#MISPRONOUNCEBACK: the reasons behind South Africa's pronunciation problems

That's not my name, says Bonginkosi Tiwane, as he delves into why it's so tricky for some people to pronounce names that aren't in their mother tongue

When Karabo Mahlase (@Spoonkz) posted his New Year's wish on Twitter on the last day of 2015, I was already deep into 2016, thanks to the guzzling of several Zamaleks. Hence I failed even to notice it.

But by the following day, it was the year's first official viral tweet.

"2016 is the year for acting like you don't know how to pronounce white peoples [sic] names," - and so #TheYearWeMispronounceBack was born.

Black Twitter took a stand and began renaming Johnnys to Jabulanis and Lindseys to Lindiwes.

A bit militant, I thought - but I could relate to Mahlase's pique.

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For some whites, the inability to pronounce black names is an innocent mistake: the result of accent and mother tongue. We all have accents, after all.

But some white folk are simply too lazy to even try to get someone's name right. Take a simple name like Lebo (pronounced lé-bu); some will insist on leaving poor Lebo as Leé-boo.

Dr Andrew van der Spuy, a senior linguistics lecturer at Wits, says it's difficult for adults to learn how to pronounce sounds that don't occur in their own languages. "Thus the 'hl' sound which is found in the Nguni and Sotho languages is difficult for English and Afrikaans speakers," he says.

What the doc says makes sense. On numerous occasions I've heard Caucasians hopelessly butcher a Hlengiwe into a Shlengiwe. The click sounds trip up most white compatriots, and my own name has also suffered its fair share of mangling. It got so bad in Grade 3 at Olifantsfontein Laerskool that I grilled my mother about why she hadn't registered me under my English name, so as to spare me the sound of Afrikaans teachers dismembering "Bonginkosi".

I can't recall the name of the brunette who taught me in Grade 2, but she would translate my Nguni name into Afrikaans: "Bong-ghee-nkosi"

I expected things to improve in high school, for some reason. Enter a Grade 9 maths educator who stubbornly refused to say my name correctly. Maybe it's because I wasn't very good at her subject, but Mrs Ferreira loved to give my classmates a laugh.

"Bongi-wat se goed" was my maths name, I thought.

It wouldn't be far-fetched, especially with racial tensions asimmer, to suggest that mispronunciation is a direct result of the apartheid past. Black employees always had to refer to their white employers as "baas" while the latter never bothered to learn how to say a black name. A nickname or a generic name would be given to the black worker.

But Van der Spuy says this is not a race issue. "Many white Afrikaners have trouble with English names and many English-speakers have trouble with Afrikaans ones," he notes.

I've also found myself innocently butchering Greek, Italian or French names. It's a crime we've all committed and will continue to commit. "Many black people have difficulty with names like Turner, because the 'ur' vowel is not found in any black South African language," says Van der Spuy.

Maybe the solution is to oblige white people to learn black languages at school? Here's Van der Spuy: "I think it would be excellent, but they would have to start very young, preferably in Grade 1, as people learn languages best when they are young."

This sounds a better solution than #TheYearWeMispronounceBack, which is essentially just another tit-for-tat exercise that does little to help.

Until individuals take the decision to do the right thing and learn how to say things right - or at least make a decent effort - then mispronouncing white names will not change anything. It will just deepen the cycle of vowel violence.

And since we can't all go back to Grade 1, maybe a few Zamaleks will, after all, offer a temporary truce in the pronunciation wars.

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