Sorta yeah but nah, people learn the set of phonemes they can easily recognise and pronounce very early in life and they’re always going to struggle later.
In practice, almost everyone gets used to having their name mangled in predictable ways depending on the origin of the speaker.
I like the Hong Kong approach of having a double barrelled English/Chinese name, so you get Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing and Alan Tam Wing-lun.
The fun part about this is that the last name ends up in the middle of the name, surrounded by first names! So you can say Alan Tam, or Tam Wing-lun, and either is correct. Very flexible, very pragmatic.
Being unable to pronounce people’s names is rude and racist now?
Welp. I wonder what that makes me. English is not my first language and I’m probably mangling everyone’s names all the time. I’ve been told my English is good, but I still do have an accent and just… clearly just never talked enough to know how lots of things are pronounced.
I didn’t even know that “B” and “V” made different sounds until earlier this year. I am 23 years old.
I dunno, I think it is a response to how people in the past have been pressured to use English names because those are “normal” names, and thus cannot expect the usage of their name, even imperfectly. Often, “I cannot pronounce your name“ is an attempt to subtly conversationally pressure them to provide a “just call me (English name) instead.”
So in that context saying “people should learn how to say it” is not “people should ace the pronunciation” but “I should not be obligated to go by a name that is foreign to me for your convenience.”
The burden of cultural accomodation, diplomacy, and tolerance is gonna fall on someone, and yes, it is a burden, but either you just don’t interact positively or someone picks it up. When that burden is always on one person, they start getting exasperated. As someone who has an unusual birth name themselves I made a point of learning how to pronounce foreign names to me because I learned exactly how displeasing that could be.
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