Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be
our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the
final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president
stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my
correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and
insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.
Let's assume for the moment that young Mark doesn't pronounce his last name Crick-oh-ryan, shall we? Let's assume that he doesn't Americanize and pronounce Justice Skalya's name or Justice Al-eye-to's name using the same standard. How does the lad order fajitas or hors d'ourvres or even, for that matter stop to by a souvenir?
It seems that the serious people have run out of even their specious arguments and are now just casting about for the anti-furriner support.
1 comment:
My grandfather wouldn't even pronounce George Washington's name correctly (he always said "Warshington"). I think they are casting about for the uneducated vote as much as for the anti-furriner vote (although there's a significant amount of overlap between the two).
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