Anglicization

[Paul Frank]

This (in my opinion silly) habit of pronouncing foreign names the
foreign or pseudo-foreign way when speaking English only works with
languages with which English speakers are familiar or vaguely
familiar. In the next few days we are all going to hear all sorts of
attempts to pronounce the name of Liu Xiaobo (several of whose
articles I'm a little proud to say I had the honor of translating for
Human Rights in China when Liu Xiaobo was known to virtually no one
outside or inside China). Chinese names are too foreign to be
pronounced the Chinese way in English.

Paul

On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 3:19 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
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>
> At 10/8/2010 08:44 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>
>>The wisdom I received long ago, though I've never personally and absolutely
>>verified it, is that the pronunciation of foreign names and words in English
>>was almost always anglicized by the intelligentsia (and presumably most
>>everyone else) up until the 20th Century.
>
> One can see that in the attempts at phonetic spelling in the 18th
> century. Â E.g., "Lewis" for "[King] Louis".
>
> For another kind of anglicization, one sees "Hyacinth" Paoli for "Giacinto".
>
> Joel

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