Language Learning Forum: Pronunciation of L1 words when speak L2

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Pronunciation of L1 words when speak L2

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Forum Name: General discussion
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URL: http://how-to-learn-any-language.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=40364
Printed Date: 21 July 2021 at 4:20pm

Posted By: 1e4e6
Subject: Pronunciation of L1 words when speak L2
Date Posted: 23 April 2015 at 3:26am

I always debated to myself how to pronounce L1 words that appear during speech of some
L2, L3, etc. For example, many Hispanophones use a completely Spanish pronunciation of
English (or any other language) words, proper nouns, names, etc. when they speak
Spanish. However, I notice that the Germanic countries use the Anglophone
pronunciation when they pronounce English names, proper nouns, and words. I just heard
CFK, the President of Argentina speak in Moscow today with her signing of new ties
with Putin and Russia she said,

https://youtu.be/WfNzEt3iiOM?t=50s - «Quiero dirigirme a agradecerle a Victoria
Porontsova, por RT, Russia Today, recién incorporada señal de noticias en español,
para todo el mundo, excelente por cierto...» except that the English name
"Russia Today" is pronounced in a Spanish way, like "eh-rú-si-a eh-tu-e-dé". Someone
from Norway or Denmark would probably pronounce it using Anglophone pronunciation.

But then I wondered, since I am a native Anglophone, who also speaks Spanish (not
natively though), if it sounds right for me to pronounce an English name like that
with the Spanish pronunciation or the English one. I can read it using Spanish
alphabet instead of English alphabet, for example, but the difference with using an
authentic accent is that in this case, since I speak English natively, I know how to
pronounce the English name the Anglophone way. So there seem to be two results that I
foresee that could happen: either 1) I pronounce it the English way but then the
Hispanophones think that I sound posh because I show that I pronounce it properly, or
2) I pronounce it the Hispanophone way but risk sounding like I am making fun of them
for being unable to speak English or at least pronounce English words and names.

My recent strategy is to pronounce things in L2 way by pretending not to know English,
which seems to somewhat avoid the problem (provided that they do not see my
passports!) but I wonder what others do here.

This can also be extended for L3 in L2, like if whilst speaking Spanish, I had to
pronounce "Tromsø", which I can do in Norwegian pronunciation instead of the Spanish
way which almost all Hispanophones do not know how to pronounce the "ø" and just use
"o". If I prononuce it Spanish way they might think that I am implying to them that
they cannot pronounce things in other languages properly, but if I pronounce it
Norwegian way they might think that I am showing off some sort of linguistic skill or
sound like I am over-educated.

Replies:

I pronounce it the proper way - whatever that language prefers. Notice that some cities
have their own names in some languages; you can't say Paris in Dutch, you HAVE to say
Parijs. Londen over London, Moskou over Moskva and so on. If that language tends to
Anglicize the pronunciation I will do this when speaking Norwegian or Swedish; I will not
when speaking Mandarin or Spanish.
tarvos on 23 April 2015

I'm struggling with this forever too.
For countries and cities I definitely use the correct L2 name if it exists, same with 100% established loan words. As for something like Tromsø, I would aim for remaining in the ballpark but staying close enough to the correct pronunciation that I don't cringe inside. Although I find that with enough exposure this no longer sounds jarring. People pronounce things as they can, and historically that's what they always did really.
Serpent on 23 April 2015

I tend to "nativize" it if that's what they do. When I was in Japan I would just use the English pronunciation of words that had been "nativized" and found no one understood me and I'd ask for a coke and get a coffee instead and that sort of a thing. From that I just started adapting to their pronunciation,
basica on 23 April 2015

If it's something they will pronounce without hesitation: do exactly what they do, whether it's similar to the original
language pronunciation or not. At this point the pronunciation has essentially been adapted into the language, and
you should use it.

If it's something they will look at and say "huh, that's a weird foreign word, I don't know how to pronounce it," then
pronounce it using the closest approximation to the original language pronunciation that you can achieve using
only sounds that exist in the language you're speaking.

Do not switch out of your L2 accent and use the actual original pronunciation unless they also speak that language
so it would be normal to code switch, or you want to emphasize the fact that you speak that language at the cost of
sounding pretentious.
robarb on 23 April 2015

If the other speaker is speaking a language from the same family like German or Dutch, then the words will probably sound very similar, but similar doesn't mean the same.

There is also the separate issue noted above of different words being used for naming things. For example Parijs in Dutch is a completely different word from Paris in English, but I suspect Dutch speaking people have no problem saying "Paris" if they felt like it (but why would they?). There is also the German word Paris, spelled "Paris" as in English but pronounced in a completely different way from the English word for Paris, which is also spelled "Paris". But German speakers will have no trouble with the word Paris itself, for example, as it occurs in the name "Paris Hilton". Unless, of course, you're dictating a text in which the name "Paris Hilton" appears printed on the page but you've never heard the name "Paris Hilton" pronounced before. In that case, you will probably just say it in whatever way first comes into your mind. And that's just fine too.

chaotic_thought on 23 April 2015

chaotic_thought wrote:

But German speakers will have no trouble with the word Paris
itself, for example, as it occurs in the name "Paris Hilton". Unless, of course, you're
dictating a text in which the name "Paris Hilton" appears printed on the page but you've
never heard the name "Paris Hilton" pronounced before. In that case, you will
probably just say it in whatever way first comes into your mind. And that's just fine
too.

Would be just weird to dictate a text about some Greek guy (/'pɑ.ris/ in German) with a
strange surname when the text suddenly is about purses, cute dogs and party scandals.
daegga on 23 April 2015

I make a point of using the Mandarinized pronounciation of American place names whenever possible, not to show off, but to prevent others from knowing what I am talking about.

In a recent conversation I said "Ya-li-sang-na", which is the Mandarin word for "Arizona", and "De-zhou", the Mandarin word for "Texas", rather than the Anglicized pronounciations of those place names, which themselves are not "Anglo" names to begin with.

Out of respect to Mandarin native speakers I say "Dong-jing" for "Tokyo" or "Xi-la" for "Greece", because they may not know the Anglicized versions of those words.

There doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule in Mandarin about what pronounciation is acceptable. I have watched Mandarin news where they have used "Sierra Leone", "Sai-la Li'-ang", or "Shi-zi Shan", which means "Lion Mountain".
holly heels on 24 April 2015

Going backwards, Anglophones in general (although I have never met an Anglophone who
pronounced it correctly) pronounce the very common city name "Amsterdam" with stress
on the first syllable instead of the correct last syllable, Amsterdam. The
aeroport Schiphol is even worse pronounced by Anglophones, but then these two are
cases that I usually just use the Dutch pronunciation anyway. Same for Breda,
Rotterdam, Scheveningen. "Tromsø" is a tricky one because unfortunately
most people are not sure where it lies, but I have had to say "Tromsø" much more than
most people do regularly because it is an important city and hub for one of my
hobbies.

For those who know both Russian and French probably know that Putin's name is spelled
and pronounced as "Poutine" in French, which to me always sounded and looked weird,
especially for those who are from Québec. But then they do not transliterate all other
people's names like this. It seems to be a complete random system.

In Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch, German, even though they have their own city names and
spelling systems, on a map "New York" usually still shows as "New York" instead of
"Nieuwe Jork" or "Ny Jork". But in Spanish and Portuguese this is "Nueva York" and
"Nova Iorque" respectively. But then also in Spanish, their system still uses the
Norwegian letter "ø", like in this broadcast,
https://youtu.be/qVFvzuyIDZg - Olimpíadas de ajedrez Tromsø 2014 . Then this
is a very strange case where they have the Norwegian original spelling but most
pronounce it Spanish way. In the rare case that a native Hispanophone uses a semi-
Norwegian pronunciation then I think that it gets a bit more complicated.

Mandarin (and by extension, Cantonese, perhaps Fukien too), is probably easier,
because they use usually complete transliterations with their own words (which are
usually rare, obscure words in addition to common ones) as Crush once said, that many
transliteration words seem to be words somehow almost completetly just tailor-made for
foreign name transliterations.

I once had to say "James Anderson" in Spanish and paused for about 1,5 seconds trying
to do a quick think on how to pronounce this without sounding weird or pretentious, so
I just did a mix "e-dzhéms e-án-der-son". But then anyone who knows football knows
about the Colombian midfielder-turned-striker James Rodríguez, whose forename is
pronounced completely in Spanish way despite it being an Anglophone name, i.e. "ja-
mes" instead of Anglophone "dzhéms".
1e4e6 on 24 April 2015

1e4e6 wrote:

For those who know both Russian and French probably know that Putin's name is spelled and pronounced as "Poutine" in French, which to me always sounded and looked weird, especially for those who are from Québec. But then they do not transliterate all other people's names like this. It seems to be a complete random system.

Actually this transliteration is perfectly consistent with the http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_du_russ e_en_fran%C3%A7ais - traditional French system of transcription of Russian . Since Russian isn't written in the Latin script a transliteration/transcription is always necessary when writing in a language with a Latin-based alphabet. Unlike, say, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization - Japanese or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin - Mandarin Chinese , Russian doesn't really have a single Romanization system that is universally endorsed by both the academia and the media, so some languages have retained their own transliteration schemes that are different from the de facto English-based standard that has developed in the recent decades. Besides, using the English-based Romanization of Putin's name would just make French-speakers pronounce it identically to "putain". Not that I mind, personally :)
vonPeterhof on 24 April 2015

holly heels wrote:

I make a point of using the Mandarinized pronounciation of American place names whenever possible, not to
show off, but to prevent others from knowing what I am talking about.

In a recent conversation I said "Ya-li-sang-na", which is the Mandarin word for "Arizona", and "De-zhou", the
Mandarin word for "Texas", rather than the Anglicized pronounciations of those place names, which themselves
are not "Anglo" names to begin with.

Out of respect to Mandarin native speakers I say "Dong-jing" for "Tokyo" or "Xi-la" for "Greece", because they
may not know the Anglicized versions of those words.

There doesn't seem to be a hard-and-fast rule in Mandarin about what pronounciation is acceptable. I have
watched Mandarin news where they have used "Sierra Leone", "Sai-la Li'-ang", or "Shi-zi Shan", which means "Lion
Mountain".

I'm curious, which Mandarin contexts have you observed Mandarin speakers using Anglicized place names like
"Tokyo," "Greece" or "Sierra Leone?" My experience is somewhat limited but I've never heard this except from
Chinese living in the US where some code-switching into English is expected.

When the place name is obscure, like a small town, often people won't know (or there may not even exist) the
accepted transliteration, but in my experience Chinese people aren't any more likely to use English country
names than Americans are to call Germany "Deutschland." I imagine Chinese who don't speak English would have
trouble understanding you or at least see it as an obvious sign of lack of Mandarin proficiency if you kept saying
"Paris，France" instead of fă guó bā lí.
robarb on 24 April 2015

Robarb, in answer to your question, of the 3 place names you listed, "Sierra Leone", is the only Anglicized one I have ever heard on a Mandarin language newscast, when they were talking about the Ebola outbreak last year.

It stood out in my mind because that was probably the only time I ever heard a native speaker use an Anglicized place name on a newscast or in a conversation.

As for conversing with native speakers, most of whom know very little English, I have always said "Ri-ben" instead of "Japan" or "Yue-nan" for "Vietnam", etc. because the Mandarin place names harmonize better with other Mandarin words and are the only ones used on Mainland and Taiwan TV shows.
holly heels on 24 April 2015

vonPeterhof wrote:

1e4e6 wrote:

Up until 1992, watching the Olympic Games, the broadcast on TV would show the USSR athletes' names in the French transliteration. By 1996, they switched to the English one, and it has remained that way since. Of course for English speakers, it must be easier, however despite knowing English, it seems to me that I lost some details. For example, 1992 star gymnast Vitaly Scherbo's French translitaration was "Vitali Chtcherbo" and Grigory Misutin's was "Grigori Misioutine". I assume a Russian speaker will know better than I do, but the French version seems more precise to me.

As for the original question, for me it depends: if the native pronounciation is close enough to the L2 one, I will pronounce it the way it is natural to me. If it is too different and I fear not being understood, I'll pronounce it just like L2 native speakers.
Avid Learner on 25 April 2015

The French would probably stress half the names wrongly because of the Russian moving
stress... that would cause a lot of problems.
tarvos on 25 April 2015

I've always pronounced Schiphol as "Amsterdam airport."

Seriously. I have no idea how to say that word.

I trip on the syncopation more than the actual pronunciation when I have to say an English
word in an L2, especially with proper nouns. I've always pronounced my home state of
"Michigan" in a bit of a lazy drawl on the first syllable, and light stress on the first and
last syllable. That won't work in a language with regular syncopation, or that has a regular
system of stress and accent. Sometimes I shift to L2-style syncopation, sometimes I say it my
way.
kanewai on 25 April 2015

Avid Learner wrote:

Intresting information, thanks. We can't say whether the English transliteration is close or not because English has very vague pronunciation rules and foreign words don't follow them anyway. The best French variant for Мисютин would probably be Missutine.
Марк on 25 April 2015

tarvos wrote:

The French would probably stress half the names wrongly because of the Russian moving
stress... that would cause a lot of problems.

And the English stress Russian names wrongly even more often. In fact, Russian pronunciation rarely goes beyond the former Soviet Union.
Марк on 25 April 2015

Марк wrote:

tarvos wrote:

The French would probably stress half the names wrongly
because of the Russian moving
stress... that would cause a lot of problems.

And the English stress Russian names wrongly even in a bigger portion of cases. In fact,
Russian pronunciation rarely goes beyond the former Soviet Union.

I am not sure whether the portion is bigger but it should be comparable. But that the
pronunciation is correct only in the former Soviet states is not surprising - that is
where Russian was spoken, after all ;)
tarvos on 25 April 2015

The ugliest pronunciation I've heard
is

ižmahčifõni for smartphone
(it is the way people in Rio pronounce it)

Brazilian people consider Slavic languages ugly
but they should pay more attention to the way they speak.

In my book, soundwise, Portuguese (either European or Brazilian) sounds more Slavic than Macedonian.
Medulin on 26 April 2015

Easy examples for place names:

When speaking Spanish, I accidentally pronounced Canada in the English way to my Spanish teacher and
another time to a stranger and both corrected me immediately... Canadá (rather than stress on
the first 'a'). In Serbian, 'London' has a Serbianised version based on the River Thames for
historical reasons. Saying 'London' in English would be both confusing and pretentious (extra
pretentious points if you're an American saying it in the British manner!).

A third example is that when I'm speaking Spanish quickly (and especially when with someone who
speaks both English and Spanish), I'll pronounce English loan-words using Spanish sounds by mistake
as in ween-dos instead of windows if talking about which operating system my laptop is running.
Before self-correcting, I look for their reaction and sometimes correct myself in English in
passing before moving on with the conversation in an attempt to lure them into telling me how they'd
say it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSqS3q1Xvew - Great quiz show clip on Brits and the
acceptable pronunciation 'Paris' and 'sauna' among other things (about a minute in).
epictetus on 11 May 2015