Multiliguists of Lemmy - When speaking Language A and using a word from Language B how do you decide which pronunciation to use?
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…wrote last edited by [email protected]Depends on how good I actually am at pronouncing the original version, how different the original version is from the current language and if I assume that my conversation partner is going to understand it. Also, I tend to have trouble with switching accents quickly. On the other hand, figuring out how to correctly butcher a pronounciation isn't that easy if you're not a native speaker of the butchering language.
I'm a native German living in Germany, English is generally fine, i.e. most Germans know English well enough that they aren't going to be confused by a correct English pronounciation and my pronounciation isn't that bad by German standards. Other languages can get dicey, though. TBH I tend to avoid pronouncing words that are neither German nor English and are hard to understand if you don't know much about the language - e.g. "burrito" isn't so different that Germans wouldn't understand the Spanish pronounciation, but many French words are not very obvious if you don't know French well, plus my pronounciation could be bad enough that it would even throw off native French speakers.
If I was in an anglophone country ordering German food, I'd probably pick the German pronounciation, because I'm not that good at guessing how anglophones in a specific area pronounce German words, and who knows how that would even come out if I try that with my German-accented English. But I'd expect that most of the servers don't know any German and have trouble understanding me. I'd probably just say the numbers if it's a numbered menu.
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…I’ll pronounce Spanish words in an American accent, but using Spanish pronunciation. For example, if I say “I would love a quesadilla, but I don’t have any queso or tortillas.” I’ll pronounce the “que” as “kay” instead of “kway” and the “illa” as “eeya” instead of “ila”, but in an American accent. The exception being if I’m pronouncing a place name, then I’ll pronounce it with English pronunciation. Like “Los Angeles”, I pronounce as “loss anjiless”.
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It's not objectively correct.
If you do this between English and Japanese, Japanese people will not understand the way you pronounced the English word.
If you ask a Japanese person if they own a "computer" they will not understand. You have to call it a "con-puuu-ta" or even "pa-so-con" which is personal computer.
McDonald's... Nope. "ma ku do nal do" or even just "makku" depending on the region.
wrote last edited by [email protected]If you ask a Japanese person if they own a "computer" they will not understand. You have to call it a "con-puuu-ta" or even "pa-so-con" which is personal computer.
In Thai it’s just ‘com’.
If you’re ready for the bill at a restaurant it’s ’check bin’ which for some reason is ‘check’ and ‘bill’ combined. When I first learned this people were confused why I didn’t already know it, “but it’s English?!”
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You pronounce the word correctly for whatever language the word is from. That’s the objectively correct way. Is this a serious question?
Do you pronounce borrowed French words the way they should be correctly pronounced in everyday settings?
Like this video: https://youtu.be/fKGoVefhtMQ
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Do you pronounce borrowed French words the way they should be correctly pronounced in everyday settings?
Like this video: https://youtu.be/fKGoVefhtMQ
I don’t even know how coupé is pronounced in French…
I have a guess but those are usually way off when it comes to French pronunciations
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I say burrito the American-English way because it's also a word in English. But if I say "arepa" I say it the way it's pronounced in Spanish.
This trend of pronouncing it the way I first heard extends to dialects, too: Words that I first learned in an Argentine context I tend to pronounce in the Argentine way (eg. the letter elle makes a "zh" or "ĵ" sound) versus the rest of my Spanish which is more (central) Mexican.
I have often irritated or confused acquaintances when using famous quotations or phrases from Latin, which I pronounce in a Classical, rather than Italianate manner (eg. hard Cs and soft Vs).
It's kind hard to write clearly in print about how we pronounce things, huh?
It’s kind hard to write clearly in print about how we pronounce things, huh?
English is also kinda especially bad for this. There's always IPA if you want to be correct but really confuse most readers ...
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…Usually like the language of origin unless I'm around people that do not speak fluently or are not looking to learn.
For example, in Chile a lot of people mix English words in their day to day use and pronounce it incorrectly so I pronounce it the same way and go along with it.
I never pronounce words in my own language differently as I think its a missed opportunity on teaching someone a little bit. Which is also a thing I appreciate other people do to me as well.
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If you ask a Japanese person if they own a "computer" they will not understand. You have to call it a "con-puuu-ta" or even "pa-so-con" which is personal computer.
In Thai it’s just ‘com’.
If you’re ready for the bill at a restaurant it’s ’check bin’ which for some reason is ‘check’ and ‘bill’ combined. When I first learned this people were confused why I didn’t already know it, “but it’s English?!”
These wrong loanwords are always so weird! German has a ton of those, e.g. "trainer" is a coach, and "handy" is a cellphone. Add all the false friends because of the similar origins of German and English (even the latin-derived words often have completely different meanings) and it becomes a huge mess to untangle when you're learning English as a native German speaker or vice versa.
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You pronounce the word correctly for whatever language the word is from. That’s the objectively correct way. Is this a serious question?
There are times in which pronouncing the wrong way can save you a lot of hassle.
In many poor countries speaking proper English is a dead giveaway that you have money, so you can obviously see why that is undesirable. Even when that is not the case English is so deep in every other language that people use English words as they see fit without knowing the language at all, so one has to pronounce it like they do for them to understand.
Last case is to "avoid correcting someone" because one does not want to make the other person feel bad, or simply want to avoid the "how is it pronounced" situation.
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These wrong loanwords are always so weird! German has a ton of those, e.g. "trainer" is a coach, and "handy" is a cellphone. Add all the false friends because of the similar origins of German and English (even the latin-derived words often have completely different meanings) and it becomes a huge mess to untangle when you're learning English as a native German speaker or vice versa.
“Trainer” probably would work just fine in US English but I can see what it wouldn’t with British English. Of course that only makes things more complicated…
“Handy” definitely does not work in U.S. English especially using it as a noun
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Definitely serious. Loanwords fall all across the spectrum regarding how much they’re integrated from their source language into the “local” language and most folks don’t know or care about word etymologies enough to even consider it. If you’re not native there’s a good chance you’re mispronouncing loanwords even when you’re trying to use their native pronunciation.
Loanwords are a different story. I would argue those are part of both languages at that point. Burrito is an English word and a Spanish word. As I see it, anyway.
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Do you speak multiple languages?
Yes, I speak English and Spanish
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Do you pronounce borrowed French words the way they should be correctly pronounced in everyday settings?
Like this video: https://youtu.be/fKGoVefhtMQ
If I can. My sentiments do not apply to “loan words”. Those are a different category in my opinion. And there are some French words I struggle with, tbh.
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It’s kind hard to write clearly in print about how we pronounce things, huh?
English is also kinda especially bad for this. There's always IPA if you want to be correct but really confuse most readers ...
Instructions unclear: Had a beer, still not great at putting my accent(s) into print.
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Instructions unclear: Had a beer, still not great at putting my accent(s) into print.
I'm sorry you had to go through that.
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…By how well known the word is by the people I speak to. English is usually not an issue. Germans speak english quite well. Languages' Common phrases like yes, no, thank you are also often known.
So I pronounce these as a native speaker would.When ordering food? It's a fine line when I don't speak the language myself. I.E. ordering spanish couisine but not knowing spanish. I try not to butcher the pronunciation, but trying to lean into it would feel pretentious and awkward to me.
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…Honestly it's mostly unconscious for me, the brain just does it's thing sometimes.
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As a funny aside I was serving a restaurant patron the other day who was Spanish-only. The restaurant I wait tables at is Mediterranean cuisine, and I stumbled because I couldn't remember how to say "falafel" in Spanish.
I just stopped in the middle of a sentence for what felt like a minute but was probably only a handful of seconds before I realized the word I wanted was "falafel": It's not an English word originally and I didn't need to translate it at all.
I was surprised by seeing “ñoqui” on a menu and realizing I actually knew what it was.
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…I’m a native English speaker living in Germany and if I’m speaking German, every word is coming out with a German accent. It makes Germans cringe, but if I switch back and forth, I completely lose my accent. That means that I pronounce, for example, Microsoft while speaking German with a long i, a trilled r, and a voiced s.
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The best examples that come to mind are when ordering food. As examples:
• You speak English and Spanish and are ordering a burrito
• You speak Thai and English and are ordering Tom YumI imagine it could depend on numerous things:
• You primary language or ethnicity
• What sort of restaurant
• Who you’re dining with
• Who you’re ordering from
• and probably a lot more…wrote last edited by [email protected]You use the one of the language you're currently speaking, of course.
