this has been bugging me for a while but i never vocalised it.

ever notice how before any white person says a french word, it is preceded by the disclaimer “sorry if i’m butchering this..” or “french speakers don’t come for me in the comments”, etc?

this same courtesy is not extended to non-white languages. people world over are so careful to learn exact french pronunciations before saying any french word. which is good, since any language should be pronounced the way it was intended.

they take great care learn the accent, meaning, etc of french words before saying them.

is this same courtesy extended to sanskrit, the oldest extant language in the world, or any native language for that matter?

this is the reply when someone’s pronunciation is called out. “i was taught sanskrit at brown”. as if Brown was the highest seat of sanskrit learning in the world, that teaches sanskrit the way it reverberated through ancient india. is this respect for the language?

white people appropriate indian food and culture, either without pronouncing the indian words correctly or changing the name entirely. “dal” becomes “yellow lentil soup” (NYT cooking, look it up) and Tikka is pronounced टिका instead of टिक्का.

but would anyone dare pronounce “choux” or “en papillote” wrong? this applies to italian, etc as well but i’ve noticed people that have difficulty saying certain french words/accents completely abstain from saying them rather than be ridiculed for butchering the language.

next time you hear someone pronouncing a word from an indian language wrong, be it your name or an element of indian food: don’t be scared to correct them. most people are nice enough to make the effort to try to pronounce correctly. if it’s important to you it is to them.

btw i used french as an example because i’ve seen it so much but of course the same logic extends to italian, spanish, etc: whatever a substantial white population speaks. just that french is deemed “cultured” and therefore more blasphemous in their mind to say it wrong.