It’s pretty fascinating considering the history of the US that Americans tend to be worse than the English at pronouncing various European languages. You’d think at least some people would cling on to the correct pronounciation of their own name, as the bare minimum.
I don’t really care how Americans pronounce their own names—if anything I think most Europeans are happy to be easily distinguishable from Americans with shared ancestry at this point—but it is a bit striking.
Not necessarily relevant to the people mentioned in this post, but broadly speaking, there were lots of immigrants to the US between 1930 and 1950 that very intentionally changed the spelling or pronunciation of their names to look and sound less German and Italian.
There was also the practice of giving people a new name upon arrival in Ellis Island, establishing pretty early on what kind of names were considered “American”.
I guess it worked wonders, at least if the stereotype is true that they managed to transform the Irish into a bunch of racist cops.
But yeah, you certainly had a lot of German Americans voluntarily backing away from their cultural heritage in the 30s and 40s.
It’s pretty fascinating considering the history of the US that Americans tend to be worse than the English at pronouncing various European languages. You’d think at least some people would cling on to the correct pronounciation of their own name, as the bare minimum.
I don’t really care how Americans pronounce their own names—if anything I think most Europeans are happy to be easily distinguishable from Americans with shared ancestry at this point—but it is a bit striking.
Not necessarily relevant to the people mentioned in this post, but broadly speaking, there were lots of immigrants to the US between 1930 and 1950 that very intentionally changed the spelling or pronunciation of their names to look and sound less German and Italian.
There was also the practice of giving people a new name upon arrival in Ellis Island, establishing pretty early on what kind of names were considered “American”.
I guess it worked wonders, at least if the stereotype is true that they managed to transform the Irish into a bunch of racist cops.
But yeah, you certainly had a lot of German Americans voluntarily backing away from their cultural heritage in the 30s and 40s.