Reply To: True Names
I’ve been discussing this issue a long time ago. In reality it is quite very common to mispronounce foriegn names.
We can make hundreds of sounds for our language (also known as phonemes) but in a spoken language we limit the number of phonemes we use (the phoneme set). Spoken languages have from a dozen to more than a hundred of phonemes in thier phoneme set.
Added some natural complexity of the language, the problem here is that it requires practice to be able to pronounce a phoneme properly. This is especially troublesome when a person has to produce a phoneme that is not part of that person’s native language’s phoneme set. What often happens is that they replace it with a similar sounding phoneme. Japanese speakers for example has trouble creating the /l/ phoneme as it is not present in the japanese language phoneme set and often replace it with the /r/ phoneme. Of course saying ‘rock’ instead of ‘lock’ (unrock it!) results to confusion.
In Tom’s case, his name must be Astlanian enough so that natives there can pronounce it properly.
Of course if there are aliens, as Tizzy implied, then they might just have names that humans physically can’t pronounce. Say what if the alien speaks in supersonic? What if the aliens are birdlike and uses birdlike tweets and calls in their language? Humans can’t speak that!
Well, while we are also speaking about languages, how many languages are there in Astlan? Also are there French speaking demons, Cantonese speaking demons, and Latin speaking demons? Do Ramses still remember how to speak Ancient Egyptian? What is Exador’s native language? I should have ask about Tizzy’s original native tongue, but I seem to be uninterested about it somehow.