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My daughter, Alexandra (14F), hates any shortened version of her name. This has gone on since she was about 10. The family respects it and she’s pretty good about advocating for herself should someone call her Lexi, Alex, etc. She also hates when people get her name wrong and just wants to be called Alexandra.
She took Spanish in middle school. The teacher wanted to call all students by the Spanish version of their name (provided there was one). So, she tried to call Alexandra, Alejandra. Alexandra corrected her and the teacher respected it. She had the same teacher all 3 years of middle school, so it wasn’t an issue.
Now, she’s in high school and is still taking Spanish. Once again, the new teacher announced if a student had a Spanish version of their name, she’d call them that. So, she called Alexandra, Alejandra. Alexandra corrected her but the teacher ignored her. My daughter came home upset after the second week. I am not the type of mom to write emails, but I felt I had to in this case.
If matters, this teacher is not Hispanic herself, so this isn’t a pronunciation issue. Her argument is if these kids ever went to a Spanish speaking country, they’d be called by that name. I found this excuse a little weak as the middle school Spanish teacher actually was Hispanic who had come here from a Spanish speaking country and she respected Alexandra’s wishes.
The teacher tried to dig her heels in, but I said if it wasn’t that big a deal in her eyes that she calls her Alejandra, why is it such a big deal to just call her Alexandra? Eventually, she gave in. Alexandra confirmed that her teacher is calling her by her proper name.
My husband feels I blew this out of proportion and Alexandra could’ve sucked it up for a year (the school has 3 different Spanish teachers, so odds are she could get another one her sophomore year).
AITA?
In concept it's a way to equally distribute the name changes if they do any exercises using their names. It's more important to heavily tonal, gendered, or inflected languages where the sound of the word changes how you construct the sentence. Of course, in practice, you'd just insert a foreign name with no change, but in class it helps reinforce some of those structures. Of course only some kids would actually need that. So the idea is to make every kid do it instead of feeling targeted. On top of that it's also become a kind of forced gimmick in all language classes.
I think your daughter seems entitled and maybe like she thinks a little more special than everyone else in her class. If EVERYONE is being called by a Spanish name in Spanish class then she should respect her teacher.
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I've commented this a couple ways already, but basically it's useful as a teaching tool for kids to use names that are consistent with the rest of the language, just to reinforce the rules and patterns. In OPs case, or going from Spanish to English, it's pretty useless unless a non-Spanish name looks like it should be gendered differently. In other languages with tones or complex inflection, having a linguistically consistent name can avoid grammatical errors for students.
It's also highly impractical and just a gimmick if you've had 3 years of learning that language already.