I have so much sympathy for people with foreign names and their efforts to get their name said and spelled right, which is why I want to get it right whenever I encounter names.
I am absolutely with you on this one. If, when all else fails, I suspect I still can't get a name right, I will go out of my way to just never use anyone's name at all in conversation, so as to avoid drawing attention to the one name I can't get just right. That's last-ditch, but it's still better than making someone hear their name mangled yet again.
I agree about glossary, though sometimes it still falls short. I'm currently reading Water Touching Stone (#2 in mystery series) which has a lot of Mandarin, Turkic, and Tibetan words. There's a glossary in the back, but no pronunciation guide. So it's partly there... except that most of the time, I can get the meaning from the story's context, and what I lack is the pronunciation. (I've also read stories with author notes that clarify they're using a mix of anglicization methods -- like Wade-Giles and Pinyin -- to be able to choose spelling that's more intuitively comprehensible to English eyes. Crazily, after I'd had two years of studying pinyin, now that kind of mix makes my teeth hurt. No longer an English ignoramus about that anglicizing method, I suppose!)
More to point: I didn't include a pronounciation because (like Cypho, above), I thought the name short enough and simple enough: Vrzala. Visually, "Vr" blends enough that it might appear to have an implied 'i' in the middle -- "Virzala". I mean, it's not like it's five consonants and an apostrophe in the middle and a bunch of accents. Sheesh.
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Date: 3 Jul 2011 11:00 pm (UTC)I am absolutely with you on this one. If, when all else fails, I suspect I still can't get a name right, I will go out of my way to just never use anyone's name at all in conversation, so as to avoid drawing attention to the one name I can't get just right. That's last-ditch, but it's still better than making someone hear their name mangled yet again.
I agree about glossary, though sometimes it still falls short. I'm currently reading Water Touching Stone (#2 in mystery series) which has a lot of Mandarin, Turkic, and Tibetan words. There's a glossary in the back, but no pronunciation guide. So it's partly there... except that most of the time, I can get the meaning from the story's context, and what I lack is the pronunciation. (I've also read stories with author notes that clarify they're using a mix of anglicization methods -- like Wade-Giles and Pinyin -- to be able to choose spelling that's more intuitively comprehensible to English eyes. Crazily, after I'd had two years of studying pinyin, now that kind of mix makes my teeth hurt. No longer an English ignoramus about that anglicizing method, I suppose!)
More to point: I didn't include a pronounciation because (like Cypho, above), I thought the name short enough and simple enough: Vrzala. Visually, "Vr" blends enough that it might appear to have an implied 'i' in the middle -- "Virzala". I mean, it's not like it's five consonants and an apostrophe in the middle and a bunch of accents. Sheesh.