While watching the movie adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, I wanted to cringe every time someone mispronounced a character's name. So. Awkward. Whenever Maxine said "Ash-ima" I just felt really embarassed for her. And then I started to realize: I have a really weird hangup about names.
First of all, I pronounce everything wrong. Everything. And it's not even always from ignorance, sometimes my mind just shuts off and I'll say something in a completely bizarre way. For instance: a few weeks ago, I was singing along to Green Day's rock-opera song "Jesus of Suburbia" and when I got to the line
"The space that's in between insane and insecure"
I heard myself say
"...inane and insecure"
I paused, and wondered why I would even mispronounce that. Why would I just drop the 's' from the middle of a word? I don't know. Problematically, I will do this with people's names all the time. I know what their name is, I know how to pronounce it, but then at the last minute my brain panics and second guesses itself. It's bizarre.
So unintentionally, I've placed a lot of emphasis on people's names. I tend not to really refer to people by name directly, at least not after initially getting their attention, because it just feels weird to me. It actually creeps me out a bit when someone overuses my name, as in when I get customers at work who insist on using my name after every sentence.
"Oh hello, Sarah. Thank you, Sarah. I'll have a turkey sandwich, Sarah. Actually, Sarah, can you change my order to a bowl of soup, Sarah?"
Seriously. Why?
You don't even know me! We met five second ago! Stop using my name like that!
Okay. Maybe I'm just as bad as Gogol with the name-related hangups.
Sarah-
ReplyDeleteDon't worry I pronounce things wrong too! I pronounce milk as "melk" and leg as "laeg." My friends get pretty upset and have tried to teach me the correct way to say these words on multiple occasions, but I just can't do it. Also, with the name issue, sometimes people call me Jilly. I feel so weird when people say that because I don't really feel like my personality matches with "Jilly." I feel like a Jilly is a perky, girly person which I really am not.
Sarah, I can empathize with you as I notoriuosly butcher words. I STILL pronounce pathos wrong. I say "pay-thos" instead of "path-os." Now, I just try to avoid saying pathos outloud in class, but sometimes I just need to. Sometimes, I say it right, but most of the time I am just so caught up in the moment I blirt out "pay-thos" once again. It's kind of embarassing.
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