We know the whole to-may-to to-mah-to thing (and really, no one says po-tah-to although it’s fun to say it just to wind people up), but that’s also a north/south divide. But you know what’s really terrible? When a fucking English person corrects my pronunciation of my last name.
See, I have a non-English surname as in it’s not English, Scottish, Welsh, but foreign. When an English person has to pronounce my surname, it goes one of two ways:
- They see it and go “Uh, Miss, Miss, uhh, [start bumbling my name"] and then I interject and say it for them OR
- I am asked what my surname is and give it. While the person hunts for whatever it is by my surname, they come to it and go “AH [says my last name with huge emphasis on my mispronunciation of the first syllable of my surname]“. Sometimes I get snarky and say “No, it’s [my pronunciation]“.
Fucking English thinking they are the masters of pronunciation. Have you ever heard an English person ask for a tortilla (chip or flat bread)? It’s tore-till-uh. No jokes. Also, they don’t really know the difference between a tortilla like you’d wrap a burrito in or a tortilla chip. I have heard the chips referred to as a tortilla and the wraps as pancakes. PANCAKES, people. That’s because they don’t really know what pancakes are (how come the Scottish and Irish got this right?).
I’m going off on a tangent there. The moral of the story is, NEVER, EVER correct someone’s pronunciation OF THEIR OWN NAME — it just means you’re asking for a beat down.
-Betty Crocker
