December 18

For those of you who have seen Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story, this sound clip should be familiar. All I can say is welcome to our world. Our world is one in which Ls are pronounced as Rs and Hs and the TH sound in Theurer does not exist! Most of the time when signing our last name to something (most recently the travel papers for our trip to Kyoto) the person behind the desk or counter looks at our name and then looks up to us in bewilderment. More often than not the person smiles because we both know what is about to come next. They cock their head to the side like they’re about learn something fascinating and ask us, “please say”. After slowly saying a truncated ‘Thor’ two or three times to the individual they try to say it back. Their tongue doesn’t allow the gaffe so the sound comes out like a S. Sheepishly they apologize for decimating the name. It’s a learning experience for everyone.