User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
Page rendered in 0.6479 seconds
48 querie(s) executed
| ||||||||
You are here > Home > Baseball Newsstand > Discussion
| ||||||||
Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Sunday, February 21, 2021Full Transcript of Mariners President Kevin Mather’s Remarks to Bellevue Breakfast Rotary ClubSome very candid remarks from the Mariners president on everything from free agents, when we will see fans, minor league shuffling, and paying for interpreters.
RoyalsRetro (AG#1F)
Posted: February 21, 2021 at 04:18 PM | 227 comment(s)
Login to Bookmark
Tags: mariners |
Login to submit news.
You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks. Hot TopicsNewsblog: OT - Soccer Thread - Winter Is Here
(913 - 5:32pm, Mar 08) Last: Richard Newsblog: NBA 2020 Season kick-off thread (1938 - 5:30pm, Mar 08) Last: tshipman Newsblog: Los Angeles Dodgers' Trevor Bauer pitches shutout inning vs. San Diego Padres with one eye closed (23 - 5:15pm, Mar 08) Last: snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster) Newsblog: Albert Pujols could keep playing to reach 700 career homers: 'If I’m close to it, why not?' (166 - 5:14pm, Mar 08) Last: snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster) Newsblog: MLB suspends free agent Sam Dyson for entire 2021 season (13 - 5:07pm, Mar 08) Last: Howie Menckel Newsblog: Empty Stadium Sports Will Be Really Weird (12245 - 4:09pm, Mar 08) Last: . Sox Therapy: A Week Without Me (7 - 3:03pm, Mar 08) Last: Darren Newsblog: Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 3-8-2021 (3 - 2:34pm, Mar 08) Last: Itchy Row Newsblog: Jake Odorizzi reaches 2-year deal with Houston Astros, source says (16 - 12:32pm, Mar 08) Last: The Gary DiSarcina Fan Club (JAHV) Newsblog: Universal DH and expanded postseason unlikely for 2021 MLB season, per report (35 - 8:07pm, Mar 07) Last: Ron J Newsblog: We found them: They're the worst team ever (4 - 1:06pm, Mar 07) Last: puck Newsblog: Source: Former Boston Red Sox CF Jackie Bradley Jr. to sign 2-year, $24M deal with Milwaukee Brewers (28 - 11:58am, Mar 06) Last: snapper (history's 42nd greatest monster) Newsblog: Braves revenue fell by almost $300 million last year (42 - 11:47pm, Mar 05) Last: Joyful Calculus Instructor Newsblog: Primer Dugout (and link of the day) 3-5-2021 (9 - 7:47pm, Mar 05) Last: puck Newsblog: Trevor Story Rumors: Rockies Contract Extension Won't Happen 'Anytime Soon' (17 - 12:38pm, Mar 05) Last: Bourbon Samurai stays in the fight |
|||||||
About Baseball Think Factory | Write for Us | Copyright © 1996-2021 Baseball Think Factory
User Comments, Suggestions, or Complaints | Privacy Policy | Terms of Service | Advertising
|
| Page rendered in 0.6479 seconds |
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
Would love to hear Kelenic's side of things. At least as portrayed here, he's an incredibly cocky and confident young man.
And the last section on Asian players might have been a bit dismissive of their qualms about speaking English (there's supposed to be a cultural issue regarding this in Japan. The Economist has a story here that speaks about so-called "English Allergy" amongst the Japanese).
Covid, to managing young players, to team dynamics. There’s some stuff there better left unsaid but it is no doubt an unvarnished vision into how ownership thinks.
The $75,000 the M's are paying the interpreter is a PR expense above everything else, and well worth its cost. I'm legitimately shocked Mather doesn't see that.
I don't agree with the owner, but it's not surprising that's how an owner would see it. he concedes the player may win this one.
Good chance he is fired tomorrow.
Larry Stone, Seattle Times (2019)
“He is loud, his English is not tremendous.”
Kevin Mathers, 2021
His appearance was in his role as president of the organization speaking about the past, present, and future of the organization. If ever there was a time that "my comments were my own" is not going to be convincing, this is it.
And he is a "numbers guy"?
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30946443/seattle-mariners-president-ceo-kevin-mather-resigns-comments
Strong takes. The businesses of the future uninterested in East Asian or Latin American customers will surely want to hear more.
I just don't get the outrage.
What he said about Seager? Who cares? Kelenic? Precisely what was so offensive?
The comment about Julio was doubly stupid if it's not true, as was stated in 15 above.
As for the interpreter, teams will spend stupidly on a player. Generally speaking, they will not on anything scouting-related or below upper management level. This is why front offices let go entire staffs during the pandemic when the combined salaries of those people was the equivalent of a back-up veteran infielder. Foreign scouts often promote their ability to speak multiple languages. They don't have interpreters.
I have (commercial) tenants who speak English perfectly well, until I have to take them to court and then all-of-a-sudden, faster than you can say "Sammy Sosa," their English goes in the toilet and they ask for an interpreter. And, everyone in the courthouse, from the judge on down, all know it's utter b.s.
Rodriguez seems to have taken Mather's comments personally, and can't say I blame him. Why on earth would Mather take such a gratuitous shot at one of his top prospects? It makes no sense.
Couple that with Mather's other comments and past behavior, and yeah, I can see why he got the heave-ho. I don't get why it's so hard for people to act professionally.
It was a segue to another shot on Kelenic
Josh Donaldson @BringerOfRain20
Thank you Kevin Mather. I sincerely mean it. You just said what everyone already knew, but now we @MLB_PLAYERS have official evidence that is going to help a lot of players. Again, thank you!! Bravo
vlad guerrero is the only spanish speaker ballplayer i know of who didn't/wouldn't learn enough english to even communicate with his teammates in english (or at least i remember hearing that). almost all ballplayers learn enough english to speak baseball. that is NOT being fluent in english or speaking english like a native born speaker
which is hella different than wanting an interpreter to speak to reporters who are always looking for a gotcha, AND god forbid, someone from the legal system
i've noticed how much contempt many native english speakers have for someone who has an accent. that whatshername hispanic actress in the 60s/70s made her accent her whole comedy routine, that she didn speck da inlis so good, hahahaha. old comedy routines used to be making fun of people with accents and stereotyping them (all dumb or floozy or inscrutable or drunk or greasy or something else sooooooo funny)
i have been told by a whole LOT of people who didn't grow up with english as a first language that it is really hard to get rid of an accent and to speak like a native speaker with the confidence of a native speaker. you always make mistakes. i have been told by people who speak more than 2 languages that english is THE hardest language to learn to speak because our language has no rules and is mostly slang
as for using interpreters, david N told me to NEVER to answer questions from cops. to always have an attorney speaks for you. and you betcher azz if english was not my first language, i would ALWAYS have an intrepreter speak for me. and no matter HOW well i spoke language #2 if i was in some other country whose native language was that language you betcher AZZ i would want an interpreter to deal with anything legal. i'm amused that some of youse guys think you wouldn't need THAT.
and why some of yall think that mather dissing his prospects, players, scouts to an audience of supposed mariners fan is no biggie i do not get.
Yes, and yes. Good luck explaining prepositions , or to speakers of many languages, the niceties of definite article use.
Alternatively try living somewhere more challenging than the UK and not falling back on the belief that "they all know enough English" to get by.
first day he was here he got told "commondon ron 1 woolmitcha" (come on down around 1, we'll meet you - heck, he had trouble with the "around" 1) which kind of doesn't translate real too good in the ol google translator you know what im sayin
Edit: I should've kept reading. What BBC said.
We have this issue in Canada, which is officially bilingual. In the US, it's only unofficially also Spanish. But there are certain places you wouldn't want to go without knowing good Spanish, and wouldn't be able to run a business there or get elected there without it, right?
Anyway speaking of politicians, it can be an actually deciding factor in a leader up here whether they can converse in both official languages, and even the degree to which their accent may sound natural or foreign.
Canada had Jean Chretein as Prime Minister 1993-2003, and he spoke english with a distinguishable french accent (so it wasn't a mortal issue for his career, but it was in plain sight, and sometimes made him an easy target for ridicule.) People sometimes have trouble coming up with pronunciations which do not exist in their native language. For example, in french the "h" is usually silent, or if it's paired with a "c" is makes a "sh" sound in speech. Hotel in french comes out 'otel, "shirt" in french is chemise and is said "shemise". So little wonder non-english speakers stumble when "character" is pronounced as a /k/ but it all /ch/ch/ch/ "changes" sometimes.
Chretein apparently tried hard to "fix" his accent, but could never do it. And it wasn't a matter of intelligence, he was by all non-partisan accounts very smart. But he tended to pronounce his "h" silent, and drop the "s" at the end of pluralized english words. So it would come out "it's a -ot day, but da baseball team look- good."
I remember some talk at the time from linguistic folks that because Chretein was raised in an exclusively french area, he had never even heard english until he was 12, or 14, or maybe it wasn't until university? But they said you'll almost always maintain your original accent into another language if you're never even heard it by that age. Probably the same when adult english speakers try to learn french, spanish, or chinese, or cree?
Sorry, can't find a link. But it has always struck me as believable, and I've never thought people who spoke english with their native accent were lacking intelligence, but maybe that their ear hadn't heard it until they already had an adult brain.
People sometimes have trouble coming up with pronunciations that do exist in their native language. Ask someone from the U.S. to say the words marry/Mary/merry. In certain areas of the country, all three words are pronounced differently. In others, they sound identical, and those individuals often can't even make them sound differently.
Most people don't understand my "language" when I'm speaking to them.
Which was even odder because her name was Susan.
Try the roast beef! I'll be here all week.
And the former business reporter at my newspaper in Little Rock whose first name was Theo, pronounced Tay-oh.
Also the Arkansas state legislator whose first name (presumably a diminutive, but who knows? my dad's first name was Billy on his birth certificate), Billi, was pronounced Bill-eye.
I hadn't heard this one before. I am in the "can't make them sound differently" camp.
reddit has a map: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/7l1wkr/how_marrymarymerry_are_pronounced_by_us_state/
I discovered it when I went to school in the Midwest from New York. For a lot of my schoolmates, there might be a slight difference between merry and Mary (though all tending to sound like Mary), but they weren't even capable of saying marry with the "a" in cat the way a fellow New Yorker and I could. Their efforts were similar to the pathetic sound I made trying to roll my Rs in Spanish class.
You are correct. Good guy. His (then-future) wife was a reporter on the news side, where I was night (& later weekend) city editor, & later worked for NPR online, I believe.
(Unfortunately, her mother was a COVID-19 visitor during the summer, dying at the hospital where she'd worked & presumably contracted it.)
There's gonna have to be a different man.
I just read through that Reddit thread and tried for five minutes to say "marry" with the short 'a' as in "cat" and I don't think it's even possible for this native Southern Californian. I almost have to unhinge my jaw to get close, and I sound like a zombie.
I can roll my 'r's all day though!
One hopes not. They're horribly grating. Their accents as well.
Sho 'nuff, y'all.
Californians, at least south of the Tehachipis don't distinguish Mary/marry/merry, or didn't when I was in grad school.
Maa-ree (like marinate), Mare-ree, Meh-ree
That's exactly how it sounds when my freshman roommate tries to say it.
In my case, it was obviously noticeable to my Midwestern friends when I said any word with the "arry" sound. I think it started with a friend named Barry, who gave me a hard time because I was saying his name wrong.
I will add this. About 5 or 6 years after I started school and settled in the Midwest, my mother caught me saying the word "Carroll" (the name of the county next to mine), the way a Midwestern would, rather than the way I would have said it at home. Hearing it repeatedly changed the way I said it.
My father passed 60 years in the US last month, he still speaks with a noticeable accent.
Damn right. Back when congress brought a bunch of players talk about steroids, some people made a big issue about Sammy Sosa, who spoke English well enough for baseball interviews, needing a translator. Come on people, this in front of the most powerful people in the country, you are under oath, and they will be parsing your words for anything they can use against you in a perjury trial. As they did to Roger Clemens. Sammy would have been an idiot to not take that situation 100% seriously, and make sure he’s taking every precaution he can.
As for Sosa, I saw a recent interview with him in English. His command of the language is good (much better than my Spanish) but it’s crazy to criticize him for using an interpreter when speaking before Congress, for all of the reasons noted above.
"Mare" is easy to pronounce. It's the same as the first syllable in "marry," "merry," or "Mary." It rhymes with "dare" or "care." "Mere" rhymes with "steer" and is also very easy to say.
I assume you mean NYCer, as I'm a Central New Yorker, and they are all indistinguishable.
my grandparents were born and raised in louisiana, but because they were cajuns they spoke french before they learned english. they never lost their cajun accents, which is a whole thing of its own.
a lot of the cajuns i went to high school with in small town louisiana had noticeable accents, even though they barely knew any french. it was weird.
i'm cajun myself, but since my early education was overseas at american schools run by mostly easterners and midwesterners, i don't sound out of place in CA.
Westchester/NYC.
Which is why I'm puzzled by your previous statement that
The "a" in "dare," "care," etc. is the same as in "cat" for me, unless my (admittedly tinnitic) ears are lying to me.
OK, listening to myself right now, I'll modify that a bit -- "care" is closer to "kehr" for me.
That would make it difficult to distinguish. Is the "a" in "happy" the same as the one in "hairy" to you?
My parents are from Michigan but I grew up in north Chicago suburbs. My mom pronounces milk like "melk" and golf like "gulf", but I don't. However, I have a friend from the north side of Chicago proper and he pronounces "beer" and "bear" the exact same. He also pronounces "rune" and "ruin" the exact same (both like rune). And I don't do either of those. Of course, I've never heard anyone actually refer to "da Bears" except in reference to the stereotype but I don't get to the South Side, like ever.
the funny part is that to many ears, they aren't even that close.
those listeners would score 100 percent as to which was which, on any test.
marry being like Fahrenheit, marigold, marijuana, magic, malware.
merry being like ferry, meh, many, nebulous.
Mary being like fairy, rare, air.
my Hoosier wife is in the "Ellinois" and "melk" group.
Or for non "r" sounds, hail.
But yes, for people like me, they aren't that close.
Fairy. You can occasionally find some who make a slight distinction between fairy and ferry, but fairy is the dominant pronunciation.
a problem arises with the similar "horror," however.
"hahr-er" at least sounds easy. when I hear "hawr-r," it sounds to me like a verbal equivalent of stubbing one's toe because there is no contrasting sound to end the word.
and asking a genteel New Yawk gal if she likes [scary] "whore...r" films might get you a slap in the face (non-COVID-19 era).
74. gef, talking mongoose & suburban housewife Posted: February 23, 2021 at 11:28 PM (#6006468)
Yes.
Hmm, I will have to listen to my wife (for once, she would say) to see if I notice any difference in how she says words like “happy”. I’ve only really noticed the difference in syllables that end with “r”.
gef, or others — do you pronounce the words “app” and “ape” the same way?
#80 - yeah, “horrible” is another one that comes up a lot. Also, “hilarious”.
I can't speak for gef, but no one out here has any issues with the long a sound. It's just substituting the ai sound where the short a would go on certain (or, in gef's case, all) words.
What in the holy hell.
The vowel sounds are different to you? What do they sound like?
I see. I thought you meant there was a difference between meh and many. Rather, it's just that you can't make the eh (or a) sound in front of the r.
Exactly, they don’t have issues with the long “a” sound, they have issues with the short “a” sound. I guess it’s most noticeable with “ar” words because the long “a” gets shortened before those words (People don’t say “May-ree” or “hay-ree”.)
I knew a Mary in highschool. Typically people pronounced it 'marry', I went with 'merry', which she noticed, and liked. Not sure if anyone called her Mary with the 'fairy' sound.
There aren't many words with a long a sound before an r. I can think of a few places, such as Beirut or, to some speakers*, Cairo, Illinois, but no other words jump immediately to mind.
*And the others don't pronounce it like the city in Egypt either.
Amen. I use the word a fair amount, as a fan of horror films & fiction, & it's a bugger to pronounce. For me, it's somewhere between "hahr-er" & "hawr-r" -- "har-ruhr."
It's the damned r's that are the problem.
I can't imagine. "App" is pronounced like the first syllable in "apple" -- or, more apropos, "application."
As did & do I, though offhand the only Mary I knew as a kid was my mother, not that I ever called her by name.
Looking back, that's sort of odd; surely it was a very common name.
Karo syrup (speaking of the Illinois city). Pharaoh. Payroll.
Does anyone OTHER than me say "whore-er"? A long first "O?
and asking a genteel New Yawk gal if she likes [scary] "whore...r" films might get you a slap in the face
Maybe, if they even pronounced "whore" normally, but I doubt it.
A long first "O" would produce the truly oddball "hoh-rer," wouldn't it?
Goddamned word. "Terror" is loads easier.
And no wonder Lovecraft evidently preferred to use "weird."
I don't know about Karo syrup, but pharaoh is not a long a - it's 'fero'.
Odd, though. "Sam the Sham & the 'Feros'" just sounds all sorts of wrong to me, even at this late date.
Payroll's a good one. Pharaoh seems to be pronounced both ways, but I hear the long a less often.
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main