Pronunciation

Originally posted by joesheppe
Well, wormwood, you read it all very literally. That is, consistently, and that's understandable.
I mixed some non-phonetic sounds in with the phonetic. The biggest example is Bareev. I am well aware that it actually sounds like Bar a' ev with a long a. In my original post, I only broke up the name for the proper syllable emphasis. My bad.

That first ...[text shortened]... believe that in no case did I deliberately misinform.
Questions about any of them? Just ask.

I think you and wormwood are on the same page.

You correctly point out how names are mispronounced, and he just observed that it is very hard to give a correct pronunciation using English phonics and symbols in an international forum.

I consider the attempt to be a valuable contribution, even though I know it will not be perfect, as I can never guarantee that I am really correctly reading and saying what someone else is attempting to write. (I think I am having a phonetic Wittgenstein moment here...)

The "Sevilla" posts alone show us how challenging it can be. This has been entertaining and informative at the same time!

Originally posted by joesheppe
Well, wormwood, you read it all very literally. That is, consistently, and that's understandable.
I mixed some non-phonetic sounds in with the phonetic. The biggest example is Bareev. I am well aware that it actually sounds like Bar a' ev with a long a. In my original post, I only broke up the name for the proper syllable emphasis. My bad.

That first believe that in no case did I deliberately misinform.
Questions about any of them? Just ask.

well my point is you created at least as many NEW problems as you were 'solving'. that is, anybody trying to learn from your (well intented, I'm sure) advice, will actually be worse off. it happens every single time when pronunciation is discussed online, and proper phonetic symbols or at least official translitterations are not used. and they never are, really.

evgeny bareev is pronounced [jevgeni barejev]. which of course doesn't tell you ANYTHING unless you know what language I'm writing the pronunciation IN. as it happens, I'm writing it in finnish, which fortunately happens to have close to absolute phonetic ortography, which basically means EVERY letter is pronounced EXACTLY as they're written. 'a' as a, 'e' as e, 'i' as i, 'o' as, 'u' as u etc... which is pretty much as close as you can get to correct pronunciation without using IPA symbols.

now, english however, is NOT such a language. in fact, it's pretty much the OPPOSITE! everything is written differently compared to how it's pronounced, which make all pronunciation advice offered in english doomed to fail miserably. and THAT is why even this short thread is FILLED with wildly conflicting 'pronunciation advice'.

here's a couple of examples how 'wrong' english ortography is:

english 'a' is pronounced 'ei'.
e is pronounced 'ii'
i is pronounced 'ai'
o is pronounced 'ou'
u is pronounced 'juu'
y is a vowel english does NOT even have!!

etc etc, that's only the tip of the iceberg. everything in english is wrong. there's no way to use it to describe correct pronunciation unless you're willing to write out a paragraph or two explaining what you mean by each letter.


my advice would be, don't even try. it's just gonna go wrong, and nobody but yourself is gonna understand what you meant. I mean really, they won't, even if they say they do. there's just gonna be as many WILDLY VARYING shades of incorrect, which they'll continue to spread 'as the right pronunciation' creating further havoc.

just don't do it. if you must, use IPA, or preferably native audio examples.

Originally posted by atticus2
An essential tip with Russian names is to roll the R's.

So, it's Karrrr-poff (Karpov); and Korrrr-chnoi (Korchnoi); and Kas-PARRRR-off

For Baltic state languages, 's' is often 'sh'. So Saranas Sulskis is pronounced 'Sharunash Shulshkish'. Best drink several pints of beer first, then you'll get it right 🙂

Topalov is 'To-PAH-loff'

Anand is 'an-AN ...[text shortened]... ident of FIDE, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov is pronounced 'Kirrr-RYST Ima-FUKKIN-frootloop'

I'll have to ax him that next time I talk to him, maybe he will lose the FIDE presidency next time🙂

Originally posted by Trev33
Double L in Spanish is an English e.

No it isnt.

Y maybe.

Originally posted by wormwood

here's a couple of examples how 'wrong' english ortography is:

english 'a' is pronounced 'ei'.
e is pronounced 'ii'
i is pronounced 'ai'
o is pronounced 'ou'
u is pronounced 'juu'
y is a vowel english does NOT even have!!

This is rubbish.
take a look at a site like;
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

Originally posted by wolfgang59
This is rubbish.
take a look at a site like;
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

What does this site have to do with what wormwood wrote? It's about the IPA -- he wrote about not having it.

It's a fact that English spelling/pronunciation tandem is as dumb as they get. A reform is virtually impossible though since there is no body (sic!), and there will probably never be, with the power to carry it out.

Originally posted by WanderingKing
What does this site have to do with what wormwood wrote? It's about the IPA -- he wrote about not having it.

It's a fact that English spelling/pronunciation tandem is as dumb as they get. A reform is virtually impossible though since there is no body (sic!), and there will probably never be, with the power to carry it out.

'i' is pronounced 'ai' ??????
what does that mean?

the grapheme 'i' can represent 2 of the 43 English phonemes, namely /i/ and /ie/

the phoneme /ai/ can be represented by the graphemes 'a' or 'ai' or 'ae' or 'ay' or 'a_e' or 'eigh' (possibly others - I cant think of them at the moment)

English spelling is certainly NOT phonetic but I dont understand what wormwood is talking about.

Nobody has mentione Pirc - apparently pronounced Purse NOT Perk 🙂

Originally posted by joesheppe
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Dutchman Anish Giri is said as Awnish Geeree.

Well, he's not actually Dutch in origin, so that's no hint to the pronunciation. He lives here - don't know what passport he has - but his name is some kind of northern Indian. As for the pronunciation... I think it's AhNEESH, but I'm not sure. At any rate that's how Anish Kapoor's name is usually pronounced on Auntie's culture shows.

Vassily Ivanchuk? like Va silly Evonshewk.

Well, perhaps, but how do you pronounce "shewk"? I can think of at least two reasonable English pronunciations, and only one of those is more or less(!) correct.

What you really need is IPA, but I'm not sure the site handles it, I doubt most people here can read it, and I'm pretty sure that most Anglophone people here couldn't pronounce it even if they could read it. For example...

Carlsen is, I think, Carlsen.

...for example, yes, if you can pronounce a proper "a" and "r". The "a" is not long, and the "r" is (briefly, I believe) rolled, not drawled.

Richard

Originally posted by UnderPromote
ll in spanish = y in english.

llamas = yamas

Doesn't it depend on the dialect? I believe in Andean Spanish they're called yamas, but the Castilians would pronounce it lyamas - but I could have them the wrong way 'round, at that.

Richard

Originally posted by wolfgang59
Nobody has mentione Pirc - apparently pronounced Purse NOT Perk 🙂

Nah, it's pronounced Piertsj.

Or Pee<an Englishman choking>ch, if you wish.

But no "u" in sight, and definitely more than just an "s".

Richard

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Doesn't it depend on the dialect? I believe in Andean Spanish they're called yamas, but the Castilians would pronounce it lyamas - but I could have them the wrong way 'round, at that.

Richard

Agree, as per my original post.

It is, for simpler writing, Valyayjo.... with the aycjo being the harder to explain.

You have to be there. 😀

-m.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
'i' is pronounced 'ai' ??????
what does that mean?

the grapheme 'i' can represent 2 of the 43 English phonemes, namely /i/ and /ie/

the phoneme /ai/ can be represented by the graphemes 'a' or 'ai' or 'ae' or 'ay' or 'a_e' or 'eigh' (possibly others - I cant think of them at the moment)

English spelling is certainly NOT phonetic but I dont understand what wormwood is talking about.

I thought he was talking about the names of the letters, but that's for him to say.

Originally posted by wolfgang59
This is rubbish.
take a look at a site like;
http://www.antimoon.com/how/pronunc-soundsipa.htm

Not complete rubbish, I thought.

Most of those were quite clear and correct from my viewpoint (I'm Dutch).

Pronunciation of Russian/French/German/whateverelse words written out in English confuses me.

In Holland we usually just learn how it should be pronounced in the original language without writing it out, because it will come close at best but never really there.

Something like IPA would be much more useful indeed.

The statement that almost every sound in English sounds different than most would expect it to seems correct in my view.

All that aside, what is certainly true is that there is no way to know how to pronounce English words you don't (yet) know, because there are basically no rules.

Compare tomb and comb, for instance... why are they pronounced differently? (pronunciation written out in Dutch: 'Toem' and 'Koom', just for fun 😉 )

Since there are no definitive rules, writing out a pronunciation using English will be just as unclear unless you keep writing things like 'as in "see", "me" ' or other words most people are expected to know, which basically brings you back to IPA anyway.

As this is an English-language site, I didn't feel the need to specify that in other languages my suggestions might be of lesser use.

For heaven sakes, the whole IPA, 'not in my country' stuff is just goofy. We're talking about the English language pronunciation here; not the Dutch, not Finnish version of it.

Get off your parochial footstools for just a minute and work with me. I'm not degrading your country's language or standing in any way. As long as we're jabbering here or in some English-speaking bistro anywhere, the pronunciations I gave are at least 95% correct. If they weren't, there would be a lot more corrections than just "in my country, we say the vowel o like ai!"
Sheesh.