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.
For the food thing, as a Midwesterner I feel like I come across as making fun of the other person when I try too hard. Like the people who say “Bærthélōnã” after they get back from two weeks in northwest Spain; it’s not going to fit into my normal speech pattern, it’ll just sound like I’m trying to draw attention to it if I say “bûɽɽɽito.”
But for names? I dunno man, that’s your name. I don’t want you to feel left out if I’m pronouncing “Evelyn” and “Leo” and “Elliott” perfectly, but then I stumble over “Rekha” or “Urooj” or “Joãozinho.” I’ll try to at least get as close as I can to the way I hear you pronounce it.
I grew up here, being white doesn’t mean it’s not my culture. I don’t know jack about Mexican cuisine, but Tex Mex is my culture.
Yeah, if I was from the Southwest I’m sure it would be different. But as a Midwestern kid, our “culture” is almost entirely used to ferment milk for cheese.
I honestly feel like the “you’re trying to hard to pronounce the country/city/food name” vibe is silly anyways. If they pronounce it “Bærthélōnã” in Barcelona, then why shouldn’t I try to pronounce it that way? Especially these days in our hyper-connected world, I don’t really have an excuse of “well I never knew they said it that way”.
I don’t mean people who earnestly pronounce it the way they do in Barcelona, I mean the people who make a huge deal out of saying it as intensely as possible, trying to call attention to how well-traveled they are by making it sound super alien.