Odd.
After spending my life teaching people how to pronounce my name, or rather, giving up and responding to anything remotely between Anchor and Arthur, it is an interesting scenario that the Arabic readers pronounce my name with astonishing ease.
Most American names are easy to pronounce - or only have one common way in which they're pronounced. Michael, Sarah, Mary, Jane. Names like this, people don't mess up. But toss in any ethnic name and people start slurring their speech trying to get it right. Even Fil, whose name is Filipe (not Phillip) - gets mispronounciations.
In Arabic, each sound you can make is expressly articulated with accents and other marks to indicate how you say a word. So if you pronounce things by the book, there is no mistaking the way to say a name. And if you say your name to someone, it'll be written exactly the same (or at least similarly enough that you won't be able to differentiate it).
And it works for most, if not all languages. I tried it with Genny's Chinese name. Most Americans would probably just give up when trying to pronounce Zijade (tzeh-je). But in Arabic, I pronounced it and he wrote it down. From there we gave it to another person who pronounced it exactly as I had said it.
Pretty cool.
Course if they read it in English and attempt to translate it on their own, you're left with the same dilemna.
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