every nation. But an 'official language' doesn't mean that – even though one can expect, as ajay said, that the dominant (and often official) language will always be usable and non-dominant languages will usually not always be.
The official language of a government is the language it uses for its own workings and record-keeping (multiple languages are possible, but less desirable, and cause other trouble). And for the US national government, that is always English, always has been, and will be in the foreseeable future. Passing a law declaring that to be so would (as I stated) have no practical import, but would serve at least to close the issue and prevent it repeatedly being used as a political tool by either side to distract from real issues. It may seem extreme in the current US political climate, but I believe the main purpose of government should be to actually do things, not to be a political battle ground.
Something similar is true for capital punishment, and probably has played a role in many jurisdictions that have eliminated it: whatever your personal feelings on it, it becomes used as a political football that distracts from more important crime-related matters, and can be done away with – for that reason it better is, in ordinary cases at least.
Finally, to the silliness of the 'extreme right': I'd find it more accurate to say that extreme positions attract silly people rather than that extreme positions are inherently silly (they may be, but that needs proof).
ajay said,
January 29, 2026 @ 4:42 am
Philip Taylor: If I were to say "This man's name is Robert Lee", what language would I be speaking? — I would guess English
Ah, but what if Robert Lee is a resident of Beijing? Might I not, by your argument, be speaking English for most of the sentence but switching to Mandarin for his surname, which is 李?
ajay said,
January 29, 2026 @ 4:54 am
I'm sorry, Ajay, that is demonstrably wrong. I am English, was born in the south-east of England, now live in the south-west of England, both about as far as you can get from Scotland, yet I say /hwen/ for "when" and use the same onset for "while", "whence", "where", etc.
Apologies – not all Englishmen!
Why ? Should the Bulgarian government be required to provide translation or interpretation facilities for all the attested natural languages of this planet ?
Yes, it should, within reason – and in the UK the Equality Act 2010 and other legislation are generally interpreted as implying a duty to provide translation and interpretation where the cost is not disproportionate to the public benefit.
Philip Taylor said,
January 29, 2026 @ 5:03 am
Sorry, I can't summon up the enthusiasm to continue this thread, other than to say that I am sick and tired of the widespread reporting of Iga [Natalia] Świątek as "Iga Swiatek". Do the woman the courtesy of using her proper surname, please.
Philip Taylor said,
January 29, 2026 @ 5:21 am
[I have more pressing matters to which to attend, but will just respond to Ajay's last point before going QRT] — How is the UK Government expected to know whether the cost will be disproportionate to the public benefit before they know to what matters are being referred in the non-English communication ? And how can they know to what matters are being referred without first having the non-English communication translated into English ? If (for example) my brother-in-law were to write to the DVLA in Vietnamese, asking whether he may be allowed an interpreter while taking his National Speed Awareness Course, how would the DVLA know, before having his letter translated, whether where the cost of translation would be proportionate to the public benefit. ?
ajay said,
January 29, 2026 @ 8:27 am
Good point and I should have made it clearer: the translations are normally done of official documents, and generally only on request. So, if I'm producing a public health leaflet saying "Parents! Make sure your kids get their MMR jag!" I will produce it in English, with a little line saying "translations available on request". I might get one done into, say, Bengali without waiting for a request, if I know that I have a lot of Bengali-speaking parents in my region. If someone writes and asks for one in Punjabi, I will have a look at how many kids that might cover, and then have a look at my budget for promoting vaccination, and decide accordingly.
There is not, as far as I know, an expectation that public sector organisations are expected to read communications in every language. I don't know quite what I would do if I received a letter in Vietnamese. Probably write back with a polite note asking if the sender could get someone to translate the original.
But if a patient came into hospital who spoke only Vietnamese, or a defendant appeared in court who spoke only Vietnamese, they would get an interpreter at public expense.
Philip Taylor said,
January 29, 2026 @ 8:58 am
Fair enough, no further disagreement, now going QRT.
V said,
January 29, 2026 @ 8:10 pm
I have a new neighbour in Sofia who speaks Punjabi natively and English quite well, and Bulgarian not very well. He asked me to help him with his papers.
V said,
January 29, 2026 @ 8:19 pm
When I was in Austria for a while and we were considering with my then-gf whether I should get permanent residency, there were forms for that in the town hall building in English, Polish, Bulgarian and maybe ten other languages. at the entrance.
V said,
January 30, 2026 @ 1:21 am
I'm not even sure why I should explain that. Residents of a country should be able to communicate with the government of that country.
Philip Taylor said,
January 30, 2026 @ 6:09 am
"Residents of a country should be able to communicate with the government of that country" — Of course, they should, V — in (one of the) official language(s) of that country, where such exists, and otherwise in one of the languages that is generally attested as being spoken in that country by a significant group of residents. There are over 7000 languages spoken on this planet today — do you really believe that it is the responsibility of a government to accept communications from a resident in any of those 7000+ language ?
V said,
January 30, 2026 @ 6:17 am
Philip Taylor — we already addressed that. Why are you going for reductio ad absurdum.
Philip Taylor said,
January 30, 2026 @ 8:28 am
I am not. I am simply addressing your assertion that "r]esidents of a country should be able to communicate with the government of that country" and pointing out that such a suggestion if unqualified is patently absurd. And since you have made no effort to qualify it, I merely adduced some basic statistics to point out how absurd it was.
Dkl said,
February 5, 2026 @ 6:55 pm
@V
"dental fricatives from English and Greek are /t/ and /d/ in Bulgarian, but /f/ in Russian. [v] is not a native phoneme in either language."
No, English interdentals /θ/ and /ð/ are not rendered as /f/ in Russian (especially /ð/, the voiced one, why would it?). It is a slippery topic but they could be transliterated either as /t/, /d/ or as /s/, /z/.
And /v/ is a perfectly native phoneme in both Russian and Bulgarian, as you may know. /f/ is not.