[cwbrandsma]

And you will forever have your name mispronounced by English speakers that can’t wrap their tongues around the -sma or -stra ending.

Things like TerpSON, TerpSmith, Terp….

One time while voting the lady working there butchered my name 8 times, she literally could not get it right.

[jeroenhd]

To be fair to an English speaker reading your name from paper: some native English speakers are taught to read by recognizing words by their first letter and their shape, and skipping the word to later fill in the blanks when they don't recognize the word. The lady may have simply never been taught how to sound out unfamiliar letter combinations, and may have been trying her best to make sense of the unrecognizable mess of letters she saw in front of her.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho...

[cardanome]

Oh gosh, this explains so much.

I always felt that many native English speakers can't really parse a text properly. They seem to react to certain keywords. When the text says something they didn't expect, they often miss it or get confused.

I thought it might be a side-effect of being monolingual and hence having a less explicit understanding of language but seeing how they are taught to read, things make perfectly sense.

It is crazy of much staying power bogus science has in education. Reminds me how the idea of individual learning styles is still popular and though it lacks empirical evidence.

[cwbrandsma]

She wasn't even reading it, I was telling her my name, all she had to do was repeat it and she couldn't do it.

[yusina]

I challenge you to go to China and ask people to make fun of you if you are unable to correctly pronounce half their words. Not because of stupidity but because of a mix of not hearing the subtle difference ("but that's exactly what you said!") and being unable to accurately reproduce a sound that you hear.

As kids, we have the ability to make lots of noises. Kids learning languages keep those skills alive. Over time, we lose that ability for sounds that we don't use regularly, and re-acquiring that capability is really hard.

[nayuki]

And the 13-episode podcast from them: https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/

[mrarjen]

Can confirm, usually misunderstood too.

[quink]

> she literally could not get it right

Eh, they get their revenge. As any Australian of a certain age can tell you TelSTRA could not get it right, for any value of right, without expending an equivalent effort to moving a mountain.