Just How American do You Have to Be?

[dustinzgirl]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean just image as the physical appearance, but to include the concepts preformed by the common public in regards to that individual.

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Teresa Edgerton

I think you are right. A lot of people -- I won't say a lot of Americans, because it may be equally true elsewhere -- don't care for people with names they have troubling pronouncing. I remember someone in the media suggesting that Sonia Sotomayor should have changed her name, because it's hard to pronounce. (Actually, it isn't, once you've heard someone say it.)

On the other hand, my last name looks reassuringly Anglo-Saxon, and people mispronounce it all of the time. I guess the key is that they have to believe they can pronounce it. Knowing that we don't know how to pronounce something makes most of us feel at a disadvantage, I think. And feeling that way makes some people angry.

Haha Sotomayor is hard to pronounce !

Yeah i wouldn't guess how to pronounce your last name. It makes me think of William the Conqueror days,sounds real old.

I remember my first day in a Swedish class i was asked to explain how they can say my name correctly. Making them pronounce Mohammed with the Arabic sounds was impossible. They didnt have the sounds you make in your throath from birth some cultures.

It became MUU-ha med. Which is a hassle since my brother is named Muhammud, in swedish the names sound the same