chat

Okay but consider that if you read things phonetically and you know it's in a language with grammar conventions that are entirely foreign to you and that you know you will fuck up

in contexts like this "I'm not even going to try here" is a sort of coping mechanism because you already know that whatever you attempt is going to be an embarrassing mash up of whatever it was supposed to sound like

I don't know if I would shame people for social coping mechanisms

but also it depends on how they say it, I guess, and with what intent

Counterpoint:

Admitting you don't know how to do something is good and should be encouraged

This is the same Guy-o-type that can perfectly recite the German name for the Mordtodesmaschineumjudenzubreizumachen, but hears a word in Spanish and is like, "What am I, Mexican or something??"

I'm sorry but I am not learning welsh

Depends on the situation. Being jumped with the welsh place name when you're in a hurry vs in a prepared video trying to pronounce "Venkatesh" or some other easy phonetic spelling. The latter is probably racism

Some of us grew up in extremely Anglo families and it’s not our fault. I mean, I can try to pronounce but I’m 100% getting it wrong.

How do you feel about "sorry if I mispronounce this" guys?

If you ask me to say anything in icelandic besides Reykavik im shooting you

This is such a big pet peeve of mine. Like fuck me dude sound it out. It's not that hard.

nah i'm not learning polish

The same guys who faun over latin but can't pronounce that properly either, at best theyre just doing ecclesiastical latin, dorks

i only learnt how to properly roll my rrrrrr's this year, yikes

My sister dated a guy with a slightly hard to pronounce name. Honestly not even hard to pronounce, just not a western hemisphere name. Some of my family made the effort and learned how to say it, some made the effort but still failed. The rest called him Chris, which is the closest western name to his actual name.

Those groups mapped perfectly from least to most racist.

I'm not taking responsibility for the Irish getting trolled when introduced to the latin alphabet

Caoimhe is pronounced Keeva, and you expect me to know that without knowing Gaelic?

I do try and put effort into pronouncing English but I actually can't make some of the the sounds lol

A lot of times it's also just thinly veiled racism.

I had a job as a dishwasher in a restaurant when I was a teenager, where I worked with a middle aged guy from Iran. The chef, who was an asshole, couldn't even put in the effort to pronounce the guy's name correctly, because the unfamiliar combination of just two syllables made it too difficult for him. Instead, he decided to simplify his name so that it would be easier for his KKKcracker ass to pronounce it.

I have done this but only in situations where I wasn't in a position to look up the pronunciation and I didn't want to embarrass myself by mangling it

this is very conditional, first few times someone encounters something new it's not a big deal to tap out, drawing attention to it can actually be better than completely butchering something and confusing people.

if it's shit you've been dealing with it your whole career then yeah you're just being a racist

As someone who gets their last name butchered regularly, last names are fake and don't matter.

First names should always be pronounced correctly and usually only take one or two tries to get right.

Lame take

the goal should be to get it right enough that a native speaker can recognise it without it hurting their brain. this is only easy if the orthography hasnt drifted too too far from the "consensus" on what values the letters hold.

so obviously you're fucked with english, french, irish for example. german, polish, croatian, hungarian, spanish, italian, these shouldnt be that hard.

outside europe, i dunno, you're probably fucked anyway :D

edit: thought about it a bit, and you're not always fucked. indonesian for example feels like it was made to be pronounced easily by everyone, including foreigners.

Burgerzee

at least Tim Heidecker tries!