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 Yum
I 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…
Cater to the audience. Being understood is more useful than being right.
That’s a great way to put it, though sometimes I run into situations where I know some of my audience will understand language A and not B and some will understand B but not A.
I always end up just freezing; it’s like my brain is rebooting or something.
There’s pretty much always time to explain yourself if someone doesn’t understand. You could say it the first way that comes to mind, then pause and say it the second way. It doesn’t have to be perfect, you just have to communicate. Sometimes you have to use your hands and feet, and that’s OK too.
I feel like I owe you money for this kinda therapy…
Pronounce it properly then give the equivalent in whatever language you’re talking in. That’s what I do.
Of the language I am using. Trying to fit in correct pronunciation sounds weird.
Fun fact, just this week I realized that “hemendex” is literally “ham and eggs” together when I’ve seen it written on a menu as “hamandeggs”. I am fucking dumb.
But hey, there’s also jomaha, jomaso (You’re my heart, You’re my soul): https://youtu.be/snm_GTD9-Q8?t=25
The slavic lossy compression of English.
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”.
You use the one of the language you’re currently speaking, of course.
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.
if I’m speaking German, every word is coming out with a German accent.
Speaking German with a German accent? What?
German has many English loanwords, which most Germans pronounce with an English speaking accent. I pronounce them with a German accent, as in the example given. I also pronounce “Song” in German with voiced s and a k at the end, for another example.
I’m German and I have no idea how to pronounce “Microsoft” with a German accent. I guess you could pronounce it like the German “mikro” at the beginning? But that’s not an accent, that’s translating half a word. And Song with a “k” at the end? That’s just not a word. Are you saying Zonk?
It’s called Auslautverhärtung, and it makes Germans cringe when I do it on a word like song, but if I want to use it correctly on a word like Verhärtung, I’ve got to use it on the word song.
I’m German and I have no idea how to pronounce “Microsoft” with a German accent. I guess you could pronounce it like the German “mikro” at the beginning? But that’s not an accent, that’s translating half a word.
Again, long i, trilled r, and voiced s. You can call it translation if you want.
The German r isn’t trilled, though. Not every “hard” r is “trilled”, that’s a unique feature of a specific set of languages and regional accents, like Spanish.
Also, as a German I’d frown so hard at someone who pronounces “Microsoft” like that, even most Germans don’t speak like that. Can’t you at least pronounce it as if it was written “Maikroßoft” (with a German r and a sharp s), i.e. like most Germans do? “ai” and sharp s are common sounds in German.
I feel you on having difficulties switching between accents quickly, though. I definitely run into this issue when I try pronouncing English words with English r, w or all those diphtongs that English tends to use instead of the single vowel that’s written down.
German has three widespread r variants, including a trilled one (which is most common around me, but not standard Hochdeutsch), and even more less widespread ones. If you go to Herborn, you can even find native German speakers with a rhotic r that sounds just like the one I grew up with in the US.
I wouldn’t call these variants “widespread”, but fair enough.
Do the Germans around you actually pronounce “Microsoft” like that, with German i and voiced s?
The old ones do, but young people think I’m cringe. I personally find it way more cringe if I pronounce the rest of the sentence with a strong American accent though, so my friends can call me cringe and I’m okay with it. Regarding my other example, „der Song,“ I tend to just say „das lied” instead, because I recognize that pronouncing it like „der (Minne)sang“ with an o is wrong and hard to understand.
I personally find it way more cringe if I pronounce the rest of the sentence with a strong American accent though, so my friends can call me cringe and I’m okay with it
But why do you get an American accent when you pronounce “Microsoft” like a German who speaks English with a German accent? “ai” and sharp s are common sounds in German.
I’m French and get mocked for saying sweatshirt instead of sweetshirt (as French do)… It’s a real conundrum.
France is the absolute worst for this. I once spent ten minutes in a bar trying to figure out who ‘Kenny West’ was… I kept asking my friends if they’re sure that’s how the name is pronounced.
It was Kanye. He even says his name in most of his own songs…
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?
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.
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.
I’m sorry you had to go through that.
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.
I’m Chinese-American. Primary language is English, I don’t speak Cantonese very well, and I don’t really speak Mandarin (but both are based on the same language system so its not that hard to convert from Cantonese). If I were to go to a Chinese restaurant, I’m gonna speak, in this order: Cantonese, then its Mandarin, then English, but most of the staff probably speaks Cantonese. I’m not gonna be like “I want a 燒賣, thank you”, like… that sounds so out of place lmfao, just speak the whole thing in the same language.
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.
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.
I attempt to change to the pronunciation of the original language of that word
Honestly it’s mostly unconscious for me, the brain just does it’s thing sometimes.
I’m so jealous.
Part of the reason I asked is because I want to get to this point so badly but my brain just freezes whenever I’m unsure of everyone in the audience’s understanding of both languages
😣🫣
Whichever way I learned it first.
Depends on the person I’m talking to. I adapt based on how they (or how I assume they) pronounce it.
