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