On Mon, 4 Aug 1997 22:24:38 -0400 Stan Ryckman <[log in to unmask]> said: >As the "lucky owner" of a name which few can manage to both spell >correctly and pronounce correctly, The problem with your name is that it can be pronounced in any number of ways based on where you come from and what transformations you (or your ancestors) accepted in the interest of not spending the better part of your life trying to teach people to say it "correctly". Even the much less ambiguous "Eric" can be pronounced in several ways. My (Spanish speaking) mother picked that name and I can assure you that the gringo pronunciation is NOT what she had in mind :-) I gave up a long time ago, though. And then there's "Esra", which seems completely unambiguous, except that if you stress the 'a' it implies female gender and if you stress the 'E' everyone will understand that you are talking about a man (or vice-versa, I'm sure Turgut will correct me if I'm wrong). So you just say "Hi Esra!" and everyone falls down laughing while the poor girl fumes for no apparent reason. >Eric, though, is at little risk. *bzzzt* Wrong answer :-) >Something like that isn't too "gringo-ish" I hope... and is 100% true. >Heck, if you want, make the point that gringos invented email and were >probably just lacking in foresight about the uses to which it might >later evolve. But don't be *too* hard on the gringos. The angle I would recommend is that Colombians in gringo-land may be using gringo mail systems that unfortunately can only display the gringo alphabet. In their interest, etc. Eric