People who go abroad sometimes find that the locals can't pronounce, let alone remember, their names. This happens to my students here. Hyo Bin, Se Min, Hye Young, Chan Uk, and Siu Yin sound all the same to non-Asian locals. Some students persevere and keep their names. Others caved in to the pressure and adopt a western name for themselves. Sometimes the new name is a translation of the original name, other times its a soundalike. Thus Se Min becomes Simon, Sun Mee becomes Sunny, Chan Uk becomes Charles, and so on.
One day a new student came to me and said, "I've got an English name now. It's Leo."
"Oh, you do? Leo is a nice name."
"Thank you. It means 'liver' in Spanish. My Korean name means 'liver'."
I was a bit confused at this point (ngga mudeng). Leo means 'liver' in Spanish? Korean parents name their children 'liver'? Why on earth do they do that?? But all I said was, " OK, I'll write it down on the attendance list."
I wrote down the name and showed it to him to check the spelling. It turned out that his new name was 'Rio' and that indeed means 'river' in Spanish. (Aaah.., I see, I see... (Baru mudeng.) We have a problem with 'l' and 'r' nih.) When the words come within a context, it is easier guess the meaning than when they are not.
So the week after that we did some pronunciation practices. When it came to 'l' and 'r' I showed off with Ular melingkar di pagar Pak Umar. The oohs and wows from my students showed how impressed they were. Those who know me know that my Indo 'r' is pathetically embarassing, but my students didn't know that (:
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