131–140 of 474 posts
People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…
People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…
The reputation comes from different conventions. In English letter+h is the escape code (gh, th, sh, ch) in Polish it's letter+z (rz,sz,cz,dz,dż,dź,dzi).
Especially vowels are much easier than in English. Each vowel in Polish maps to exactly one sound and vice versa.
> y - a vowel, I don't think the sound exists in english
it's the English short i like in bIt. As is the rule- Polish has a special letter for that sound and English has 2 sounds encoded the same way and you have to remember which is which :)
Another difference is that Polish j is English y. And English j is Polish dż (dżungla = jungle).
ń is the same sound as the funny n in Spanish word for Spain: España
> w is v [..] Always, no exceptions and never anything else
There actually are exceptions, but they are regular as well - w before last syllable is often devoiced to f. Levandofski. But even most Polish speakers don't know that it's the rule, they just speak that way without thinking :) And if you ignore it you are fine, it sounds unnatural but it's still correct. Like saying "I am" instead of "I'm" in English.
BTW I think all that additional complexity in English writing system is the reason you have to teach kids to read for so long. In Polish kids are usually taught reading in preschool or first class at school and they are expected to be able to correctly read any text after 6 months to 1 year.
There are some gotchas the other way around (hear something and write it) because that way the mapping isn't unique (there are sounds that have 2 ways to write them), but reading is easy.
People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…
ż has the sound of soft g, as in germs
Polish "ż" without "d" before it is more like French j for example in "je taim".
People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…
One thing that has puzzled me about complaints about English speakers' pronunciation of transliterated Chinese words (the only topic of TFA), is why the speaker is blamed rather than the transliteration. If the official transliteration into the Roman alphabet leads to less accuracy in pronunciation than some other (for example see the second vs third columns in the table in TFA), then would it not make better sense f…
Of course. But the "official" (as you say) transliterations of world languages enjoy wide usage not because they're necessarily the best anyone could come up with --- rather, they just represented the right local maxima at the right time in history. Displacing those romanization systems with better ones (assuming those exist) would be an uphill battle lasting decades, and I wager there aren't many people who would fi…
At least English speakers often try to pronounce names correctly, for example celebrities and well known sports stars. Not that we always succeed, and many people don’t care! Bach, Cézzane, Jesus, Jahn etcetera. I notice Spanish people don’t seem to try, I think in part because there is a one-to-one correspondence between words and pronunciation in Spanish. The common Spanish pronunciation of Michael Jackson is unint…
Is this actually true for English speakers? Especially prominent Latin names have been totally butchered. For example Markus Antonius always gets butchered as Mark Anthony which clearly isn't a name anyone in Rome would have had. This also seems to go hand in hand with the general ignorance of the huge problem that's the great vowel shift that messes everything up for native English speakers pronouncing words from ot…
> The goal of this guide is to produce a simple guide to help you pronounce a surname from a non-English speaking culture that sounds reasonably correct. FYI, the first sentence of the article isn't proper English. It purports to teach how a non-English speaking culture can sound resonably correct.
I appreciate the effort, but I don't like this attitude of blaming the speaker. My company once even had a video saying that mispronouncing a name was a 'microaggression.' That insanity aside, there are sounds and consonants people just cannot make past a certain age. As long as we aren't being demeaning, why go for perfection? Nearly every foreigner pronounces the short 'i' in my name as 'ee', and I've never once ca…
People are giving pronunciation tips for other languages in the comments, here are tips for polish. Polish often seems incomprehensible for english speakers because of the sheer amount of consonants though it actually flows quite nicely if you know the rules 'sz', 'cz' - those are equivalent to 'sh' (shop,shell) and 'ch' (chop, check) 'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anythin…
> For example, in the US, many families that immigrated many years ago have changed the way their name was pronounced from its original heritage pronunciation As a native German and French speaker, this is actually an issue for me. If I see a common German or French name, I do not actually know how it would be pronounced in English and it's very difficult for me to guess or get my head to think of that pronunciation…
I generally go with a native pronunciation unless told otherwise. So I would pronounce it John Dubwah, but I've learned that it's W.E.B. Du-boys. But the single most important thing to do is ask how to pronounce and keep trying to get it right. My wife's first name is a Mexican name with an ll in the middle that should be pronounced as j/y (most Spanish speakers don't really hear a difference between the two English…
And after failing to do it right after instructions, it is the other people who are arrogant for asking to use something they are able to pronounce, not you for insisting on making them uncomfortable?
Names are just sounds people make when they want someones attention. Respect goes two ways.