For example, an English person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bob”, whereas an American person called Bob might introduce themselves as “Bahb”. (Sorry, don’t know the phonetic alphabet but hopefully you get my gist)
Should you pronounce those two people’s names the same, with your own natural accent, or should you copy how the person says their own name?
Edit: I specifically picked a generic English name with different pronunciation across different accents. I know my wording wasn’t great, sorry! Hopefully the edit is a bit clearer.
Context and other languages
When pronouncing a name from a different language, I firmly believe you should copy the pronunciation of the owner of that name, and not Anglicise the name unless asked to. I say this as a speaker of a language that English people regularly mispronounce and even insist to me that they know the correct pronunciation of my language.
Renault Peugeot Rumplestiltzkin
You got any friends with a similar example name in French? Unless your name is Écureuil, I’m thinking it can’t be that bad.
“Moi, je déteste l’écureuil.” was my practice sentence to master that one and sometimes I’m still nervous to use it in the wild lol.
I’m told “écureuil” is an infamously hard word for non-natives. It’s funny that one of the hardest words to pronounce in English in my opinion is “squirrel”. At least for a beginner.
To answer your question, I was thinking about words with nasal vowels, which are non-existent in English.
“Enfant”, “informatique”, “un brin brun”
My own first name has a nasal vowel and in my experience talking to native English speakers, it’s seems like a challenge to them.
Interestingly I don’t find the nasal vowels hard at all. In Écureuil (and other words that give me problems) it’s the “u” that is the hard part. It’s projected to a funny place in the mouth for me.
If I don’t pay attention it naturally wants to sound like the “ou” in 12 which my wife gives me shit for :).
Yes you’re right, I bet the French “u” is strange for an anglophone!
The sound I have the most trouble with in English is “th”. When I try it it kind of defaults to a “d”. In France they usually pronounce it like a “z” instead.