English

[BDunnell]

Then again who writes their name in lower case in a company email?! No one.

What you mean is 'no-one with a proper command of language'.

[ioan]

Right.

[Mark]

Now viewing Ioan and loan on my phone they are identical.

[donKey jote]

that must be a fine sight. Where did you get the pics from?

[schmenke]

ioan^2

[D-Type]

Imagine how I got on when working for a Japanese company. Being a formal people, the Japanese like to use surnames and they had, shall we say, fun with my surname. Just picture the response to an introduction: "Pleased to meeet you, Mr Rollo" - "Just call be Duncan" was my usual response and I then became "Mr Duncan". At which point I said to myself "Oh borroks!" and politely answered "Yes"

[gadjo_dilo]

Ioane, never thought about a confusion between I and l. Thought the problem was the accent. Like pronouncing it like io an. Or like Johann.

My problem is the second letter of my name - O. They pronounce it ou or au although I recommend myself correctly and I really have an easy name.

[schmenke]

Imagine how I got on when working for a Japanese company. Being a formal people, the Japanese like to use surnames and they had, shall we say, fun with my surname. Just picture the response to an introduction: "Pleased to meeet you, Mr Rollo" - "Just call be Duncan" was my usual response and I then became "Mr Duncan". ...

I had a similar experience working in South Korea. My surname can be difficult to pronounce, and downright cumbersome for an Asian.
I would tell my Korean colleagues to simply address me by my first name, so I became known as “Mr. Peter” .

[janneppi]

Imagine how I got on when working for a Japanese company. Being a formal people, the Japanese like to use surnames and they had, shall we say, fun with my surname. Just picture the response to an introduction: "Pleased to meeet you, Mr Rollo" - "Just call be Duncan" was my usual response and I then became "Mr Duncan". At which point I said to myself "Oh borroks!" and politely answered "Yes"

In most email's I get from Japanese clients, i'm Janne san. Then replying to them I usually have to do an image search with their name to see what gender they are.

[Garry Walker]

Despite the claims of dunnell that I am a native english speaker, I am not and studied it in school since 2nd grade, if I remember correctly. Not that difficult of a language and I picked it up quite quickly, but lately I sense that I don't speak it as well as I used to, because I just don't get to speak it much these days. Some years ago I got to speak quite a bit of english with some clients and people thought I was a native english speaker, but these days this forum I probably the only place where I speak/write in english.