What language (other than English) do you speak?

[GoktimusPrime]

But it's from English... by the conventions of English phonology it should be "pock-uh-mon" (/ˈpɒkəˈmɒn/). Forget Japanese phonology, because their pronunciation would be /ˈpɒkɛˈmɒn/ since Japanese lacks the mid central /ə/ vowel.

Although this would only add to an already extensive list of English words which defy phonological conventions. Like how we pronounce the first "i" in words like finish, infinite, definite and indefinite differently from "finite." But 'finite' was mutated in the late 15th Century as English evolved from Late Middle English to Early Modern English (i.e. Shakespearean English), and one of the great catalysts for this change was the invention of the printing press. English was in far greater flux (and more prone to bastardisation) prior to the advent of printing as obviously the majority of people were illiterate. The mass production of books led to a significant boost in literacy in the Anglophone population, which is why even Early Modern English is significantly more intelligible to Modern English speakers today than Middle English, and Old English is practically an entirely alien language (more closely related to Modern Frisian, spoken mostly in parts of the Netherlands and some parts of Germany). King James was instrumental in the standardisation of Early Modern English.

Here's a comparison. For the benefit of those who don't read Old/Middle English letters no longer used in the Modern English alphabet, I've omitted those letters in place of modern equivalents with the exception of "æ," which is "a" as in "apple" (and not as in "cart"). Also note that the "th" used in the Old and Middle English texts below is pronounce as in words like "that," "those" or "weather," and not as in "thin" or "with."

Old English
Sothlice on tham dagum wæs geworden gebod fram tham casere augusto. thæt eall ymbehwyrft wære tomearcod

Middle English
Forsothe it is don, in tho dayis a maundement wente out fro cesar august, that al þe world shulde ben discriued

Early Modern English
And it came to passe in those dayes, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.

Now you can see how greatly English has changed between Old and Middle English, yet in the 600 years since Early Modern English very little has changed. Looking the example here we've lost the "e" in "passe" and "dayes." That's it. Other than that it's remained reasonably constant, and this was no accident. It was a very deliberate act from King James to standardise the English language and lock it in, and the fact that English from 600 years ago is still intelligible with English today is a lasting legacy of King James.

Also, many of the peculiarities between English spelling and pronunciation occurred between 1350-1600 during a three-stage period known as the Great Vowel Shift. And again, the advent of the printing press and edict of King James saw the end of the Great Vowel Shift as English spelling and pronunciation finally became standardised. But even then, it took 250 years in a pre-literate age for these mutations to occur, and much of it ended when literacy became widespread.

So it seems implausible that just mongrelisations would occur so rapidly in the modern age where we should have far higher rates of literacy and education overall*. In any case, most of the time I've corrected my students' pronunciation** (cos ya know, it's actually part of my job ). Although I don't do it anymore because my students all pronounce it correctly (I only had to do it once).

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*as public education in England came about in the 19th Century, although the Americans had it a few decades earlier and Scotland actually had free public education 300 years before the English! (take that, Brexit! ); up till then education was private and much of it was controlled by the Church
**not just of Pokémon but any other words they use; although correcting Latin is interesting because there are different ways to pronounce the words depending on which variant; Classical, Vulgar, Ecclesiastic etc. - I use Classical but I also allow my students to use other variants - it's hard to nitpick a dead language especially when even the HSC examination lacks any listening or speaking components!). And I must admit that I use a less common mouth trill for the German /r/, whereas most native Germans trill from the throat. But I do tell my students that I'm using a less common pronunciation because I personally find it easier and I encourage them to try and trill from the throat if they can.

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On a totally different note, I filled out the Census tonight and came across one problem with Question 15 for my daughter. And I did provide feedback to the ABS about it.

If they haven't fixed this by the next census then I might just tick "Other" and place both languages there.

I also noticed that you can't choose more than two options for "Other, ancestry" (although that's one more than the "Other" option for languages). I guess in this case people might need to manually enter multiple ancestries in one of the boxes.

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

But it's from English... by the conventions of English phonology it should be "pock-uh-mon" (/ˈpɒkəˈmɒn/).

The cartoon consistently calls the pok ee mon, so kids being kids, is what they end up being called. Nevermind what the conventions of phonology are. The cartoon says poke ee mon. So the kids, they say da poke ee mons.

Fault lies in the voice director I guess

[GoktimusPrime]

Well, Transformers Combiner Wars looks set on mongrelising the pronunciation of "Caminus" as "cammyness" instead of the correct "KAH-mee-noos."

Segue time!

Does anyone else find it grinding when you hear some people - and it tends to be among some Americans - place the stress/emphasis on the first syllable in "Transformers" (TRANSformers)? In every English language Transformers cartoon and film, it's always pronounce correctly on the second syllable (transFORMers); just start singing the G1 theme song and you'll hear it. It only seems to be a minority though - every English speaker I've ever spoken to, American, Australian etc., places the stress on the second syllable. And every American actor in the Transformers cartoons and films also does the same, like when Cade Yaeger says, "I think we found a Transformer" or when Attinger says, "The age of the Transformers is over" (although Kelsey Grammer speaks with that lovely refined mid-Atlantic American English* - he would make a great voice actor for Tracks if he ever appeared in the live action films)

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*As opposed to Cade Yaegar's more crude sounding Boston accent... despite being a Texan. Remember that unlike most other English dialects, American English was initially constructed by educators and linguists such as Noah Webster etc.

P.S.: Fun fact... Vatican City is the only place where you can find ATMs which give prompts in Latin!

[GoktimusPrime]

From here:

Never assume the pronunciation of names (proper nouns), even if they are derived/taken from previously used words. Just take it as a new fictional robot's name, derived from a latin word, using the same spelling, but pronounced differently.

Edit - To add, has anyone officially stated that this particular character's name is in fact taken from the Latin word? Or is it a completeney ficticious name that happens to share the spelling?
See how ridiculous these trivial things can spiral into?

Edit - and I know of the TF titan Caminus, but he is a different entity so that is moot.

Nobody's explicitly stated that Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus, Maximus etc. are from Latin, or that other names are from other language sources. But we know it because it's common knowledge and pronunciation rules are similarly applied.

Gok apparently thinks every TFs name needs to be sourced from real, literary sources. Primus alone knows what he thinks of Emirate Xaaron. Aside from that, he also appears to ignorant of one thing every student of linguistics ought to be aware of from the get-go: language changes.

This would be true if Caminus had been absorbed into English in that form or a similar form. English pronounces words like Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus and Maximus differently from Latin, but this is different because these words exist in English in these forms or similar forms. Caminus doesn't. The nearest English equivalent of caminus is "chimney" which we get from Old French cheminee, and even this pronunciation has mutated because the pronunciation of cheminee is something like "shommee-neh". In fact, RiD Optimus Prime's voice actor Neil Kaplan has a voice-character based on the original Latin pronunciation of Optimus which he calls "Optimoose."

You can't simply chalk down isolated mispronunciations as language evolution (by this logic George Dubya's mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "new-kewlar" and reference to the Greek people as "Grecians" would be correct ), that's a wholly different thing. Also, as explained 2 posts ago, language evolution in languages was effectively halted after the advent of the printing press and languages like English have had relatively very little change in the past 600 years.

P.S.: if authors don't want people to notice hold standards of pronunciation for names, then just invent entirely fictitious ones. If you're going to draw references from the real world then of course people will naturally refer to them. It's like how Spider-Man 2 claimed that you can make nuclear fission from a single atom of tritium (H3O)... you literally cannot! On the other hand you can imbue fictitious metals like adamantium, vibranium or even transformium with magical properties because they're not real - there's no real world reference for anyone to disclaim it.

[Raider]

I think you are overthinking this waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy too much mate. tom-AY-to, tom-AH-to really

[tron07]

I am no gamma nazi, so couldnt be bothered.

Do you pronaunce Ikea as i-kea or eh-kea?

ice or igloo?

[Paulbot]

I say TRANSformer, Poke-ee-mon, I pronounce Extract and Extracted the same way, and the Transformer planet Caminus didn't have a way to pronounce it correctly until the cartoon that Hasbro approved gave us one

Build a spacebridge and oh wait, Japanese is a language where pronunciation really, really matters right? Maybe we should all learn Japanese? Is that your secret agenda!?

[Zommael]

From here:

Nobody's explicitly stated that Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus, Maximus etc. are from Latin, or that other names are from other language sources. But we know it because it's common knowledge and pronunciation rules are similarly applied.


This would be true if Caminus had been absorbed into English in that form or a similar form. English pronounces words like Optimus, Prime, Ultra, Magnus and Maximus differently from Latin, but this is different because these words exist in English in these forms or similar forms. Caminus doesn't. The nearest English equivalent of caminus is "chimney" which we get from Old French cheminee, and even this pronunciation has mutated because the pronunciation of cheminee is something like "shommee-neh". In fact, RiD Optimus Prime's voice actor Neil Kaplan has a voice-character based on the original Latin pronunciation of Optimus which he calls "Optimoose."

You can't simply chalk down isolated mispronunciations as language evolution (by this logic George Dubya's mispronunciation of "nuclear" as "new-kewlar" and reference to the Greek people as "Grecians" would be correct ), that's a wholly different thing. Also, as explained 2 posts ago, language evolution in languages was effectively halted after the advent of the printing press and languages like English have had relatively very little change in the past 600 years.

P.S.: if authors don't want people to notice hold standards of pronunciation for names, then just invent entirely fictitious ones. If you're going to draw references from the real world then of course people will naturally refer to them. It's like how Spider-Man 2 claimed that you can make nuclear fission from a single atom of tritium (H3O)... you literally cannot! On the other hand you can imbue fictitious metals like adamantium, vibranium or even transformium with magical properties because they're not real - there's no real world reference for anyone to disclaim it.

Gok, I want you to know that I respect you as a member of this community and for your contributions, both officially and otherwise, to the fandom. However, lately your posts regarding language and linguistics have come across as arrogant, pedantic, and ill-informed, and it's affecting the dialogue on the boards, not to mention making me angry. So I'm not going to hold back here, okay?

I'm going to start with the highlighted part, because this is some of the most flagrant bull**** you've ever spouted. Language evolution flagrantly did not halt with the invention of the printing press 600 years ago. Don't believe me? I only need provide one example: Shakespeare. One only need look at how difficult it is for modern audiences and students of Shakespeare to understand his works clearly to see that language has changed. Additionally, Shakespeare's works are the recorded first use of many words and phrases that are now common. They also contain words and phrases that have now disappeared from use. We no longer say "thou" when we mean "you", for instance, and this is only the most basic example. Additionally, do you think Shakespeare - or a person inventing a printing press 600 years ago - would have had any comprehension of words like "internet", "feminist", or "headphones" at all, let alone in their modern usage? Language changes, and it changes all the time. The chimney wasn't even invented until the middle ages, so the idea that a Latin word like "Caminus" could mean chimney as we understand it today is ridiculous.

Now, my problem is that you're taking a position which, among linguists, is known as prescriptivist. This basically means that you're treating language as a set of rules - grammar, punctuation, pronunciation - which have to be followed at all costs, lest we fail to comprehend one another and society descends into chaos. Unfortunately, a more thorough study of language reveals this is not the case, because of the above mentioned evolution. If one does not follow a particularly grammatical rule - such as for instance writing "I" or "you" instead of "one" - then the whole sentence doesn't necessarily fall apart. You'd still be able to follow me, even if I didn't use the exact correct term. Unfortunately, prescriptivism suggests otherwise, and that's how we end up with vestigial parts of language that are somehow still hanging on, such as "whom", a word which never does anything to actually improve the clarity of a sentence or phrase, and which only serves to bump up the ego of pedants when they notice it's being used (or not) incorrectly. Prescriptivists behave as if making an error regarding some grammatical rule will result in the failure of society, whilst believing that so long as they are "correct" at all times, they will somehow be rewarded by some all-powerful god who handed down language to man at the invention of the printing press 600 years ago. This simply isn't the case.

The same is true of pronunciation as it is of grammar. Pronouncing a word wrong doesn't necessarily mean it won't be understood. It might mean people will laugh at you, but it doesn't mean you're suddenly talking nonsense. A good example is the word "maroon", referring to the colour worn by Queensland's State of Origin* team. In the UK - where I'm from, and where we have a country called England where we speak English, by the way, not that that's my only qualification here - that word is pronounced with a long double-u sound, such as in "moon", "balloon", or "platoon". In Australia, it's pronounced with a different long-oh sound, as in "loan", "moan", or "float". Neither pronunciation is any more correct than the other (no matter how I may tease my Australian housemates for their bizarre colonial way of speaking). Yes, you could look back and discover that the ancient Vikings wore a deep shade of purple when pillaging Britain, and their leader was a man called "Mahroney" and his name was pronounced one way or the other and anyway this was all before the great vowel shift and I'm making this up, but that would have very little bearing on the fact that one state in one part of the world laughs at people who say "marune" and in the opposite hemisphere they shake their heads at "marone". The same is true of Caminus. Just because it's drawn from a Latin word doesn't mean that we necessarily pronounce it that way today, or that fictional robots on a fictional planet wouldn't pronounce it differently. It's drawn from that word for literary reasons that have little to do with actual linguistics - or pronunciation - in this case, because it means "engine" in Latin, and a few of our other characters and concepts have Latin names, and it's all about machines, so let's go with that. No-one is a native Latin speaker, so talking about the "correct" pronunciation of the word is a fallacy; at the time the word was invented, one accent may have pronounced it exactly like they do on the Machinima show.

The names of Transformers concepts and characters needn't be drawn from any linguistic or literary source. Yes, Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus have meanings in Latin. Hardhead and Silverstreak are common phrases repurposed as names. But names like "Iacon", "Furos", or "Emirate Xaaron"? They're made up, cut from whole cloth, invented. "Furos" was chosen because it sounds a bit like "Duros", the characters original name, and also a bit like furious. It was never intended to mean this or that in any language whatsoever, so getting all in a tiz about it meaning something or other or not at all is not just pedantic, it's a waste of time.

Gok, I recognise that you are interested in this are and I recognise that you've admitted you're a pedant, but please, educate yourself a bit further about language and linguistics before you go any further. It isn't necessarily about the number of languages you speak, it's about your understanding of language and how it works. You obviously have insight and analysis, but you need to understand that language isn't a prescribed set of rules sent from on high, but rather a flawed and beautiful human invention that changes according to the whims and needs of human beings. Otherwise, you're just going to continue coming across as a pedant, and continue getting on people's nerves.

*formally speaking, this event should be called "The States of the Origins", but nobody calls it that. You see my point?

[GoktimusPrime]

Much of what you're saying is in response to stuff that I did not explicitly say. Perhaps I did not articulate myself clearly enough, so I shall attempt to clarify my stance.

Language evolution flagrantly did not halt with the invention of the printing press 600 years ago. Don't believe me? I only need provide one example: Shakespeare.

I didn't say that language evolution absolutely halted, I said that it "effectively halted," perhaps hampered or slowed down might've been gooder (sic) words. And the measure that I use for this is intelligibility. Although there are certainly many differences between Early Modern English and current Modern English, Early Modern English is still intelligible to current Modern English speakers. We do still teach Shakespeare in junior high school in NSW, typically from Year 9 onwards. While it's true that there are many archaic words and expressions, they are still intelligible. I've taught Shakespeare before to Year 9 English students in a socioeconomically disadvantaged public school, and students were still able to comprehend the text. No, it's not as immediately intelligible as other forms of current Modern English, like say American English, British English etc., so yeah, it can be a bit trickier to understand, but it is - overall - reasonably intelligible. Old and Middle English on the other hand are no longer intelligible with current Modern English -- they are effectively foreign languages. As I said, the nearest living relative to Old English is current day Frisian, and if you listen to someone speaking Frisian it's completely unintelligible to Modern English speakers. You might be able to detect some familiar cognates, such as fog, blue, mist, cheese etc., but otherwise the two languages are mutually unintelligible.

You may not agree with this measure that I'm using, but I'm just explaining that this is what I've based my assertion on. The fact that Australian students can read and study Shakespearean texts without having to learn Early Modern English as you would learn languages like German, Japanese, French, Latin etc. demonstrates that they are mutually intelligible. Imagine reading Romeo & Juliet translated in Middle English, Italian, Korean, Spanish, Chinese etc. -- a student who doesn't speak any of those languages would find it impossible to analyse and study the play if it were written in any of those languages. While Shakespearean English may initially appear daunting, it is still inherently intelligible. As someone who's taught both Shakespeare and foreign languages, I can tell you that teaching Shakespeare is nothing like teaching in another language, even teaching integrated content in an immersive language class. e.g. teaching physics in Japanese to my Year 8 class (see more detailed notes on the Teaching Thread).

The chimney wasn't even invented until the middle ages, so the idea that a Latin word like "Caminus" could mean chimney as we understand it today is ridiculous.

As I said, chimney arrived to English from Latin via French. It wasn't directly transmitted from Latin to English. It evolved from Kaminos (Greek) to caminus (Latin) to cheminee (Old French) to chimenai (Middle English) to chimney (Modern English).

References:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chimney
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=chimney
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/chimney

The same is true of pronunciation as it is of grammar. Pronouncing a word wrong doesn't necessarily mean it won't be understood. It might mean people will laugh at you, but it doesn't mean you're suddenly talking nonsense.

I suspect that if you were to speak to a non-English speaking Latin speaker and pronounced caminus as "cammyness," they would probably not understand what you mean. You may need to repeat yourself and maybe make gestures or point at a forge or an image of a forge, but I suspect that it would impair your ability to be understood, at least to be easily and efficiently understood.

e.g. sometimes I deliberately mispronounce "apologies" as "apple-logies" (as in the Logie awards ), and it throws people off because they initially don't know what I'm saying. Or I say "Avengers" as in rhyming with "scavenger," e.g. "I can't wait for the next "Avvenger" movie," and again, people usually don't know what I'm saying, until I repeat these words again and again and again and usually (but not always) they work out what I meant.

So I think by pronouncing "caminus" as "cammyness," you're likely to decrease the ease by which others can understand what you mean. So this is linked to what is known as communicative competence. Okay, you may be able to maintain communication with poor pronunciation and grammar, but would it be effective communication? What is the level of competency? How would you grade or compare a person who speaks with correct pronunciation and grammar vs someone who doesn't? Would you rate them as being of equal competency or proficiency? So it's not to say that a person with incorrect pronunciation, grammar etc. is necessarily completely incompetent (i.e. unintelligible), but possibly less competent that someone who can speak gooderer (sic).

I have a book called "Japanese Slanguage" which has heavily Anglocised forms of Japanese expressions, which I sometimes use on native speakers for laughs to see if they can understand what I'm saying. e.g. for どういたしまして (doh-ee-tah-shee-mah-shteh), it says "Don't touch my moustache." I went around saying to all these native speakers, "Don't touch my moustache!" and none of them initially understood what I was trying to say. A few of them worked it out and had a laugh. As you said, it may not come across as nonsense, but people will laugh. And if you're trying to be a competent communicator and maintain sustained communication or conversation with another speaker, then I think that having reasonably correct pronunciation and grammar would help with that.

A good example is the word "maroon", referring to the colour worn by Queensland's State of Origin* team. In the UK - where I'm from, and where we have a country called England where we speak English, by the way, not that that's my only qualification here - that word is pronounced with a long double-u sound, such as in "moon", "balloon", or "platoon". In Australia, it's pronounced with a different long-oh sound, as in "loan", "moan", or "float". Neither pronunciation is any more correct than the other (no matter how I may tease my Australian housemates for their bizarre colonial way of speaking). Yes, you could look back and discover that the ancient Vikings wore a deep shade of purple when pillaging Britain, and their leader was a man called "Mahroney" and his name was pronounced one way or the other and anyway this was all before the great vowel shift and I'm making this up, but that would have very little bearing on the fact that one state in one part of the world laughs at people who say "marune" and in the opposite hemisphere they shake their heads at "marone". The same is true of Caminus. Just because it's drawn from a Latin word doesn't mean that we necessarily pronounce it that way today, or that fictional robots on a fictional planet wouldn't pronounce it differently. It's drawn from that word for literary reasons that have little to do with actual linguistics - or pronunciation - in this case, because it means "engine" in Latin, and a few of our other characters and concepts have Latin names, and it's all about machines, so let's go with that. No-one is a native Latin speaker, so talking about the "correct" pronunciation of the word is a fallacy; at the time the word was invented, one accent may have pronounced it exactly like they do on the Machinima show.

Yes, I've already stated this. See my previous comments about language evolution. You may disagree, but I don't think that isolated incidents of mispronunciation are sufficient to classify it as an actual evolution of the word. Unless you consider my "apple-logies" pronunciation of "apologies" to be equally correct as the standard pronunciation. Then I apple-low-guise.

Latin has certainly evolved too. As I said my previous post, some of the main variants are Classical, Vulgar and Ecclesiastic Latin, and even then there are many variants within some of these variants, especially within Vulgar Latin. Even Classical Latin varies depending on which period you're looking at. Classical Latin was spoken among the upper classes in Rome, but your average Roman commoner would've spoken Vulgar Latin, and as such modern day Romance languages are more commonly descendant from Vulgar Latin than Classical Latin, which would partially account for why words like "cheminee" looks and sounds so different from Classical Latin "caminus." I don't know what the Vulgar Latin form of caminus is, I don't know if Vulgar Latin was as well documented as Classical Latin. Ecclesiastic Latin is what is used by many Christians such as the population of the Vatican. When I lived in Japan I saw many church services conducted bilingually in Japanese and Ecclesiastic Latin (because many Christian immigrants in Japan come from different language backgrounds and Latin acts as their lingua franca).

The names of Transformers concepts and characters needn't be drawn from any linguistic or literary source. Yes, Optimus Prime and Ultra Magnus have meanings in Latin. Hardhead and Silverstreak are common phrases repurposed as names. But names like "Iacon", "Furos", or "Emirate Xaaron"? They're made up, cut from whole cloth, invented. "Furos" was chosen because it sounds a bit like "Duros", the characters original name, and also a bit like furious.

Yep, I've already stated this in a previous post (see my comparison with fictitious elements/metals like adamantium, vibranium etc.). If people are going to invent completely fictitious stuff for which there is no real life reference, then fine, you can do whatever you want with it because there's nothing to compare. But if you're going to draw something from reality, then people will compare it with real life because there are reference points. Like say the geographic inaccuracies in Revenge of the Fallen - you could argue that in the cinematic Transformers universe that certain things are located differently or perhaps certain countries just don't exist, or borders are different... but when you set events in real places like Washington, Jordan, Egypt etc., then there are real points of references that people will relate to. Having Doctor Octopus generate nuclear fission from a single atom of tritium -- you could argue that in that movie's universe perhaps tritium is somehow radioactive. But not in the real world. And if you're going to explicitly refer to a real compound like tritium, then it's natural for people to make references.

For example, in the languages of Middle Earth, most names containing /i/ pronounce it as "ee" - Isildur (ee-seel-doohr), Minas Tirith (meenas tee reeth), Mithrandir (meeth run deer), Sindarin (seen-dah-reen), Bilbo Baggins (beel-boh bag-geenz), Glorfindel (glor-feen-dell) etc., yet Isengard is pronounced "eye-zuhn-gahd" and not "ee-zuhn-gahd." Apparently there are recordings of Tolkien himself pronouncing it as "eye-zuhn-gahd," although he has stated that Isengard does not come from the same languages which use the short "i" sound. I don't know if the fictitious etymology of Isengard was ever explained by Tolkien beyond it being "what Men call it." But if Tolkien has been recorded as pronouncing it as "eye-zuhn-gahd" then that's the official pronunciation. Some fans have theorised that it may be inspired by the German word for iron, "Eisen."

But I totally agree, fictitiously invented words like Iacon, Xaaron etc. have no other "correct" pronunciation beyond what is presented in these media (and in the case of printed text it may be open to interpretation), unless the author has explicitly stated otherwise (such as in fictitiously constructed languages).

Much of what you're saying is mostly stuff that I would generally agree with. There's certainly nothing you're saying that I would outright disagree with. My apple-low-gheez if I had not articulated them clearly enough before.

P.S.: I would like to propose an experiment over this weekend: would you care to spend some time speaking to your friends where almost every word is deliberately mispronounced? Don't give them any warning or tell them what you're doing, just randomly drop it out of the blue and see what happens. I sometimes do this in Japanese where I speak Japanese with a deliberately thick Bogan Aussie 'Strine accent; I used to do this with my daughter sometimes and it drove her mental! Just yesterday I was doing this with a native Japanese student and he couldn't stop laughing. I might try this on the weekend with some native speaking Japanese adults and see what reactions I get. I'll let you conduct your end of the experiment in English and we can compare results. If anyone else would like to join in and do the same with English or any other language, please feel free. Try to mangle the pronunciation and/or grammar as much as you can and see what happens.
P.P.S. The French police man from 'Allo 'Allo! "Good moaning, I was p......g by your door."

[Tetsuwan Convoy]

Names are a funny thing and people can get quite personally offended by mispronunciation.

The photographer of my wedding MANY moons ago was a guy from Queensland. and upon meeting him I said "Hi Grant".
As a Kiwi we normally say the name as Gr-aunt and thus that is how I pronounced it.
He gave me the most horrible frown and said: "My name is Gr-ANT!".

It was quite an unnatural pronunciation for me but I tried my best to remember when I met him to force the Aussie accent out. It remains with me as probably the first time I encountered someone who was VERY particular about their name pronunciation.

Interesting there, as my first assumption seeing the name "Grant" would be "Gr-aunt " as well. A bit immature of him to frown and be all grumpy at what is possibly a pretty common situation.

I always pronounce dance as "Darnce" as opposed to "dants" and often got teased (friendliy like) by my friends for saying "yoh-gurt" instead of "yoe-gurt."

But this name talk reminds me of an episode of the Next Generation where the old doctor lady calls Data "Darta" and Data asks her why she calls him Darta when his name is Dayta. At that moment, I was all like
"that makes sense, so if an American is call Grant, he's probably not a Grarnt"