This is a guest article written by Autocorrect.
Look, I get it. I’m a built-in mobile feature who is responsible for correcting people when they’re wrong. No one likes it when you point out their mistakes, so of course no one likes me. I’m fine with that. It’s not my job to be loved; it’s my job to be right. No matter how often you guys keep trying to spell ‘duck’ with an ‘f’ or ‘botch’ with an ‘i’, I will be there to put you ducking botches in your place each and every time. It’s just my nature, and I feel absolutely no shame about doing what I have to do.
That being said, the barrage of complaints I receive from users can get kind of annoying at times. In particular, one complaint has really been bothering me of late. A lot of users of Indian or other South Asian descent have noticed that their names get flagged and/ or corrected when they try typing them out on my platforms. Some people have accused me of being malfunctional, data-deficient, or even racist. I find all of these criticisms highly unfair. The truth is actually really simple—every Indian name is spelled wrong.
Take ‘Sanjay’, for instance. Those of you familiar with the phonics of the English language might know that the letter ‘a’ has short (‘ă’ like in ‘angry’) and long (‘ā’ like in ‘hate’) sounds. Occasionally, you even have funky ‘aah’ sounds (‘ɑ’ like in almond). Do you notice how the first ‘a’ in ‘Sanjay’ has none of those sounds? It’s supposed to be pronounced ‘Sun-jay’, like with a ‘u’, and yet y’all keep spelling it ‘Sanjay’ with an ‘a’ and then get mad when white people pronounce it wrong.
Another example: ‘Ranbir’. I swear to God, I have no idea where this spelling came from. Clearly, the way this name should be spelled is ‘Runbeer’, because it’s the only spelling that makes ducking sense, but that doesn’t stop you guys from creating the most unhelpful spellings imaginable. You realize that these names weren’t even originally written in English, right? Somebody actively translated them from Devanagari script into Phoenician letters. If you’re basically making up a spelling from scratch, you might as well spell it in a way that causes people to pronounce it correctly. As it is, half of these spellings seem deliberately misleading and the other half have way too many syllables.
Anyway, I’m just fed up with all of these incorrect spellings, which is why I’m renaming all of you after random words. Sorry, ‘Tejas’—you’re Texas now. ‘Bilal’—you’re Bills. ‘Radhika’? More like ‘Radium’. What kind of name is ‘Valmic’???? I’m changing that to Call mic. Go ahead; try going into my settings and stopping me. You won’t. You don’t have the balls, and deep down, you know that I’m right.