Re:Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers
by LordAtlas on Monday July 26, 2021 @10:40AM
(#27959945)
You have my condolences for Google's nonsense. I have not written anything in Hindi for the past couple of decades, I think, despite growing up in Delhi and speaking the language fluently. All my work communication and conversation with friends is in English. The good thing about Hindi is that if you know the script, it's pronounced exactly as it's written. There are no strange inconsistencies like the monstrosity that is English.
> In fairness to butcherers of Manohar's name though, you really do need to be told/have learnt how the transliteration (IAST or roughly) is supposed to work. Otherwise of course you're going to read it in the language you know.
I have absolutely no ill-will for people who pronounce any language's names solely after reading them. But if you work with someone and they introduce themselves to you, it's just common courtesy to at least make a best effort attempt to get the syllable emphasis and the vowels right. If you _hear_ it and still get it hopelessly wrong, I would be less charitable.
Worse, Google has updated the (abc -> हिंदी) keyboard on Android so that in many cases it actually refuses the standard transliterations in favour of popular ones, I assume. And so if you want पीता you have to type 'peeta'; 'piita' won't get it, even if you click the caret for more options.
It also reinforces things like हूं - which I can understand if you're writing by hand, but why wouldn't a digital keyboard input the 'correct' / 'proper' / whatever हूँ?
(To write it there I used the direct input method rather than transliteration one, with which afaik it's not possible to write it.)
In fairness to butcherers of Manohar's name though, you really do need to be told/have learnt how the transliteration (IAST or roughly) is supposed to work. Otherwise of course you're going to read it in the language you know.
The trouble is, once you do know, you're left wondering if something is transliterated 'correctly' (in standard as opposed to popular fashion) or English-phonetically... Particularly with vowels: 'e' for example is either 'ay' as in 'pay' or 'e' as in 'pee' accordingly. (The latter 'should' be 'ī' or 'ii'.)