This was inspired by a different thread in a different sub, but it reminded me of a story I read. There was a woman working in Japan, possibly as an ALT, possibly a university, something along those lines. The English department was making a test, and one of the questions involved the town of Carmel, in California. The professor apparently pronounced it with the accent on the wrong syllable and the woman politely corrected him.
The professor was not amused and insisted that his pronunciation was correct.
The woman mentioned, as delicately as possible, that she was *from* Carmel.
The professor opened his encyclopaedia to the entry on Carmel, pointed to the phonetic representation (which was apparently wrong) and made it very clear that the issue was closed.
I’m sure many of us have had over-zealous colleagues, etc., try to correct us, so let’s have some stories.
36 comments
A story from within Japan: when we moved from mainland Japan to Okinawa, we had to tell the city office in Aichi about our new address. It was 中頭郡 読谷村, and the official at the city office insisted it was pronounced ちゅうとうぐん よみたにむら. There happened to be a woman in the office who was from Okinawa, and she told him it was actually なかがみぐん よみたんそん, but dude was having none of that, and wrote in his reading of the address.
Working as a Japanese to English translator, I also had many cases of customers correcting my English for various reasons. My eyebrow used to twitch so much I have a permanent head tilt to this day.
[deleted]
My manager (Spain guy) used to “correct” the localization from Japanese to English , basically he tried to teach English to the American guy in charge of localization. The American guy always very nice to all suggestions though.
Got in a dispute long ago where a Japanese teacher insisted that my hometown is nicknamed “Hongcouver” because of the high percentage of ethnically Chinese residents.
I mean, it is called that, but only by racist assholes.
At that point I was so sick of the job I just replied “Yeah, you can call it that if you want to get beat up by a Chinese guy, sure.”
Several years ago, back when I was just an intern, my company forgot to put up a robots.txt on a website that was still in development. It started showing up on search engines, so they wrote some emails to various engines’ support addresses asking them to have it taken down.
Bing in particular apparently had no Japanese support, so they had me write an email in English asking them to take it down. I wrote down a quick email, sent it off to the person who asked me to write it, and passed his desk on my way to get a cup of coffee. I noticed him checking the email with google translate open. When I sat back down to my desk, I got a message on slack asking me to change something completely inconsequential. I forget what exactly it was at this point, but it was something like changing “please take this website out of your search results” to “would you be able to remove this website from your search results” because google translate made the former sound too direct in Japanese.
Last job, there was this lady who has been a civil worker in Akita pref until she moved to Tokyo for said job. She’s like 20 yrs older than me and single – dunno if it’s relevant or not.
Anyway, one of our clients is based in 壬生町 so obviously the word would come up in lots of topics. It’s みぶまち apparently – Google told me so and other people have pronounced it so. But everytime I – not everyone else – said “mibumachi” she would be like “『みぶちょう』ね.” Being the foreigner I didn’t mind it so much, I honestly thought she was correct but right before leaving I realize it was simply 嫌がらせ.
Sorry it didn’t answer your topic question though.
(Non Japanese nor English native speaker here, but deeply involved in translation and language related work)
I think that when it comes to these sort of language nitpicks, it is more about the “how and why” you propose an alternative than the “what” you propose.
Regardless of you being or not a native speaker, when you propose an alternative wording for a phrase humbly, for a valid reason and willing to respect the proposal of the other party from an objective standpoint, it should be welcome.
The problem is when this is turned into a dick measuring contest and it is a matter of “getting my proposal shoehorned in” just to fulfil your ego, instead of aiming for the most correct phrasing towards your audience.
Honestly, simply working as an ALT/instructor not from America (New Zealand!!) and being told that my word choice is wrong, my intonation is wrong, “that’s not real English” constantly because it didn’t exactly match the JTE’s knowledge of American English. 🤷♀️
We made flyers for our school about a decade ago. We included a picture of me and the sentence ” I look forward to meeting you!” A potential student called and insisted to our staff that it was grammatically incorrect, that the expression could only be used in the present continuous tense. I called her back and explained that it can be and often is used in the present simple. She insisted that I was wrong and nothing could convince her otherwise. I eventually had to hang up on her crazy ass.
米原. Is it まいばら or まいはら? No one knows for sure….
A teacher I used to work with who I didnt get along with refused to believe that “I have ever”, for example “I have ever been to New York” was wrong. I explained that we can use “have ever” with a superlative such as “That is the fastest I have ever run” but we never use it to mean したことがある. She HATED the fact that I had corrected her and about 3 days later came up and waved some printout of some bullshit blog written in Japanese by a Japanese person as proof that she was “correct”.
A colleague had somehow managed to get a nearly perfect score on one of the English certifications, but couldn’t speak or communicate well at all.
We were working a sales call and the presentation she put together was utter nonsense. Incomprehensible, not at all appropriate for sales. I edited it, made it into actually grammatically-correct English using appropriate industry terminology, etc. She threw a minor fit saying she thought it was fine how she wrote it.
We show up to the sales call and she pops up on screen her original nonsense version. Nobody in the room could tell what it was saying, asked a ton of questions exactly about areas I’d previously fixed, and had a really hard time getting through the discussion.
Plus I felt embarrassed because from their perspective why is a native English speaker in the room showing off this incomprehensible text? Made it look like I hadn’t done my job, either.
[deleted]
(Keeping things somewhat vague to avoid identifiable informtion.)
I was working at an Eikaiwa, teaching some adult students, and the topic of the lesson was generations (Gen X, Millenial, Gen Z, etc.). I mentioned that, since I was born in the early 90s, I’m a Millenial, and this one woman was not having it. A summary of how the conversation went:
Her: “No, millenium means 1000, so Millenials were born after the year 2000.”
Me: “Actually, Millenials are people who came of age, became adults, in the new millenium, so that means people who were born in the 80s and 90s.”
Her: “No.” or “I don’t understand.” or “You’re wrong.”
And on and on like that. I say “summary” because it went back and forth like that for about 20 minutes. I pulled up a source detailing the years each generation was born in, tried to explain how generations typically get their special names after people from that generation do something culturally relevant, and everything else I could think of, but she just was not having it. I think she left that day still thinking she was right and I was an idiot for calling myself a Millenial.
The same woman fought with me on a different day about snowmen. I shared the fun little cultural detail that, while a stereotypical snowman in Japan is made of two parts, in America they have three! Again, she refused to believe me. I pulled up pictures and illustrations of snowmen in the US, drew my own examples, even explained that I’m just talking about what people imagine when they think of a snowman and they don’t all actually end up looking like that in reality. Nothing worked. She still insisted, “I didn’t see any snowmen with three parts when I was in the US.” As if her vacation compared to me growing up in the US, being constantly exposed to media from the US, and just in general knowing what a damn snowman is supposed to look like there.
Honestly, I could fill this thread just with stories of this one woman refusing to believe I knew more than her about anything. I’m glad I left that job for a lot of reasons; (hopefully) never seeing her again in my life is one of them.
Being from Carmel, Indiana, The pronunciation of Carmel is not a hill I’m willing to even climb, let alone die on. I just don’t care.
Now, if we are talking about Sault Ste Marie or Mackinac….
It’s not pronounced octoPUS, it’s octoPAS, with a broad A like apple.
In this case I did manage to convince a skeptical teacher that perhaps the IPA guide was a misprint?
Yet in the listening recording I was told to say octoPAS because that’s what the students learned.
Because that’s what’s going to trip them up.
To be clear – I know it’s octopus, I was being told to mispronounce it. My pronunciation was “wrong”
I can’t think of any pronunciation ones off the top of my head, but I’m driven crazy after years of people (mostly Europeans , but could be from anywhere) telling me how things are in America
Usually based on having spent a week at Disneyworld 10 years ago
This is very similar to the sentiment that we actual Japanese people have when engaging in conversations with non-Japanese people on Japanlife.
A lot of people believe that they know better than a native speaker, however they actually never.
Someone said “wicket” is not a common word in English for ticket gate.
I’m sure I have had several, but one that comes to mind was when an “advanced” speaker at the eikaiwa started giving me crap for not understanding her. She kept saying ” アンケート , アンケート , why can’t you understand English?!?”. I was a young, new teacher and just said, “I don’t know what your saying but it isn’t English”.
She finally looked it up in her electronic dictionary.
My wife (Japanese) actually quit college and the straw that broke the camel’s back was an arguement with a professor about an English translation. Turned out she was right and then on her next assignment she got a suspiciously shitty score.
Not really language, but tea.
I was told by a co-worker that all British people put milk before tea. I told her a huge majority will put the tea first, but she said she saw it on TV it’s the done thing to put milk first. Was a Japanese tea ‘expert’ on a Matsuko Deluxe show.
Not a native speaker, but I feel the pain for for my Asian looking native English speaker friends who I’ve seen being corrected many times on their English pronunciation.
LOL a dude in my class keeps correcting our Japanese teacher’a stroke order…
I think that’s because most Japanese people, even those who speak English well, don’t even think about how not every single city in the US has an English origin, and thinking about it too much might break their brains. Carmel likely has a Spanish origin, just like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, Fresno, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and most cities in California that have been around for more than 200 years.
I’ve posted this story in this sub before, but…
I worked in Kumagaya around the time of the Rugby World Cup. I was there when they brought out [these banners](https://i.ibb.co/V91Lk54/image.png) that are literally *all over the city* now in all shapes and sizes.
What the general public will never know is that when the first draft version of these came across my desk in a 回覧, the designer had come up with the genius idea that “Kumagaya” looked cuter in English spelled with a C instead of a K. I had to have a very uncomfortable conversation with a colleague explaining why this was not acceptable. They had to send a very awkward email back to the designer, along with the explanation that a native English speaker (me) had advised that this spelling was extremely inadvisable. Even then, the designer refused to change it and multiple more drafts with the C spelling got made until a phone conversation happened, including the definition of “cum” and assuring them that English speakers would definitely take notice of the unfortunate spelling, and they were finally convinced.
I didn’t have a say in the actual design so the font is atrocious, but I saved Kumagaya from becoming one of Japan’s greatest memes
A friend was at a primary school as the English speaking person (assistant, not the teacher). Not sure of the hierarchy, but they were there to practice with the students. Teacher makes a massive grammatical error in the lesson. Friend corrects them. Teacher gets very angry about being corrected and yells a bit. Book is checked. Book has glaring spelling errors that have lead to the issue. Friend tries to fix the textbook but the teacher is having none of it. The book is right. The book is God. Friend is told to teach the misprint as correct regardless of actual correctness. Friend is reprimanded for correcting teacher in class later. Instructed to always teach the book. Ignore what is right. The book is right and so is the teacher. Friend quits.
Slightly tangential, but an elementary teacher tried to tell me that a Filipino volunteer said bat as in baseball bat was pronounced differently than bat as in vampire bat. I never met the volunteer and so can’t confirm the story. I did say that there are various native English dialects, and while they are all valid, the two bats are pronounced the same in AmEng, and showed her the dictionary entry.
Fight of the native speakers, now at Flower Park Elementary! One night only! Well, actually, the controversy dragged on for a couple of months of one-shotting.
I work in an Eikawa that hires from all over the world. The English from Indians is often wrong both in a colloquial and grammatical sense.
Many “Japanese” English teachers are like that. I was raised in Japan and went to schools here. And heard many stories of English teachers boasting their English skill as better than anyone else.
I mean, Even if a Japanese kid who has lived in English speaking countries or a half kid say the teacher is not correct, he would not listen.
I do a lot of proofreading in my job. I’ll sometimes get my work back with a note, usually from newer Japanese staff members, asking if I’m sure the phrase I used was correct, and often offering their own suggestion.
Most times I’ll explain to them why I used what I did and why theirs doesn’t work. But every once in a while, when a staff insists their correction is more accurate, I’ll raise my hands and say “Ok. You know what your talking about. Please use that version.” I don’t get paid enough to argue with someone who apparently knows everything.
So is it CAR-mel or car-MEL?
As a Japanese to English translator, I get “feedback” from clients all the time asking me to clarify things or, in other words, basically give them a free English lesson to explain why I translated something the way I did.
Those I mostly tolerate.
The ones I do not tolerate are the ones to try to correct me.
There are various reasons they do it. Some try to “correct” my English because they’re the Official English Speaker in the office and they have to rationalize their job by doing something that looks like work. It’s also a way to show off.
Some honestly believe they know English better than I do because they lived there for a week or whatever bullshit.
Some are just assholes, and some are just unaware that there is more than one way to say something.
One time I received a job to translate a white paper for a Japanese government agency. I did not receive any details on *how* they wanted me to translate it, so no glossary or prior examples. So I went to the website of that agency and downloaded some white paper PDFs that had been translated in the past, so both the Japanese and English versions, and read through them to get an idea of the tone they were probably looking for.
After I submitted the translation, they got back to me with basically the first three or four pages completely marked in red and vague instructions to rewrite the rest (dozens of pages) in the same tone. I sent them the copies of the PDFs from *their* agency that I’d referred to for the tone and told them to fuck off (with a note that if they wanted to dictate a different tone from what their own agency was already using, they needed to tell me *before* I started the work). I also refused to accept any work from that client again.
Other clients I’ve dropped were for example Macromill, a survey company. The lady I was dealing with had a very specific way she wanted things to be worded which she was convinced was the most correct way to phrase things for native speakers, but were actually quite stilted and literally translated. And again, she came at me *after* I’d submitted the translation with tons of changes, but had not given me any glossary or example translations to work from. I told her to fuck off too.
I was working with a teacher and he had written a list of prefecture names for the students, but he spelled it Gumma instead of Gunma. I told him that it’s Gunma, and his response was that Gunma put out a statement about it. They print it “Gumma” in Japanese passports because of specific romanisation rules that the passport office uses, and they print it “Gunma” in some other places because of different romanisation rules that other government offices use, so out of Gunma and Gumma, you can’t say that either of them are incorrect.
I was like yes, but in English we write Gunma. If there’s ever any doubt about a specific romanisation of a Japanese word, there are a few places that you can check to get an idea, so I checked a few. Gunma Prefecture’s website, Gunma University, Gunma’s tourism board, the “Welcome to Gunma” signs on the road. Gunma Chuo Hospital, etc. The list goes on. Anywhere you can think to look up, they spell it Gunma. The only places that I can find that use “Gumma” are the passports, the train stations, and some Japanese websites talking about whether “Gunma” or “Gumma” is correct. So it’s like 99% vs 1% for which one is correct, and the guy still uses “Gumma” in class.
On one hand, I had to be pretty insistent that “skin head” was not the normal English way to say “bald”. I am from Alabama. I know what a “skin head” is, and calling random bald men skin heads is a good way to start a fight.
On the other hand, I apparently used British spelling for theater and never knew it until my JTE pointed out that we don’t use “theatre” in the US. I guess my hometown just liked doing things the fancy way.
I often got in trouble for writing test questions without a “correct” answer. Like “what is your favorite color”. I mean… there are many possible “correct” answers to that aren’t there? in fact, most questions can be responded to in English in many different correct ways. They didn’t like it, but it is what it is.
My first year here I worked with a Filipino ALT who really shouldn’t have been an ALT. Honestly, her English might have been the worst of any Filipino I’ve ever met. But she was confident as hell. She made a big display for our school’s open house and one part said “We are creaters!” I tried telling her that it’s “creator,” and she literally laughed in my face and said “Maybe where you are from.”
After that, I just didn’t bother. At one point we were at an event where all the ALTs gathered and she went up to a Moldovan ALT and said, loudly “You know, non-native speakers like us are usually even better than native speakers! So we can help them out.” But the Moldovan woman just completely shut her down with “No, you never correct a native speaker.”
Not quite what you’re looking for, but I had an acquaintance who was from England that tried telling me she knew more about English grammar, literature like the legends of King Arthur, and pop culture like Doctor Who than I (from the US) did just because she was English.
In reality, I had a better grasp of grammar (including more knowledge about variations in what is “correct” between US, British, and Australian English). I went through a fairly long phase of reading Arthurian literature, both classic and modern, even taking University literature courses on it, and knew way the hell more about it than she did. As for Doctor Who, I’d never really been exposed to it and had just started watching the new era- but even then I realized half of what she was going on about was just plain wrong. So no, just because you are from a country doesn’t give you an automatic knowledge of the language and culture.