an aussie in austria

Learning a foreign language comes with many things… and one of the big things is correct pronunciation. If you haven’t grown up speaking German, it’s almost impossible to master all the nuances.

One of the things I still find difficult is pronouncing my last name. It’s not a difficult German word, really, but somehow the roll of the R never quite works for me and I end up spelling it phonetically or writing it down if I’m in person. After a while I got sick of the constant Richard, Anton, Gustav… spiel, and instead I got smart. I changed my name.

Claudia Weiss… that’s me. Because this name is easy to pronounce. No one has ever asked me twice. I use it for things like phone calls for random questions or restaurant bookings where it doesn’t matter what my name is.

And anything that makes it a tiny bit less terrifying to make a phone call can only be a good thing!