Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I liked it a lot. Definitely not what I was expecting from Tarantino. Loved that most of the movie was not in English, how much of the plot was about language - and that they were forced to cast multiple polyglots for major roles!

>> ^RhesusMonk:
The average Chinese cannot pronounce many, many of the English morphemes. Anecdotal evidence is useless in the conversation. We're talking about a best-fit line situation including all the members of linguistic groups, most of whom don't have a Babelfish stuck in their ears. It's not broad-minded to think that changing your name or modifying it to make it easier for the target culture to say is stupid, racist, etc. Just because you sometimes care enough to practice and learn doesn't mean that it happens globally enough to make it worthwhile to keep a difficult-to-pronounce name.
And to those with linguistic ability: do you really think that an increased capacity for polyglot-ism is the norm? I think if you truly understood your talents, you would see that you are different.


The ability to learn and pronounce foreign languages runs in my family to an extent, most people in my immediate family have studied a foreign language or two to varying degrees of success, and there has been at least one person per generation to reach a fluent level of pronunciation and near-fluent speaking level of a foreign language for the past several generations. I'm aware that some people simply aren't able to learn new sounds.

That said, I would rather somebody use an adaptation of my name (for example, Raisu in Japanese instead of Rice in English) than assign me an entirely new foreign-language "name" that is not my own. I think that a person's name is very important to them for most people, beyond the strictly utilitarian definition of being a convenient way for them to be referred to.

>> ^RhesusMonk:
And to those with linguistic ability: do you really think that an increased capacity for polyglot-ism is the norm? I think if you truly understood your talents, you would see that you are different.


I honestly think I'm rubbish at languages in general, because if that weren't the case, I'd be speaking perfect German and Russian by now. English is the only foreign language I've picked up really well - I'm not sure why. But like I said, the reason for me being able to discern the pronunciations is that I've had a couple of multi-cultural experiences; that's it. I'm definitely not linguistically-gifted.

The average Chinese cannot pronounce many, many of the English morphemes. Anecdotal evidence is useless in the conversation. We're talking about a best-fit line situation including all the members of linguistic groups, most of whom don't have a Babelfish stuck in their ears. It's not broad-minded to think that changing your name or modifying it to make it easier for the target culture to say is stupid, racist, etc. Just because you sometimes care enough to practice and learn doesn't mean that it happens globally enough to make it worthwhile to keep a difficult-to-pronounce name.

And to those with linguistic ability: do you really think that an increased capacity for polyglot-ism is the norm? I think if you truly understood your talents, you would see that you are different.