Should you pronounce a difficult or foreign word correctly, even if you\u2019re less likely to be understood? Or is it better to focus on results?<\/p>\n
I recently brought my wife a plate of some cheese we hadn\u2019t tried before, a tasty French variety called \u201cbucheron.\u201d I know enough French from high school to guess that it\u2019s pronounced something like \u201cBOOSHur-OH!,\u201d with that nasal stop at the end, but if she\u2019s unfamiliar with the cheese, who knows what that would have sounded like?<\/p>\n
Instead I pronounced it \u201cbutcher on,\u201d sounding like an ignorant American \u2013 but confident that she would know what I\u2019m saying. <\/p>\n
If you write for a living, or even just did well in school, it\u2019s easy to get attached to the vocabulary you worked so hard for. I think this is a mistake, because words, while fascinating and beautiful in their own right, are just tools we use to transmit meaning. If we get lost in the word itself, the reality in our mind changes to fit the word, when the opposite is what we really want to happen.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always good to know and understand as many words as possible, just as you should know how to use a skill saw correctly before cutting any wood with one. Nonetheless, there are times when I pull the blade cover back on that skill saw and freehand the blade. Dangerous as it is, in some cases that\u2019s what you need to do to get the job done. Other times you are better off using a different tool entirely.<\/p>\n
It can be subtle, and your choices should be based on who you\u2019re talking to. For example, in Spanish, the singular of the word tamales is not tamale, but un tamal<\/em>. I work with a lot of native Spanish speakers, and if I\u2019m speaking to them I\u2019ll talk about \u201ca tamal.\u201d But most Americans would have trouble understanding that (perhaps because people rarely eat only one in this country).<\/p>\n If I insist on describing one as a \u201ctamal\u201d to an English speaker, I\u2019m showing off my knowledge of Spanish more than I am communicating. (This tendency was captured perfectly on the latest episode of Portlandia, where a couple just back from vacation in Spain go to a fun tapas-themed dinner, and can\u2019t resist telling everyone how wrong and unauthentic their tapas, sangria, dinner time, &c. are.) <\/p>\n In fact, according to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the singular in English is tamale with this etymology: \u201c[Mex. Sp. tamal<\/em>, pl. tamales<\/em>, f. Nahuatl tamalli<\/em>.]\u201d So even if you\u2019re chasing authenticity, tamale is still the better thing to say, because it approximates the original Nahuatl word. But I would rather say the thing that gets my meaning across.<\/p>\n As usual, Chuang Tzu (Zhuangzi) says it best :<\/p>\n \u201cThe rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; Should you pronounce a difficult or foreign word correctly, even if you\u2019re less likely to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":433,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[56,57,197,51,65,52,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realchange.org\/taoish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nonce you\u2019ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare.
\nWords exist because of meaning;
\nonce you\u2019ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words.
\nWhere can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?\u201d (Burton Watson translation)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"