Americans’
Problem of Pronunciation
Americans
have a problem with English pronunciation. Do not pounce on me; hear me out.
It
is all a matter of aspirating consonants p, t, and k. I had severe problems
getting Americans NOT to aspirate the consonants in my name - Raghuram Ekambaram. The ‘gh’ in my first name should be aspirated (as written
in Sanskrit) and the ‘k’ not. OK, the aspirated ‘k’, despite my pronouncing it always
unaspirated, occurred very infrequently, but not so the ‘gh’.
I
just gave up and accepted my name as “Ragu”. The problem was it made my name
identical to “Ragu”, the spaghetti sauce that came with the wrap line, “That’s
Italian!” in TV advertisements! This is how I, a TamBrahm (Tamil Brahmin) from
the then Madras, became an Italian!
There
was a female graduate student, also a TamBrahm from Pune, whose name became, “YOUsha”,
like Utah. Her husband, a white American, must be still be calling her the
same. At that time, the North Korean dictator Kim Jon Un was not in currency then. That could have made things better
for Usha.
Why
all this now, after returning to India in 1991?
Oh,
the context is how the Democrat nominee for the President of the United States (POTUS)
is being called on American TV. Aspirating the initial ‘K’; ouch.
It
is not impossible, but Kamala’s (கமலா)
father is a Jamaican and must have taken to his American friends’
pronunciation. It is also possible, that கமலா
just got frustrated trying to correct her friends’ pronunciation (with
aspirated ‘K’) and gave up and adopted the pronunciation (just like I did).
In
general, Americans CANNOT pronounce a name (that is not a normal Anglo-Saxon
name) the way a native pronounces. They cannot pronounce the name of the one-time
president of South Africa – Thabo Mbeki.
They would not take the effort to roll their ‘r’s in Barrack Obama. God, do not
let letters ‘s’ and ‘r’ come together, as in, ‘Sridhar’; this combination is “weird”
(the current cuss word in political speech!) they would say. They would not have
aspirated the ‘gh’ in my name even if the sky were to fall. I wonder how
Chinese and Japanese proper nouns are mangled by Americans.
I
believe I have made the case I mentioned at the start.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
2 comments:
YOUsha made me laugh. Proper nouns have such problems, I guess. I have problems with the names of writers from certain countries. Unfamiliar names . I need to check their pronunciation online or somewhere. Schuyler, for example.
Thanks a lot, Matheikal. An Indian (Bengali) acquantence of mine introduced hmself to Amrericans, of all hues including Indian-Americans, as "DATA" when the name was "Dutta". This grated on me, as you would imagine.
Raghuram
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