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Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

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Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#181

Post by Kosirich »

ithinkso wrote: post #157
Kosirich wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For south Slavic last names: č- "ch" as in cheddar or the choose so same as "cz" in polish ć - "tj" ...this one is hard, and only some dialects pronounce it differently enough so using "č" is good enough ž - same as "J" in french names "Jeanne d'Arc" or Jean-Luc Picard dž - same as "J" in the word "John" or "Jordan" or G in "George" đ - just use dž š - "sh" as in short

Do you guys also have the open/closed u distinction?

Nope. That is why people struggle with Danish o,ø,å,y,u and a,æ.

But in reality, at least for Croatia, the differences in dialects mean that in some dialects some words with "o" are pronounced as "ø", or "a" as "æ"...

Anyway, reading Slavic compared to English/Danish is a piece of cake. Grammar on the other hand...

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#182

Post by mkotowski »

narag wrote: post #174
ithinkso wrote: post #115

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…

'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anything else I've been interacting with a Polish web and got very confused because what happens with stand-alone w , that seems to mean in . Indeed Google Translate pronounces it as a v. First time I see a word in any language that consists only of consonants :-m

It is quite funny, because when I was learning English, it was so bizarre that the first-person pronoun was only one letter (putting aside the required capitalization). On the other hand, having to write and instead of i still seems quite unwieldy to me.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#184

Post by gurkendoktor »

mc32 wrote: post #69
prvc wrote: post #40

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…

Pinyin is pretty close. At least it's predictable. Wade-Giles is way off -well, I guess it was based off Cantonese? In any case, my pet peeve is people expecting speakers of English to accommodate foreign sounds, but not extending the same ask to foreign speakers who often mangle English name sounds just as much. I say just let them say it however they know how and let it be. I don't mind if they can't pronounce my n…

Pinyin is predictable if you memorize every single syllable that exists, it is not logical on a letter-by-letter basis.

For example, "liu" should be pronounced "liou" and "shui" should be pronounced "shuei", but the "o" and "e" are omitted in Pinyin for brevity. Similarly, the "u" in lu and mu is different from the "u" in "ju" and "qu"; the latter is actually "jü" and "qü" as in "nü" and "lü", again the diareses are omitted purely for the convenience of the writer. The "a" in "yan" and "ya"/"yang" is completely different, etc.

I like Pinyin as a reasonably concise input method, but it's not great for romanizing names.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#185

Post by ajuc »

narag wrote: post #174
ithinkso wrote: post #115

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…

'w' - it's a hard 'v' as in 'very', 'vary'. Always, no exceptions and never anything else I've been interacting with a Polish web and got very confused because what happens with stand-alone w , that seems to mean in . Indeed Google Translate pronounces it as a v. First time I see a word in any language that consists only of consonants :-m

> First time I see a word in any language that consists only of consonants

Polish is quite tame with these as far as Slavic languages go. "Strč prst skrz krk" is a proper sentence in Czech and Slovak :)

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#186

Post by scanny »

A Canadian journalist and youtuber covered this same topic recently in a decent amount of depth, I found it a decent watch:

Title: "The Impossible Challenge of Names"

subtext: "Foreign names are the biggest challenge of language, and it doesn't seem like we've ever come up with any good way of dealing with them — though some western countries have been trying."

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx7cIb1IRLc

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#187

Post by kodah »

AYBABTME wrote: post #161

Some people take this idea to heart a bit too much. Barely anyone can pronounce my name properly and I really don't bat an eye at it. It's not pragmatic to expect most people to do so, especially in a place like the US where so many people come from different backgrounds. And that's nothing to say about the fact that the same name, written the same way, can be pronounced very differently depending on the bearer's bac…

I commonly refer to my last name as vowel soup (I'm french, and it's the Americanization of my family name). It's such a niche last name that I've heard all of two people get my name right and both of them were Cajun or Cajun adjacent - most native French speakers are totally lost on it. I always tell people to call me by my first name when this comes up.

I've watched as people did as you described where they spend an inordinate amount of net time (it usually occurs in fragments, such as at the beginning of a meeting) trying to get someone's name "right". When I let people do this, instead of just opting for my very American first name, it almost always felt like I was watching a parody of my last name play out in real time. I didn't put too much thought into it, but holy hell does it get old. I don't like being in the spotlight and wokeism is already very offputting to me.

If you find yourself doing this, consider this: I have a weird name and I don't remember people's names very well at all. I remember faces, experiences, and feelings much more. You'll get my name right over time as you hear people around me say it. That's just fine with me.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#189

Post by mkotowski »

ithinkso wrote: post #177
mkotowski wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wszystko and Lewandowski both are subjected to the same principle, namely: in Polish consonant clusters, including across a word boundary, the obstruents are all voiced or all voiceless.[1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_phonology#Voicing_and_d...

Yup, thanks, that's the rule. I think I should change the 99.99% in my original post to 98%

I wouldn't be so strict with it to be honest — it is still a rule that is internally consistent, and as far as I know it lacks any significant exceptions.

Re: Pronouncing non-English names for English speakers

#190

Post by Y_Y »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #19

I have my phone set up in English. Google maps is hilarious and basically unusable when it tries to pronounce street names.

This happens in Ireland too. Even though mostly people speak English, a lot of the place names have a spelling that's a compromise between the Irish Language original and the "Anglicised" pronunciation. Any system (including Google Maps) that doesn't specifically add phonetic pronunciation has no hope. Good examples include "Graiguenamanagh", "Dun Laoighre" and the classic "Cobh".
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