this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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Chapotraphouse

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When English is your only language and you can't even get that right, maybe who's running for mayor shouldn't be your biggest concern. Try mastering your ABCs first and then we can move beyond sesame street level issues.

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[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Usually when people mispronounce Zohran in a way worth correcting, it's because they say Zorhan, which isn't a matter of ambiguity but of jumbling letters. Like when Eric Adams kept calling the "Intifada" the "Infintada"

It's even more egregious with his surname for the same reason.

[–] knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can't forget about the famous US football player Brett Faarv.

USians are illiterate.

[–] gobble_ghoul@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's completely normal based on how French allows syllables to be structured compared to English. In French, the name is one syllable, /favʁ/, with the /ʁ/ on the outside of the syllable. That is really unusual across languages, and English doesn't allow it. It's even kind of weird in French, and when a word starting with a vowel comes after words that are structured like this, the /ʁ/ actually gets shunted over to start the next syllable so that "Favre est" is really more like "Fav rest". English speakers have a few options to fall back on if they're trying to pronounce the name according to English syllable structure, because they are overwhelmingly not going to keep the original French structure intact. They can:

  • delete the /ʁ/ and just say /fɑv/, prioritizing syllable count over keeping all the segments
  • add an extra syllable with a schwa on either side of the /r/, making /fɑvrə/ or /fɑvər/, prioritizing keeping the segments over keeping the syllable count
  • metathesize the last two consonants to say /fɑrv/, prioritizing both syllable count and keeping the segments while sacrificing the exact ordering of the segments

All of these are common strategies in borrowing loanwords across different languages.

[–] knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 1 week ago

Very interesting, thanks for your explaination.