Friday, October 06, 2006

Mack my words

I've been meeting a lot of people, almost all of them Australian, and find myself sometimes uncertain how to pronounce my own name. Often someone will introduce me to someone else and say "Have you met Mock?" or, more Australian, "You've met Maa-hic?" (with the a of Mack, nasal, and a rising melody). When someone addresses me, the melody of Maa-hic may even get that tilde shape, going up a note and down to a note below and back up above, d-e-d-c-d-e, but all somehow contained in a single lazily floating syllable!