pronunciations

Guy Van de Poel Guy_VdP at t-online.de
Fri Jan 14 16:27:08 EST 2000


Hi all,

>Despite some saying that pronunciations don't matter, they DO matter to
(snip)
>but the point is still there.  Communication does not always take place
>when the same name is pronounced differently.


Not to correct but to add:

They do matter in a way that communication will be faster, but communication
always depends most on the mutual willingness of the concerned TO
communicate; that 's what the red telephones in the White House and the
Kremlin stand for.

Back in mainland Europe, we have a lot of languages, in my own country
Belgium, we have three. In high school, one of the first things our Latin
teacher taught us was that there are different pronunciations for Latin,
depending on the religious background of the person concerned. So when I
talked to a French-speaking student late summer last year, I was not
surprised that she pronounced the probably shortest name for a butterfly, io
(peacock), completely different from how I do it. And I must have stared for
a moment, trying to figure out what she was talking about.
You could argue here that my Dutch (= Germanic language) spelling of Latin
is less correct than hers, but when you see what they made out of Latin (=
French), I wouldn't trust them either  :-).
Most important is that we communicated.
I met several US-Americans who have a name of undoubtedly Dutch origin, and
there was not a single one who could pronounce it right. And they did not
seem to be bothered ...

Happy New Year to you all,

Guy.

Guy Van de Poel
Guy_VdP at t-online.de

Royal Entomological Society of Antwerp
http://www.freeyellow.com/members/fransjanssens/index.html




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