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.
Ugh all these American pronunciations are making me feel very stupid. I’m saying kregg out loud and then Crayg and they sound exactly the same.
For me, they are like saying “bread” and “braid” 😁
That is very helpful! Braid is such a longer sounding word too, even though they’re both just a syllable.
There’s probably regional differences, like a lot of pronunciations in America. I’m American and the way I say “Craig” is closer to “krayg” than it is to “kregg”.
how do you pronounce “egg” then?
Wow. I’m embarrassed to say with a long a sound. I’ve never thought about it. I thought that’s how you say it. Egg. Same vowel sound as cake, or neighbor, or ain’t.
oh, don’t be embarrassed, dialects and pronunciation differences are cool on valid! I pronounce it like ehgg, but I live like ten minutes from a place where vowels can be pronounced however you like lol