Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Dear Persons Who Mispronounce My Name, I Don't Like You: An Open Letter

Dear Persons Who Mispronounce My Name:

I don't like you.

Maybe I should start calling you Effin' Imbecile. What? That's not your name? But doesn't J-A-N-E D-O-E spell out Effin' Imbecile?
I don't know, Effin', that's how we pronounce it where I come from.

For everyone out there who's even a little bit unsure of how my name is pronounced, following is a phonetic guide that will be of great assistance to you:

Sabila: Sa-bee-la

No, it's not Sa-bil-la or the ever wrong but oh so popular, Sa-bee-lee-ah. And, thanks for trying to make my name just a little bit more exotic by pronouncing the single "l" like the double Spanish "ll". I appreciate the effort on your part but no, my name is NOT Sa-bee-YA. Say-bee-la, Sha-bee-la, and Sa-bla are also not cute.

Clearly you folks must have the same sort of twang I have when I attempt to say Effin' Imbecile.

Now that you know how to say my name (see phonetic guide above), please correct all of those individuals who have picked up on your bastardization of my beautiful name.

I suspect that I will continue to hate you even after you've mastered the pronounciation of my name.

Sincerely,

SABILA (once again, please refer to pronunciation guide in the body of this letter)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

its august and you are still angry

chillin winter is on the way :) sabrina :P

[adventures.in.anonymity] said...

methinks white people are encoded with a special gene that makes them purposely butcher everyone's names.

down with whitey!

mAn[S]o0r said...

well written!

i dont like ppl who mess up my name either... its mansoor, not manZoor,mansOUr, masood, mashood, mahood or any other comibination you might've heard of!

good going sabila! make em SAY it!

Anonymous said...

SAY MY NAME!
WHAT'S MY NAME BITCH?!!?

=)

  said...

There must be a heck of a lot of ignorant people out there, because I would have thought that the pronunciation of Sabila was obvious. I think you are right to be pissed off. How hard is it to say? (And if they don’t know, could they not ask first before embarrassing everyone?)

Maritza said...

I get:
Martiza (Mar TEE Za)
Maritz (Ma Ritz)
Mah Mah Mah?
Mareeza (Mah REE za)

and just puzzled looks at my name in general. I tell dumb whitey folks that it's a triple word score in Scrabble and they believe it. Dumb f*cks.