Post by Prometheus on Apr 7, 2021 1:18:37 GMT
mispronouncing an Asian person's name
Ashley Lee
Wed, April 7, 2021, 3:38 AM
Wed, April 7, 2021, 3:38 AM
The Times recently reported on the outcry following the L.A. theater community's Ovation Awards, where organizers mispronounced the name of an Asian American nominee and displayed a photo of the wrong actor.
If anyone doubts the racially based sting that comes with such insults to one's professional endeavors, just read the emails that rolled in to The Times after publication of our article. One reader said the Ovation reaction was just an example of "Asian victimhood." Another called it a big joke: "I thought you were writing a sketch for SNL with your article yesterday; so 'much pain and anger' that wrong photo used and name pronounced incorrectly. Hahahaha — really, audition for SNL, use that article, your [sic] sure to get hired!"
One went the extra mile to make fun of Jully (pronounced like Julie) Lee, who was nominated for her performance in East West Players' and the Fountain Theatre's "Hannah and the Dread Gazebo." Wrote the reader: "How do you say her name? Is it Jelly or Jolly?"
I was so disheartened to read these comments. The Ovation Awards' snafus — and some of our readers' reactions to the news coverage of them — are emblematic of the casual racism in the theater world and the world at large.
Mispronouncing someone's name, accidentally or on purpose, at the very least demonstrates a selective laziness to learn the correct way to address or acknowledge a person. The name is perceived as particularly difficult only because it's beyond the white European names that have been deemed normal. (For some reason, an effort can be made for a white person with an unusual name, as Hasan Minhaj explained while on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2019. "They're always like, 'I'm so sorry, I can't pronounce it. Meet my son, Higsby Witherthrottle III!'" he said. "If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj.")
When done willfully, it's a conscious decision to weaponize one's name — a deeply personal signifier of ethnic background and family lineage — against them, othering and invalidating them in a culture that already upholds white supremacy. This was the strategy of former Georgia Sen. David Perdue in referring to Kamala Harris, his Senate colleague and the Democratic nominee for vice president at the time, as "KAH-mah-lah? Kah-MAH'-lah? Kamala-mala-mala. I don’t know — whatever." (Perdue's move instead sparked a viral campaign in which people shared the origins of their names on social media.)
Such encounters sprout name-based microaggressions like "assignment of an unwanted nickname, assumptions and biases about an individual based on their name, and teasing from peers and educators due to cultural aspects of a name," according to Ranjana Srinivasan, whose research advocates for the mental health of South Asian Americans.
People like my parents hoped to shield me by assigning me an Anglicized given name at birth. Making my name more convenient for others was a defensive move: to lessen the likelihood of being bullied about my race and to up my chances of blending in, belonging and being seen as equal to my peers.
"This is what it is to grow up as a person of color in a white-dominated world," wrote Kelly Marie Tran in a 2018 New York Times piece in which she reflected on her parents' adopted American names and included her Vietnamese name: Loan. "I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. … I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings."
The Ovation Awards took place shortly after the documented hesitancy to deem the killings of six Asian women in Atlanta a hate crime instead of a sex addict's "really bad day." In the days that followed the attack — one of many acts of violence on people of Asian descent, which have risen significantly during the pandemic — these women's names were repeatedly misspelled and mispronounced by the media. It all echoes the pervasive invisibility of Asians in America, where your name isn't worth saying correctly, whether you're an actor in an Oscar-winning movie or a slain victim of senseless gun violence.
I find it exponentially more disrespectful that this error was made during an event that celebrates the theater, an industry in which artists of color are already pressured to water down their stories, language and entire selves to be palatable for white artistic directors, collaborators and audiences. Amid an unprecedented closure due to COVID-19, so many theater companies have released statements to their patrons, declaring that Black Lives Matter and that violence against Asian American Pacific Islanders is unacceptable. But these boilerplate sentiments say nothing without meaningful action — which, at the very least, calls for pronouncing names correctly and getting photos right.
For the L.A. Stage Alliance to be so careless — especially in the diverse city of Los Angeles — is indefensible. It is yet another example of an awards body that actively diminishes the art form it claims to celebrate.
After the disastrous ceremony, 25 theater companies revoked their memberships from LASA, which announced Monday that it has ceased operations. I look forward to the day when the American theater values the contributions of its artists enough to know their names — all of their names — and it is no longer necessary to explain why people’s names should be pronounced correctly.
If anyone doubts the racially based sting that comes with such insults to one's professional endeavors, just read the emails that rolled in to The Times after publication of our article. One reader said the Ovation reaction was just an example of "Asian victimhood." Another called it a big joke: "I thought you were writing a sketch for SNL with your article yesterday; so 'much pain and anger' that wrong photo used and name pronounced incorrectly. Hahahaha — really, audition for SNL, use that article, your [sic] sure to get hired!"
One went the extra mile to make fun of Jully (pronounced like Julie) Lee, who was nominated for her performance in East West Players' and the Fountain Theatre's "Hannah and the Dread Gazebo." Wrote the reader: "How do you say her name? Is it Jelly or Jolly?"
I was so disheartened to read these comments. The Ovation Awards' snafus — and some of our readers' reactions to the news coverage of them — are emblematic of the casual racism in the theater world and the world at large.
Mispronouncing someone's name, accidentally or on purpose, at the very least demonstrates a selective laziness to learn the correct way to address or acknowledge a person. The name is perceived as particularly difficult only because it's beyond the white European names that have been deemed normal. (For some reason, an effort can be made for a white person with an unusual name, as Hasan Minhaj explained while on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" in 2019. "They're always like, 'I'm so sorry, I can't pronounce it. Meet my son, Higsby Witherthrottle III!'" he said. "If you can pronounce Ansel Elgort, you can pronounce Hasan Minhaj.")
When done willfully, it's a conscious decision to weaponize one's name — a deeply personal signifier of ethnic background and family lineage — against them, othering and invalidating them in a culture that already upholds white supremacy. This was the strategy of former Georgia Sen. David Perdue in referring to Kamala Harris, his Senate colleague and the Democratic nominee for vice president at the time, as "KAH-mah-lah? Kah-MAH'-lah? Kamala-mala-mala. I don’t know — whatever." (Perdue's move instead sparked a viral campaign in which people shared the origins of their names on social media.)
Such encounters sprout name-based microaggressions like "assignment of an unwanted nickname, assumptions and biases about an individual based on their name, and teasing from peers and educators due to cultural aspects of a name," according to Ranjana Srinivasan, whose research advocates for the mental health of South Asian Americans.
People like my parents hoped to shield me by assigning me an Anglicized given name at birth. Making my name more convenient for others was a defensive move: to lessen the likelihood of being bullied about my race and to up my chances of blending in, belonging and being seen as equal to my peers.
"This is what it is to grow up as a person of color in a white-dominated world," wrote Kelly Marie Tran in a 2018 New York Times piece in which she reflected on her parents' adopted American names and included her Vietnamese name: Loan. "I want to live in a world where children of color don’t spend their entire adolescence wishing to be white. … I want to live in a world where people of all races, religions, socioeconomic classes, sexual orientations, gender identities and abilities are seen as what they have always been: human beings."
The Ovation Awards took place shortly after the documented hesitancy to deem the killings of six Asian women in Atlanta a hate crime instead of a sex addict's "really bad day." In the days that followed the attack — one of many acts of violence on people of Asian descent, which have risen significantly during the pandemic — these women's names were repeatedly misspelled and mispronounced by the media. It all echoes the pervasive invisibility of Asians in America, where your name isn't worth saying correctly, whether you're an actor in an Oscar-winning movie or a slain victim of senseless gun violence.
I find it exponentially more disrespectful that this error was made during an event that celebrates the theater, an industry in which artists of color are already pressured to water down their stories, language and entire selves to be palatable for white artistic directors, collaborators and audiences. Amid an unprecedented closure due to COVID-19, so many theater companies have released statements to their patrons, declaring that Black Lives Matter and that violence against Asian American Pacific Islanders is unacceptable. But these boilerplate sentiments say nothing without meaningful action — which, at the very least, calls for pronouncing names correctly and getting photos right.
For the L.A. Stage Alliance to be so careless — especially in the diverse city of Los Angeles — is indefensible. It is yet another example of an awards body that actively diminishes the art form it claims to celebrate.
After the disastrous ceremony, 25 theater companies revoked their memberships from LASA, which announced Monday that it has ceased operations. I look forward to the day when the American theater values the contributions of its artists enough to know their names — all of their names — and it is no longer necessary to explain why people’s names should be pronounced correctly.
As a teacher in China, let me say this about that:
Making fun of someone's name is never cool (except as a bit of a joke between friends), but mispronunciation is to be expected if one has never heard the name spoken before or if the new speaker of the name has their own cultural, linguistic tics:
Now, the above video is an example of the teacher doing the wrong thing, but it does help to explain my point: without prior experience, a teacher is simply not going to know how to pronounce a name, especially if it is written in familiar characters that have a different pronunciation in the other language.
Let's look at a made up name as an example:
Zhang Xiaocui
If a teacher (with no prior experience with pinyin) walked into a classroom, looked at the class list and tried to pronounce this name, they would fail... miserably. You, dear reader, are probably making a mess of it in your own home right now. You're probably saying the "zh" like the "su" sound in "measure"; you have the "ang" rhyming with "sang"; you are struggling with pronouncing the "x" as a "ks" followed by "ee" and "ow" (as in cow) sounds; followed "koo-ee."
Am I right?
OK. Here's your Chinese pronunciation lesson for the day:
Zhang: The "zh" sound like a "j"; the "ang" should have an elongated short a sound like some posh British fucktard: "ahng"
Xiao: The "x" is pronounced a sibilant s (say the "sh" sound but keep your tongue flat... or practice sounding like Christian Bale); the "iao" sounds like "yow" as in "yowzah."
Cui: The "c" in pinyin indicates a "ts" sound; the "ui" is pronounce as "way"
Can we really blame a person with no training in modern Chinese pinyin for saying that name wrong if they've never heard it? What if they learned Wade-Giles pinyin (still used in Taiwan)?
In that case, they wouldn't know how to pronounce the "x" at all since in Wade-Giles, that sound is written "hs".
It's mispronunciation of Wade-Giles that give us "Chinese" words in English that the Chinese people are baffled by on first hearing such as "kung fu" which is written "gongfu" in modern pinyin and pronounced with an initial hard g and a long o sound. How about going to the restaurant and ordering "Kung Pow Chicken"? That's "gongbao" in pinyin. Mispronunciation of Wade-Giles had us calling the capital city of China, "Peiking" instead of "Beijing." BTW, the "j" should have a sibilant j, not a hard j.
After all that, there's still intonation. Chinese has 4 tones for each vowel sound (and a 5th neutral tone) and using the wrong tone can change the whole meaning of the word.
cāo (1st tone) means rough or coarse (texture)
cáo (2nd tone) means groove or channel
cǎo (3rd tone) means grass or straw
cào (4th tone) which means fuck
You don't want to make a mistake and offer to take a girl on a date to pick fuckberries... or maybe you do. 
As you can see, "casually mispronouncing" words could lead to all sorts of embarrassing situations but it's not laziness. It's understandable ignorance.
"No ignorance is understandable!" you shout?
Look at everything I just explained! And I haven't covered even a third of Chinese phonemes, nor have I covered Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, or any of the other multitude of Asian languages. How many times have you seen the Vietnamese name, Nguyen and fucked up trying to pronounce it? Vietnamese has 6 tones for each vowel. If you can't get Chinese right, you sure as hell aren't going to get Vietnamese right.
The only solution is two-fold:
The non-Asian speaker needs to ask how to pronounce the name rather than just blindly fucking it up and the Asian person has to be understanding that the non-Asian person probably isn't going to get it right the first time (or the 2nd or 3rd) especially if you're going to be strict about the tones. How about some understanding and pat on the back for at least making an effort and coming close?
The non-Asian speaker needs to ask how to pronounce the name rather than just blindly fucking it up and the Asian person has to be understanding that the non-Asian person probably isn't going to get it right the first time (or the 2nd or 3rd) especially if you're going to be strict about the tones. How about some understanding and pat on the back for at least making an effort and coming close?
I've explained all of this to my older students who are planning on studying abroad and told them to save their new teachers some embarrassment by offering their "English name" to help the teacher save face.
My IRL name is 1 syllable and 3 letters long, yet my younger Chinese students fuck it up all the time because they have trouble with switching from Chinese pronunciation of the letters to English pronunciation as well as the juxtaposition of characters that simply would never happen in Chinese. I don't get mad and call them racists. I do my best to help them.
One last thing:
I absolutely have a Chinese name that I use with Chinese friends who speak little or no English so that it's easier for them to say.
![[giveup]](http://storage.proboards.com/7182076/images/FSYefibmKqtatIXMgHZg.gif)
![[cheers]](http://storage.proboards.com/7182076/images/engyBVslEdpmpmdnBwZQ.gif)