For most of my childhood, no one could say my name correctly1. I always dreaded first days of the school year and new teachers, or substitute teachers throughout the year, because my name would invariably be said wrong and I would have to correct them. It was frustrating.
The problem is in most Latin languages i is pronounced with an EE sound (as in fleece), which is a bit different from the sound we give the letter in English (which is as in kit). Using typical English pronunciation rules, nearly everyone attempted my name as Lah Spin-ah. Some misguided souls would even give an ae (as in ash) sound to the first a, rendering it Lae Spin-ah.
Ahhh… it’s all coming back. Now that I think about it, I remember that being the prefered mispronunciation.
sigh. As usual I’d think, wearily, as I raised my hand. “Actually it is pronounced…”
Most of my time online2 I have ignored the issue, letting anyone who stumbles upon my website pronounce it in their heads as they will, but now that I have made my domain the same name I should probably tackle the issue.
The name is Italian. My dad was born in Sicily, as was his dad, and later immigrated to New York before ending up in Indiana where I was born. The correct way to say it sounds something like Lah Spee-nah. My grandfather said it with an Italian accent. My father with a Brooklyn accents. And me with a Hoosier accent3. Whatever your accent may be, just try to get that second syllable correct4.
And now you know.5
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They still can’t, at least in America. ↩
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Which dates back to sometime in the early 90s when I signed up for the futuristic service, Prodigy, connecting to it with my trusty 2400 baud modem. I can still hear the sound of that modem as it sent out all manner of strange noises as it negotiated a connection over the phone line. ↩
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That’s Indiana, to all you non-Hoosiers. ↩
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Interestingly, most people in Japan can and do say my name correctly, where I write it as ラスピナ (rasupina); in practice the u in su is whispered so that, with the exception of the r in front (in Japanese r and l is the same), it comes out pretty close to the real pronunciation. ↩