Lost in Translation: International Pronunciations of Names

As many of you may know, 2006 FIFA World Cup of soccer is drawing to a close.  (My prediction is that Italy will win 2-1 by the way).  Watching all these games with players from various countries has reminded me of an idea I developed a long time ago.  As a person who doesn't have an English-based name, I am constantly reminded that few people who aren't familiar with Indian languages can say my name correctly.  Many times, they just look at its spelling and take a guess.  It has been butchered, combined with my last name, made to sound Irish...  I understand that it's because different languages use different sounds and so our brains are only trained to hear and speak certain sounds, but it would be nice if everybody could say names the right way regardless of where they're from.  When it comes to names of countries, each language modifies the name for their own language.  So, in French, U.S.A. is les Etats-Unis d'Amerique.  And in English l'Italia is Italy.  Since the world is becoming more global, I say we should all start pronouncing names the way they are spoken in their native language.  For example, everybody would say Bharat for India, Sverige for Sweden.  This way, we would all become familiar with the sounds of various languages and then be able to say names properly. As a side benefit, we might all start understanding all those accents that we tend to ignore when we type, (but we'll need to get new keyboards).

+ Atul

Comments

[Jack Yan]

Not a bad idea, Atul. I adopt a half-way policy for my publications: the cities are in their original languages (if in a different script, then the nearest transliteration), but countries are in English. When given the opportunity, I will pronounce the place name as closely as possible to what a native would call it.

[Dave P]

Atul
Not just a new keyboard, but some programming/reporting tools disallow the use of an apostrophe because the single quote is used to denote a string. Also, some email software is not setup to decipher non-keyboard symbols.
Oh, wait, the company can add this functionality and then you would have to purchase it and the company would make $$$$.

[prego]

Brilliant. and states, too:

Flo-REE-dah, Coh-loh-RAH-do,
Te-HASS.... and Nueva Yorrrr.

All kidding aside, very interesting. I never knew India was Bharta. I found it odd, during the World Cup that the Netherlands is referred to as 'Paises Bajos' in Spanish. There's no logic to it...

[Atul]

Glad you guys like the idea. Now we just all have to start learning the pronunciations and spellings of the hundreds of countries' real names, and start a company that makes keyboards with all the accents. Then we'll be rich, and we will have world peace because we'll all 'understand' each other better!