going tonto

[sagehen]

The view one takes about  anglicization of borrowed words & names relates
in the end to a political attitude.  Is the naturalization  a friendly act
or a reflection of insularity, jingoism,
don't-give-a-damn-what-anyone-else-thinks?
English has been accomodating foreign words for  very long time and their
pronunciation has been evolving along with the rest of the language.  So
what's new?  Courtesy suggests making an effort to pronounce people's names
the way they would like them pronounced while they are around to inform us,
but after they are dead, if their names pass into the language they become
subject to the  same influences as other words.  Applying English phonetics
-- a famously slippery subject -- to foreign spellings seems reasonable,
but one hopes it is done out of friendly not chauvinistic feelings.
A. Murie