a rose by any other name

[framefolly]

Okay. Today I'm going to post something snarky and petty, just to get it off my chest. I'm going to start a new tag for it, "stranger in a familiar land." It's about living as an Asian, specifically Chinese-American, in America.

I cannot count the number of times I have had this exact conversation. I roughly estimate that it happens at least once a

Comments

[owenthurman]

People really think they're good at pronouncing foreign words? I hear them try sometimes and it's not pretty. English is hard to pronounce well but my second language is easy and plenty of people mangle it.

[framefolly]

Yes, I have had many people tell me so. They do not generally back up their claim in a convincing way.

Out of curiosity, what is your second language?

[owenthurman]

I speak English and Spanish. Spanish has a bunch of sounds English doesn't have and I have spent hundreds of hours practicing them to render them passably. It was not easy and I don't have a talent for it but now I do it well for a foreigner.

I think that really doing the work to pronounce one new language right would cure anyone of that delusion.

And even after learning one language I don't ever dream that I could pick up Chinese. There is a definite order of difficulty in languages where -- on a scale of one to ten -- Spanish, Italian, and Japanese are ones; English is a three; Russian is an eight; and Chinese is a twenty.

[framefolly]

I wish I could speak Spanish -- it would be very useful here in the American Southwest, where I live.

I agree that there's a "order of difficulty," but I think the order changes depending on one's origin language(s). English felt like much more than a 3, for instance, when I was first learning it! But after learning English, French was still a bitch was more approachable.

[thisficklemob]

I don't even try saying hello in Chinese -- I've been scared off by hilarious mistakes in meaning by the wrong inflection. A Japanese name, since I lived in Japan as a kid, I might try. I can see someone who was studying Chinese attempting to learn a Chinese name properly, but that's a bit different.

The part that makes me wince is I'm sure none of these PNPs have the slightest idea that this is a recurring conversational dance for you... if it happened once, it wouldn't be such an annoyance, I'm sure.

*adds to list of things not to do* ;)

P.S.

[thisficklemob]

I wasn't meaning to excuse them, btw. Just feeling unnecessary embarrassment empathy, as I do when I watch sitcoms.

I always think it's a bit messed up that people want to know the meaning of certain names, Asian and Native American ones in particular. (You don't see people asking, "What does Juan mean?" "John.") Sure, perhaps the meanings are a bit closer to the surface if the syllables literally mean something in the same language, but we don't expect people named Rebecca to explain that Rebecca means "to bind" in Hebrew, or people named Juan to explain that it means "God's grace".

Re: P.S.

[framefolly]

Oh lord! I have such a love/hate relationship with cringe humor! And now that I see it in this lens, I'll probably have more fun ;) Thanks for giving me that image.

You're SO right about the "what does your name mean?" thing! Even when the names do mean something -- is someone called Hope necessarily an optimist? Names tell us more about what a person's parents were thinking than about the person herself directly. It's interesting information, but only of secondary relevance.

Re: P.S.

[thisficklemob]

I have mostly a hate/cringe relationship with cringe humor -- especially when I feel like people should be embarrassed/ashamed but aren't. Like, hide! Hide, you fools!

Heh. I always felt it was mean to name your child a recognizable noun or adjective -- it's such pressure! And it just makes it worse when Grace is a klutz, or Hope is a pessimist.

Don't even get me started on naming, though; I could rant and rant. *g*

[petzipellepingo]

People is dumb.

[framefolly]

Yes. We is all dumbs ;)

[essaying]

Do you ever use fleur de sel? It's salt only better -- it doesn't dissolve readily, so when you sprinkle it on your food, you get amazing little crunchy bursts of perfect saltiness, without any of the bitterness of most commercial salt. And lots of people think it's better for you than regular salt, partly because of the trace minerals, and partly because one tends to use less of it because of the non-dissolving thing.

Favorite Breakfast: labneh (yogurt cheese, which I make by draining Greek yogurt through cheesecloth overnight), drizzled with olive oil and sea salt, and scooped up with bread or pita.

[essaying]

Damn, now I want labneh, and it's 4am and there's no yogurt in the house :( I need to be careful with reading/writing about food after 9pm or so.

[framefolly]

I know exactly what you mean.

[framefolly]

Ooo! That sounds intriguing! I'll keep it in mind -- thanks :)

[zandperl]

I grew up around half my family speaking nothing but Chinese (Shanghai usually, but I'm told it's not too far from Mandarin), and I had just enough exposure to Chinese to know definitively that I cannot pronounce Chinese correctly. It's kinda like when I'm singing off key: in both cases I can hear that I'm wrong, and I can hear what I should be doing, but I can't figure out what I need to do differently

[zandperl]

Also, I have a Chinese name that I don't mind telling people, but I mispronounce it myself. Now *that* is embarrassing - I can't even say my own name well enough for Chinese speakers to know what it is! What I like about explaining the meaning is that it gets into double-meanings and puns. While my name itself doesn't have a pun (it's something like "Sung-Eh", literally: heart and liver like the body parts, figuratively: heart and soul like the emotional parts, or so I'm told), it's always been interesting to me that words seem to have more meanings in Chinese than in English - or maybe I've just internalized the multiple meanings in English and of course I haven't in Chinese.

[framefolly]

What is mispronunciation? If enough people agree to say a certain word a certain way, it just becomes an accent ;)

I wish I knew what characters comprise your Chinese name. From your description I am almost positive I know the first character, but the second one eludes me...

[framefolly]

Yep -- I have the exact problem with Cantonese, which has 8 tones instead of 4. I've pretty much given up