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Random thoughts
Welu:
I know a couple people named Neil and so many people insist on calling them Niall. A lot of tourists especially seem to just refuse to accept that an Irish person can be called "Neil" and no matter how much they're corrected, say "Niall".
I don't understand how some people have insisted I'm wrong about my own name. My real name is just one syllable, "Lynn", spelled that way, and since that's the beginning to so many commons names like Lindsey, Linda, Lynette, etc, so many people assume it's short for one of those. I will introduce myself as, "Lynnie" and five minutes later they'll be referring to me as Linda or Lynette or something. When I correct them they think I'm just being picky about a nickname. Even the ones that accept my name is just "Lynn" right away usually don't understand my spelling. They say things like, "Shouldn't it have an 'E' on the end?" or "Shouldn't there just be one 'N'?" :?
I hoped when I started introducing myself as "Lynnie" it would avoid things like that but they still come up or a lot of people end up calling me, "Lily".
pwhodges:
There are even people who think that what I really want to be called is Paulo, when my name is Paul. Not many, though.
Akima:
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 08 Jun 2012, 06:44 ---I think some people are actually simply incapable of imitating the sounds they hear, as opposed to making the sounds they are used to.
--- End quote ---
Short of hard work in the language-laboratory where you can record yourself and play it back, I think this is probably true of most, if not all people, though perhaps less so for musicians like yourself. Some sounds are just very difficult for people not used to them to hear and reproduce. For example, many Chinese surnames begin with the initial that is represented in pinyin as zh (Zhou, Zhang, Zheng etc.). This is one of the three "retroflex" initials, and is hard for English-speakers to get their tongues even if they are not confused by the romanisation. Unless I'm talking to a CSL student, I advise people simply to pronounce zh like the j at the beginning of jungle, jangle, or Joseph.
The one that puzzles me is why people mispronounce my "first name". I adopted the first syllable of my Chinese personal name as my Australian "first name", because it is pronounced like a common Western girl's name, and I even use the English language spelling instead of the pinyin romanisation. But as soon as people see it in combination with my Chinese surname, their brains seem to turn to mush, and they invent the weirdest pronunciations.
--- Quote from: pwhodges on 08 Jun 2012, 07:57 ---There are even people who think that what I really want to be called is Paulo, when my name is Paul.
--- End quote ---
Eh? Portuguese style? Powlo?
Redball:
I introduce myself as "Bob Ball." So many miss the last name, misspell it back to me or ask me to repeat it, that many years ago I began introducing myself as "Bob Ball, B-A-double-L." I'm not even sure that's helpful.
LTK:
Try switching to "Ball. Bob Ball."
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