I’m from country A she is from country B, and we met in country C in a program for foreigners that are in C to learn and or improve their C language skills.
The language program organized a party for all participants, and we were all wearing name tags with our names and all the languages, one speaks, on them.
So, this girl comes up to me and asks: “Is your name pronounced ‘her country’s pronunciation of my name 1’ or ‘her country’s pronunciation of my name 2’”
And I tell her I’m fine with either or she can call me ‘my name as pronounced in C by the instructors’.
The thing is. Ich have a name that is kind of challenging in an international context.
3-4 syllables depending on the language
Beginning and ending with letters that are not spoken in all languages and another one in the middle.
Therefore, I don’t usually care how my name is pronounced by people speaking other languages.
She went off on a tirade on how there is only one correct way to pronounce each name which is the way the person that gave set name says it.
So, I told her my name as it is pronounced in my language, and she tells me that she can’t pronounce that without even trying to.
Which pissed me off after she went on and on about how I was letting people trample all over me by letting them call me by whatever version of my name existed in their language.
I told her I’d teach her how to do it and that’s what I did.
Admittedly this was the first time I tried to teach someone my name (or my language) to this extend and except for the speech therapy exercises on how to roll my ‘R’s from when I was little I didn’t really have any tools which lead to me incorrectly over emphasizing the ‘te’ which lead to us making spitting and retching noises for a while until I realized that ‘te’ is kind of pronounced like in English a short ‘the’ just with the tongue touching the roof of the mouth in the ‘t’-spot instead of the teeth. That helped a little.
This trial-and-error teaching went on for about 15 to 20 Minutes until she stomped off.
She has been giving me the stink eye for about 3 days now.
Am I the asshole?
NTA – she basically told you that you were a pushover for not insisting people pronounce your name the correct way and then got in a huff when you tried to teach her the correct way
NTA She wanted to pronounce your name the way it actually sounds in your native language, and you tried to teach her.
It’s not your fault she got huffy from her failure. As someone in a language program, I’d have expected her to be more gracious in her failure.
NTA – she insisted on there only being one correct way of pronouncing a name and told you to insist on the correct pronunciation. She would have been fine if she had just picked one of the options you explicitly said you are fine with.
What exactly did you do that you think could make you an AH? This is a story about some AH being an AH to you and you bending over backwards to try and accommodate them.
Of course NTA
NTA
The only mistake is thinking that someone who started out with that attitude was going to be interested in learning anything.
Also I low key wanna know the languages
NTA
You did what she asked. She is projecting her anger she has with herself on to you. I think it was amazing of you to take so much time helping her, that show’s incredible patience. Don’t let her childish attitude get to you.
NTA. I absolutely will do that to people because I think my name needs to be pronounced the way it is and there is only the way that I say it that I will accept. But if that is true, then other people are allowed to accept multiple pronunciations of their name because the thing that matters is that the person who holds the name gets to make the decisions.
Some people have names that are more difficult to pronounce than others and some people have names that other people just are too fucking lazy to learn how to pronounce. And there is a huge difference between accents and language of origin and being too fucking lazy to learn how to pronounce something.
As someone with a name difficult to pronounce in the country I reside in -NTA.
You were kind and gracious by allowing an easier version. She didn’t accept that. She made a whole thing about how you should feel, which frankly is none of her business and she is wrong assuming things about you. When you give in and try to teach her, which she wanted, and she fails she ends up being pissy and sulky? No.
Fuck that. I am not a language instructor and it takes too much time out of my day. I have a version of pronunciation I am fine with. That’s my name.
Nta, she is with her proclamations about only one way to pronounce a name , and then being rude about not being able to. In the future maybe don’t care as much about what other people can do or can’t. It’s not your weight to have to carry if she can pronounce something or not, and people will like you more for being aloof. People like others not for what they say, but how well they perceive others listen to themselves.
Lol, I like you, you’re my kind of guy 😂
NTA
NTA. You literally did what she asked.
Your name is Squirrel?
NTA.
She is embarrassed that she couldn’t pronounce your name. She was bent on it being option A or B, and when you said C, she got caught off guard. But instead of accepting that you were fine with people being unable to pronounce your name, she wanted to prove she could. She thought that she could be better than most. And when she couldn’t, she got embarrassed and stormed off.
You did nothing wrong here.
NTA but 15-20 minutes is way too long lol it must have been awkward for sure. You should probably have dismissed the whole thing after a few attempts saying that it was too hard anyway or that she was very close and that’s more than enough just to avoid making it unnecessarily weird