>Dragan;
>
>You would think that anyone could pronounce my last name, Whiteley (White lee). However, from Kindergarten through six years of college, only one teacher pronounced it correctly, and she had a Ph.D. in English! Do not ask me why this occurred but it did. On the Polish side of my family my grand aunt’s husband changed the name from Rosynski to Ross - that worked for them. My grandmothers last name was Pieotrovski - that could not be pronounced either.
>
>I have not had an employer who could pronounce my name correctly for the first few months. Perhaps we should all be called by the same name to be sure of correct spelling and pronunciation! Perhaps he and she would do? I would hate to tax anyones abilities!
Well, coming here and seeing, through my youngest daughter, how kids actually learn to read and write English, I understood the cultural shock I had to endure when I was learining English. In Serbian, there's no difference between spelling and pronunciation, they are identical - the alphabet is simply phonetical. Given the phonic apparatus of the language, your name, for instance, would transcribe as Tomas Vajtli. We have no 'th' so it transcribes as either 't' or 'd', and 'j' is
always pronounced as 'y' (like in 'you'). Also, lacking a corresponding sound for 'w', we customarily digress from the rule "transcribe it the closest to the
pronunciation of the original" and don't transcribe it as "u" (as in b
utcher) but go for a 'v'.
Sounds complicated? Maybe, but back home once you know the 30 characters in the alphabet, you are literate. You can read anything. You may take some effort to learn the punctuation etc, but you are basically literate. And anyone knowing the characters, would read the transcription of your name the same, without any doubt of does it read this way or other. Other way around, the question "how do you spell it" also makes no sense. You write it as you hear it.
And no, I'm not proposing a change in English spelling. The decision to keep as much as possible of the historical reasons to spell words this way was made long ago, and it's pretty much too late to change. We were just lucky to have had this sort of reform back in times when all the books printed old way could have been loaded into a couple of ox carts.
