I'm thinking of English sentences that are mentioning foreign places or figures.
Specifically, I'm thinking of Mandarin Chinese proper nouns in an English sentence, since I speak both of these languages.
E.g. President Xi Jinping took an airplane to Beijing.
The anglicised versions of both of the proper nouns sound pretty dissimilar to the correct Mandarin pronunciations, not to mention how tones are usually disregarded in anglicised Mandarin.
I used to have an English teacher who taught us to treat any pinyin in an otherwise English sentence as Chinese and pronounced them as such. But that's because we all understand both languages.
I've never heard any English native speakers, news anchors and such, use anything other than the anglicised pronunciations. But that's probably because their audience have also only known the anglicised pronunciations and wouldn't understand the "correct" pronunciations.
What would be a socially acceptable way to handle these situations? Perhaps it's by occasion/ audience?
Would you consider it to be like saying "Paris" in proper French in an otherwise English sentence, which usually only makes you pretentious? Would your perception change if the person actually speaks the language/came from a country that speaks that language?
As a Russian immigrant to the UK I have three problems with my first name "Dmitry":
- it's almost always murdered by non-slavs because there is no "dm" in English
- it's almost always misspelled as Dimitry/Dimitri
- I don't like being immediately pigeonholed as a Russian (my accent isn't obvious at this point). Sure, my second name is Eastern European and I don't plan changing that, but it's not like I introduce myself with my full name (and my accent isn't too obvious).
However, it's a pretty big decision, and for me big decisions come with heaps of overthinking. It'd be so much easier if I was Alexander/Alexey (Alex), Danil (Dan), or Yulia (Julia)! Ideally I'd want something pretty neutral, unladen of heavy class/subculture associations (although I guess I'm fairly middle-class), but at least somewhat related to my original one. Unfortunately, I got some social intuition over the years of living here, but it's hardly infallible so I doubt it all the time. I thought about several options:
- Jimmy as Greek Dimitrioses go by. God no
- David. David is OK, his troubled brother Dave is not. Dave snorts cocaine in Magaluf, I'm not Dave!
- Dan. That's pretty neutral to my taste, but what do I know
So, what do you think? Who are those Davids, Daves, and Dans? Do decent people actually call shorten David to Dave? What should I go with? Maybe I'm missing an obvious option, and if so, what are your associations with it?
Edit: oh my god, I didn't expect THAT many replies! Thanks a lot to everyone participating. There a few recurring themes in the comments, I'd like to add a few things:
- I've probably put it a bit wrong, it's not about legal name, it's more about "social name" or nickname for English side of my life. Think your email address or CV, not bank statements or payslips. My legal name is screwed anyway, thanks to Russian bureaucracy it's spelled "Dmitrii" and I don't have a say in it until I obtain some other passport other than Russian.
- it's not a big issue, sure. On the other hand, there is a weird effect that I and a few of my friends experienced when you develop a slightly different personality when you talk and think in your second language (if that makes sense). Maybe that's why I don't feel a particularly strong attachment to my "original" name when I talk and think in English, so even a few minor issues might make it worth it to start using a "social name".
- I don't like short versions of it in English. "Dima" and similar are way too cl
Please help me make this translated sentence sound more natural in English. Thanks
"The more ideologies a revolution offers, the less chance will be for it to be stable after taking place."
Unless you want to go along the conspiracy that ATLA makes a point not to explain where the air nomad children come from, and therefore Aang could be any ethnicity. Aang, and the rest of the air nomads are somewhat east Asian, not Anglican/caucasian.
So why did the writers make Aang super white and stocky when compared to the considerably smaller air nomads? Even compared to how he looks in the original series, Aang goes from a short, skinny little kid to a pretty above average near jock. It's just so unbelievable for me. If not for the massive blue arrow on his head, there wouldn't be anything really obviously identifiable to the original character. Unlike the rest of the gang who's designs were overall more iconic to the original series. It just seems like poor character design, and more of the retconning of the original series that made TLOK so difficult for me to watch.
RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ 2fm provide listenable content almost every single time I tune in.
Even if there aren’t much more than those 2 stations available to me, is there any shows on them I should be tuning into in particular; that I might be missing? Thank you.
The Chinese character for his family name is 颜, pronounced as "Yen", but I can't understand why it becomes "Yan" instead of "Yen" when Romanised in pinyin.
What's the logic behind this?
Hi guys, just wanted to start a little discussion on the topic of Ireland and its people never conforming to Protestantism.
After the Norman invasion, some local Chieftans had lost their land but the relationship was for the most part symbiotic, with many Norman clans intermarrying with Irish clans and forming alliances etc. The unifying factor being both people were strongly Catholic.
Fast forward 300 years or so to the Tudor Times with King Henry VIII declaring himself as the 'King of Ireland' (previously a Lordship). During this period we encounter the Tudor Conquest of Ireland and the emergence of English Tudor landowners. This period is associated with the aggressive spirit of Protestantism. There emerged a strong effort to end the 'Gaelic way of life' - associated with an un-molded social structure, barbarism, laws of land etc.
I don't want to ramble here but as we all know, the laws which were to be instated endlessly dis-favoured Catholics over Protestants. I'm wondering what was it that made the Irish so reluctant to convert en-masse to Protestantism? From my little knowledge on the subject, I believe that there were fairer terms for doing so. An Irish Catholic who converted to Protestantism would have surely been at the lower end of the Protestant social class of the time but it still would have been fairer terms than remaining Catholic.
I know freedom to practice religion, uphold cultural traditions etc. are clearly worth fighting for but what do you think would have happened if the Irish of the time willingly accepted Protestantism and the English way of life without revolt - would we have still been screwed over or would there have become a more symbiotic relationship between the two nations?
I hope you find this topic as interesting as I do - I'd love to hear your opinions. Thanks
I always have the option active. And the only thing I note it's every language finish with -ian. Is it the only thing It do?
Linguistic anglicisation is of course when foreign words are modified to better fit the English language. Is there a term for this practice in general? I.e what is it called when a foreign word is modified, in spelling or pronunciation, for another language (not only for English)?
I have an entirely English sounding surname, but it's definitely a rare one. We did our family tree in 2019 and found out my surname was anglicised by my great-great-grandfather; his grandfather was the one to emigrate to England. Turns out my dad's ancestry is in total about 50% from this other country, and only about 50% English. We had no idea about any of this, so personally I feel 100% English and don't feel any connection to this other country or to my family's former surname, but I was curious if anyone else was in a similar boat but felt otherwise, and if so, why?
I'd also be interested in hearing from any more recent immigrants too, if there are any here. Have you anglicised your name, and why/why not?
Morning all, I’m trying to track my maternal line through Ireland. My question is throughout the 1800’s and before, would the O prefix be picked up and dropped dependent on the record? I know that It was often anglicised and I have what seems to be fairly accurate line that takes me from O’Reilly, but with parents known as Reilly. Could this be down to the record keepers?
The same question applies to my fathers side. I have records of the same person (seemingly) being known as Poor, and then Power. I know that the origin of the name was French ‘de Paor’, but I’m unsure as to what they were known as.
On parle beaucoup d'anglicisation de Montréal, ces temps-ci. Il faut dire que, pour quiconque a connu Montréal dans les années 2000 ou 90, la différence est frappante. En tout cas, pour moi qui est parti quelques années et est revenu par la suite dans ma ville natale, je suis abasourdi du changement qui s'est opéré et continue de s'opérer dans la ville. Des endroits traditionellement très francophones, comme le Plateau à l'est de St-Denis, se sont fortement anglicisés, et je me fais régulièrement acceuillir, et servir, en anglais, même si je parle aux commerçants en français, le plus récemment chez West Elm dans Griffintown.
On a également beaucoup parlé ces dernières années de la CAQ ayant réduit les taux d'immigration de 50 000 à 40 000 par année. À mon avis, c'est mal placé, parce que ça ignore un autre type d'immigrant dont on parle peu et dont la discussion est taboue: l'immigration canadienne. Car le Québec acceuille, à chaque année, 20 000 canadiens qui immigrent au Québec [Tableau 1.2]. Si le Canada serait un pays distinct du Québec, ça serait, de très loin, le pays d'où proviennent le plus d'immigrants, puisque le deuxième pays avec le plus de ressortisants est la Chine avec 5308 immigrants en 2018, en comparaison.
Ce n'est pas nouveau, bien sûr, le Québec a depuis longtemps acceuilli autant de canadiens. Je suspecte, cependant, que d'une manière ou d'une autre, l'immigrant canadien type a changé ces dix ou vingt dernières années. Un évènement majeur depuis le début des années 2000 a été l'accroîssement massif du coût de la vie à Toronto, Vancouver et d'
... keep reading on reddit ➡Hi folks,
British expat living here for a couple years and I've been craving some 'Chinese' food recently. Specifically, the way it tends to be in England. With salt and pepper chips and sweet chili chicken dishes (they tend to come with a sticky red sauce thing?). Any suggestions? Bonus points if I can get it delivered!
Thanks!
Hello all,
I’d love your feedback and tips on a project I’m trying just for fun.
I‘m experimenting with a new technique of language learning in which a sort of intermediate is created between two languages to highlight similarities while allowing the learner to get a better instinctual understanding of the flow, grammar, and vocabulary.
Really what I’m talking about in practice is anglicising German while keeping true to both the German language and it’s grammar. I suppose it’s almost like a dialect.
The way I want to do this is to create a list of cognates between German and English as the basis.
I would create a hierarchy of these words with absolute similarities being at the top, with less accessible cognates further down.
After this, I would create intermediary words to be used sparingly in order to give the learner a chance to learn via exposure while also creating a strong sense of the word’s meaning and origin.
The way I would create these intermediate words wouldn’t be totally consistent. I’ll aim for legibility. Some words like Handschuhe could be written as Handshoe in a different colour to indicate their constructed nature with a side note to clarify. The second time, it could be written in the original German. Other techniques could be minimising sound shifts or something similar.
Of course, there is a great deal of German that has cognates but favours another form. I think that writing texts while using this list would create an opportunity to use both while referring to something, thereby emphasising the words in their context.
Naturally, there are so many basic German words that shouldn’t be altered because they are fundamental to the language. I want to use a frequency list to determine which words would be best preserved.
https://preview.redd.it/rtw7v8huin351.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=330845887853aa1cd0a984b37ef07ebc5833c4e1
