A lot of unhappy memories I have with former friends and coworkers involve something inevitable, which is me mispronouncing something and them taking a horrid offense to it, especially since I never do it in jest.
Like me driving my Toyota Prius on Lower Wacker Drive, and casually mentioning the importance of a character’s Louboutin shoes in a certain episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ to my friend riding shotgun.
“Oh my GAWD, Kris,” my friend interrupted me, waving her hands, “It’s LOU-BOO-TAWN, not LOU-BOW-TIN.”
“Sorry,” I responded, a little taken aback at her vitriolic response, “I’ve only read the word, I’ve actually never actually heard it pronounced.”
You’d think as an English teacher, she would have had a little bit of sympathy for someone stumbling over language acquisition issues, but that was not the case. She continued ranting at me as we passed through to Lake Shore Drive.
“Of course you only read it! You do this all the time! It’s so irritating! You can’t pronounce anything right! Like ‘matte’. It isn’t ‘MAH-TAY’ it’s ‘MAUTTE’. Like, Jesus, I can’t take you anywhere without you sounding stupid!”
That’s a rich comment, I thought, considering I’m driving you to Navy Pier. Besides, ‘matte’ is spelled the same as ‘latte’. Isn’t that an easy screw up? Calm down.
We drove the rest of the way in silence, I figured I’d mispronounce something else, and she’d jump down my throat for having the audacity to have a communication disorder in her all knowing presence.
I have since ended that friendship, but other cases have popped up throughout my adult life. Like my former coworker snapping at me over mispronouncing certain hockey players’ last names, or watching a fellow organizer scream at another conference attendee over the mispronunciation of her extremely common name.
That second one was especially troubling, as the angry organizer was ferociously proud of her commitment to equity for both disabled and diverse audiences, and watching her absolutely lose it at another doctoral candidate in public was chilling.
Heck, I kind of wanted to sit her skinny little blond self down and give her a gentle explanation on how mispronunciations happen--a lot--within the learning-disabled community, and if she was really all about that inclusion, then she’d better calm down and lend a (non-learning disabled ear).
So, you’ve made it this far: let me explain.
Non-verbal learning disability means that the verbal (especially visual) is easy for individuals like me to memorize and understand. Need me to write out and remember exactly how your long name is spelled? Honey, I got you. I’ll remember which vowels have the exact accent and umlaut over them.
But speaking? Having NVLD means I struggle to remember spoken words, whether in a classroom or in a social situation, and numbers often dance all over the screen for me. I simply can’t remember them unless I am in the process of writing them down myself. As a result, catching how things are pronounced often escapes me, as the NVLD serves as a delightful little barrier to remembering the verbal pronunciation itself.
It’s made language acquisition a nightmare, obviously. To make things worse, my undergraduate major required both studies in French and German, and it drove my professors wild that I would flourish in writing the language but absolutely stumble at the speaking part.
Speaking of der Teufel, I should also know personally about hard to pronounce names, and thus empathize when others struggle with pronunciation, even if they’re not learning disabled. On top of my learning disability, my last names are wildly butchered left and right. Which I get. ‘Vogt Veggeberg’ is a LOT of Germanic language to swallow, especially if you’re unfamiliar with silent consonants.
Years of being called “Voggut/Vocht/Vaaacccchhht” has given me a tough skin when it comes to people absolutely mangling my last names, even at award ceremonies, where I was supposed to be celebrated, rather than mocked, which is how I felt when my name was read aloud, and I’d be laughed at as I accepted my awards.
Heck, I remember crying in kindergarten when a little boy asked me why I didn’t have a ‘real white person name’ like all the Lynchs and Gormans in my half Irish Catholic, half African American school.
But over the years, I’ve learned to laugh at it, and then give a gentle correction on how to pronounce my names. It gets even more complicated if my last names are spoken by Germans, Swiss, Afrikaner, or Danish speakers, all of whom have their own way of pronouncing my names.
I recognize the deeper social issue that is present when it comes to mispronouncing names: it often smacks of colonialism and dismissal of ethnic backgrounds, and can be very hurtful for them as well. Even though I struggle with pronunciation, I try to acknowledge my learning disability if I stumble over a name I’ve never heard before and tell the other individual that I’m speaking to that I’m not mispronouncing their name out of ignorance. I beg for grace constantly over my learning disability, a fact that hurts, but I’ve learned to live with it. I didn’t choose this learning disability, just as I didn’t choose my ethnic background.
So if someone is mispronouncing something innocently, please give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they’re learning disabled, and are scared or embarrassed to talk about it. Not everyone is like my doctoral alma mater, University of Illinois, which required exact phonetic, written pronunciation of names for the doctoral hooding ceremony.
But, everyone should be like University of Illinois. When in doubt
Dr Vogt Veggeberg writes from her hometown of Chicago, where she lives with her husband, daughter, and assortment of pets. A graduate of University of Oregon and University of Illinois at Chicago, she currently works as a nonprofit director and writer. Her work can be found at https://linktr.ee/krisveevee
Cover Photo: Kim Salt