When Should You Use Foreign Pronunciations of Foreign Words Outside Their Original Language?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

My name is Ahmed Mohamed and I’m calling from South Carolina and I have a question that I’ve been thinking about a lot and maybe you can help me with it.

Oh, well, great, Ahmed. Let’s hear it.

So the background story is that my native language is Arabic and I am slightly familiar with the French.

And I noticed that in the English language we use a lot of words. Most of them are names of places or names of people, but some of them are from foreign language origin, either from French or from Arabic.

And the best example I can mention is the poet that probably a lot of Americans will be familiar with called Khalil Gibran.

Now, Khalil Gibran is how we pronounce it in Arabic, but I’m sure the English speaker will pronounce the name Khalil a little bit different because you don’t have the letter H.

And the second example I will mention is Qatar, which we call Qatar, the country of Qatar.

And in the French, I have the other example. We say, for example, we have croissant.

But most English speaking, they probably say croissant or something, some other variation.

So that’s a long introduction. But my question is, for those of us who are familiar with the language of origin, when we talk in English, should I just say it the same way other English speakers do, or should I say it the proper way in the original language?

Oh, what a good question.

Yeah, that word proper in there is going to be a point of contention, I think.

Yeah, so let’s talk about the word croissant, which is how most North American English speakers would say it.

We’re talking about the crescent-shaped breakfast pastry, right?

Right.

Yeah. There are four things that we want when we’re communicating. One is to be understood, number one, by far and away. And if pronouncing it the way the word is pronounced in its original language gets in the way of you being understood, then it’s probably not a good choice.

And you should pronounce it in the anglicized way, as most English speakers say it.

So with a food item like croissant or broccoli, it’s pretty easy to make that choice.

But when we start talking about places, then we have this heavy weight of history on us.

And we talk about personal names. Then we have this other notion when we communicate is to be respectful.

To be respectful of other people and other cultures.

And so you can try to pronounce Khalil Javran’s name like they say it in other languages or in an original language.

It’s Arabic, right?

But if you’re not a speaker of that language, you’re going to have a really hard time.

But you do want to try to be as respectful as possible.

I remember, Martha, we had a caller from a fellow named Luis, and his coworkers kept calling him Louis, but his name isn’t Louis.

It’s Luis.

And that’s because it’s not respectful for them to mispronounce his name because they don’t even try.

And so that’s part of it, I think, Ahmed, is trying to be respectful.

At least you’re making the effort.

And I think the third thing is be authentic to yourself.

It’s a little pretentious sometimes to pronounce stuff in French, even though everyone around you only knows it as an English word.

To say croissant, you know, instead of croissant.

I just got back from Paris, you know.

Yeah, Paris.

It sounds pretentious.

And whether or not it’s authentic to the original language.

And I think the fourth thing, and a distant fourth, is you want to help other people pronounce things correctly and save them from embarrassment.

But at the same time, there’s no reason for you to show off your own erudition or knowledge in a showy, demonstrative way.

So those are the four things.

I had the sense that Ahmed wasn’t showing off, for example.

Yeah. Oh, no, I wasn’t saying that.

Yeah. When you mentioned the author of The Prophet, I really had to think about who in the heck you were talking about for a second there.

Because, you know, I grew up thinking of him as Khalil Gibran.

And now you’ve educated me as to the correct pronunciation of it.

But it made me stop and sort of get distracted.

And I think that’s the other issue, you know, is that we’re always trying to communicate clearly and in the most, in the easiest possible way.

Make, you know, your writing and your speaking easy for the listener.

And I really had, I tripped on that at first, I confess.

That’s why I was talking about the number one goal is to be understood.

So, Ahmed, is all this kind of clicking for you?

Yeah, no, it definitely makes sense.

And I think there are, to me, there are two parts to this dilemma.

First one, if you are an English speaker and cannot say Khalil, I will not expect you to say it.

And I am okay with you saying it.

However way it is easier for you.

The best example of that is my name.

My name is Ahmed.

But if you say Ahmed or Ahmed, I’m perfectly okay with it because I understand that your intention is not to butcher my name.

You’re trying your best and that’s how you say it.

But for me, who can say it, you know, the original language that it was written in, that’s why I always have the question in my head.

And I’m torn between what you said.

No, I don’t want to be a show off and say, oh, I can speak Arabic.

Oh, I can speak this or blah, blah, blah.

But at the same time, like, okay, I know in my head that it’s not Khalil Gibran.

It is Khalil Gibran.

Right.

Yeah, those are all excellent points.

And I heard a word in there that I think really applies here, the word torn.

Because you are straddling multiple cultures when you know more than one language.

You’re straddling more than one phonetic inventory.

You’re straddling different pools of knowledge.

And it is hard to know which side to go to, and sometimes you can’t.

And every circumstance, every moment can be different than the last one.

And you kind of have to reassess every single time one of these words that lives in two cultures or more than two cultures comes out of your mouth.

Well, thank you very much. That has been helpful, and I really appreciate the show. As a person whose English is my second language and didn’t even start learning it until I was a grown-up person, the show is always helpful to understand more about the language and its origin and how things came to be pronounced this way or that way or written this way or that way. So I appreciate it.

Our pleasure. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with us, Ahmed.

Yeah, we hope you called again.

Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thanks. Bye.

I would love to hear some more feedback from our listeners because we have listeners who speak all kinds of languages and have lots of experiences like Ahmed had.

And we’d love to hear about it.

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