I ate the
whole jicama, and I can’t even pronounce it.
I love the
unaccompanied flute solos of French composer Charles Koechlin, and I do not
know how to say his name.
I’ve always
loved Kate Chopin’s short stories, but her characters’ names are beyond me. The
same goes for Russian novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but for them I
have an additional problem: I cannot
keep track of who’s who in Anna Karenina and
The Brothers Karamazov.
I mispronounce
English words even though I was a college English instructor. The time a student corrected me on the
pronunciation of hyperbole was
embarrassing, to say the least.
And, if a
person’s name is foreign to me—well, I always give it a German twist. That does not work well for Japanese names,
or Spanish names, or any names other than German names, for that matter.
Writing is
safer than speaking, because even if I cannot say a word correctly, I can
usually spell it if I’ve seen it. Even onamatoepia.
