Umpires introducing Players

Discussion in 'Rules / Tournament Regulation / Officiating' started by Federflieger, Aug 26, 2013.

  1. Federflieger

    Federflieger New Member

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    An umpire is judged by making the right decisions and his sensitivity dealing with players and cooperating with other officials. Other tasks may be considered as minor.

    However, watching matches I regulary notice how bad some umpires are in pronouncing the players name. Actually not only 'some' and even in the biggest tournaments. Most players politely ignore the miss pronounciation or sometimes you can see a double just a bit amused and smiling to each other. To me, checking out the right pronounciation of players names would be a sign of acknowledgement and respect. It takes just a minute. Wrong pronounciation - even of well know international names - seems a bit awkward if not ignorant.

    Introducing players is not the umpires main job and may be negligible. Umpires have not to be multilingual too. But a little pronounciation check ahead of the introduction would indicate more respect to players and their teams.
     
  2. yuki onitsura

    yuki onitsura Regular Member

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    Agree entirely but there are a lot of names out there that are very very difficult to pronounce correctly unless you happen to speak the language. Still, it'd be nice to see them at least give it a go.
     
  3. visor

    visor Regular Member

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    I wouldn't want to introduce some Thai players that have at least 15 letters in the first name and 20 letters in the last name. :p
     
  4. randomuser

    randomuser Regular Member

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    and for some the correct pronunciation is not one that the audience would recognize
     
  5. CantSmashThis

    CantSmashThis Regular Member

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    I, as an umpire, do ask players on how to pronounce their name before walking on if it looks confusing. However, we only have seconds of practice before we walk onto the court. I have said it correctly during warm ups, etc but when it comes up to the actual announcement have stumbled. Especially since I don't speak the common languages other than English and Vietnamese, I will butcher a lot of Chinese, Thai, Indian etc. names.

    We do not know that much in advance sometimes on what match we are doing. Even if I practiced in the mirror 100x in the morning, I don't think I can pronounce Porntip BURANAPRASERTSUK easily any time soon.


    On a side note, after watching some other umpires at the US Open, I am proud to say that I can pronounce Sapsiree Taerattanachai easily.


    Edit: Some players even tell me they don't care and just try my best. I've even had a player tell me just announce the 1st letter of their last name since he knew it was that hard to pronounce.


    2nd Edit: Even European names can be quite hard, we just don't have that much time to correctly pronounce it. One Netherlands player, Selena Piek, on the side I was talking to our Belgian referee, took me over 10 tries to pronounce her 1st name correctly. I kept saying Sa-lee-na Peak when he told me it should have been Sa-lay-na Peak
     
    #5 CantSmashThis, Aug 26, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2013
  6. gundamzaku

    gundamzaku Regular Member

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    there is a lot of work to do as an umpire and not to mention the pressure from players as well as the fans to make correct judgement. i give them props for what they do and if they can't say my name correctly, it's not going to affect my playing at all.
     

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