Okay, fair enough. No doubt the way Koltenowski pronounced the name is more accurate than the way someone in the United States would pronounce it from an English speaking viewpoint. -- And I'm sure he wasn't the exception, thank you.
All I was saying was that, at the time, and not having actually seen Colle spelled out, the way it was said sounded like college to me. I didn't write any of that to poke fun at George Koltenowski, nor to ever poke fun at anyone for an accent, only to mention that his English accent was thick enough to be awkward and Kolty himself, a person I've never heard a bad thing about, was gracious enough to find it humorous rather than being thin skinned, which would have been far easier. In any case his English was infinitely superior to my Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish, French, whatever, and no doubt he was at least conversant in numerous other languages, so I'm definitely not, and definitely wasn't poking fun at him.
The name Alekhine has a somewhat humorous history with me, or at least I think it's humorous. Sometime in the late 60s a Russian corrected my standard pronounciation of the name and assured me it should really be pronounced something like
Aljekin. Over the decades it was revised by various other Russians I've known, for the most part Soviet GMs who came to live in New York. I've always accepted what they said on this (and most other things, I've always liked them) as being indesputable. Recently I was talking with a much younger Russian Grandmaster and I asked him something about Alekhine's Defense. He gave me a puzzled look and asked what defense I was talking about. I said, "Your late countryman, Alexander Alekhine." He shook his head and pronounced it exactly the way it's spelled in English. I told him how I was told to say it by other Russians and he shook his head and said, "No, it's Alekhine in both Russian and English." At this point I guess it must be a regional difference. Names can be pronounced numerous ways even within the same country. The only important thing is that we all know who we're talking about.
Yes, English speaking people are constantly mispronouncing the names of people in other countries with names that would be unusual in either the UK, Canada, or the United States. We see it constantly in chess DVDs where people like Nigel Davies, and Andrew Martin give the name of one or both players and immediately appologize for having mispronounced either, or more likely both names and, of course, the same would be true in citing variations or even most place names. A German friend of mine said it was only recently that he realized English speaking people were talking about Koln when they said Cologne -- and my sincere appologies if I've just mispelled either of them.
Good luck in talking to a Surinamese audience, hat's off to you. Personally I have more than enough trouble just trying to be understood by fellow Americans. As Winston Churchill put it, I won't attempt a direct quote from memory but it was something about Britons and Americans being separated by a common language.
-- BTW I had a discussion recently with that same German friend I mentioned earlier about the differences and differences of the Dutch and German languages. He mentioned there's a region at the northern part of the border where the two languages are very similar. The reason I'm interested in this is because I was wondering if, in the early 17th century, someone arriving in New Amsterdam (later New York) who was from what now would be Southern Germany be able speak pretty much the same language as the Dutch colonists. I know this totally off topic but any light shed on that would be greatly appreciated.
Very glad we've had this conversation.