Funny story: My specialty is American Indian history. My first conference presentation happened to be at the largest gathering of the year and my advisor - a giant in the field - made sure that everyone who was anyone was in the audience for my panel. no pressure at all. On top of it somehow we had finagled the dean of Cherokee studies to chair the panel. It was an all star session with one exception: Me. Fortunately, I had uncovered a fabulous topic and my paper was very well received with one exception. I was discussing "red progressives" in Oklahoma in the 1910s and 1920s, among them were various Osage tribal members. I pronounced it Oh-sazh as I had read it in all the documents. I got a great response from the crowd, good questions, and even the chair pulled me aside and said something about "you're too green to know how good a topic this is, keep it up". My advisor ambled up with his proud papa smile, leaned in, and said "It's Oh-Sage."Tommaso wrote:The problem is, if for example you're speaking at an international meeting of scholars, that you simply don't know if someone speaks the language in question. But if so, I personally would want to avoid making a fool of myself by, for instance, pronouncing Goethe as "Go-thii". I heard that myself, and I couldn't help it: it gave me the chuckles.
Thanks for the help with Rye, guys!
Prof deflated.