How to pronounce Skaters' Names

[Mathman]

I don't get why English speakers are averse to using double u's (except for vacuum!).

My favorite Hangman word is "cwm. It has no vowel.

Yes it does, it has two.

 

[dorispulaski]

"Double u" really means it in the case of "cwm."

 

[skatedreamer]

My favorite Hangman word is "cwm. It has no vowel.

Yes it does, it has two.

News from the Know It All Files...

there's a cwm on Mount Everest. It's called the Western Cwm. I only know this because mountain climbing stories fascinate me; they're one of my favorite sources of vicarious thrills.

The Western Cwm (/kuːm/) is a broad, flat, gently undulating glacial valley basin terminating at the foot of the Lhotse Face of Mount Everest. It was named by George Mallory when he saw it in 1921 as part of the British Reconnaissance Expedition that was the first to explore the upper sections of Everest, searching for routes for future summit attempts; a cwm is a valley fully enclosed by mountains, from the Welsh word for "valley".

Western Cwm - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[el henry]

My very favorite hymn is Cwm Rhondda.

I understand it is also the Welsh national anthem, but I learned that much later. The hymn I knew from childhood.

Have there ever been any Welsh skaters? And I mean Welsh, not Welsh descent as I imagine David and Alan Jenkins are.

 

[Mathman]

Trivia question. What do Alan Jenkins and Mikhail Shaidorov have in common?

Both won Olympic gold medals in men's figure skating at Cortina D'Ampezzo, Italy (1956 and 2026). Well, almost. I think the skating venue was iactually in Milan this time.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

My very favorite hymn is Cwm Rhondda.

I understand it is also the Welsh national anthem, but I learned that much later. The hymn I knew from childhood.

Have there ever been any Welsh skaters? And I mean Welsh, not Welsh descent as I imagine David and Alan Jenkins are.

• Five times British Ice Dance Champion Marika Humphreys is from Flintshire. [If we are being strictly accurate, she was born just across the border in Chester, England. But that is just a technicality. She's Welsh].
• 2000 British Ice Dance Champion Julie Keeble was born in Cardiff. [Nationals were held in Belfast that year, so that's why she stuck in my mind].
• 2006 & 2007 British Junior Ice Dance Champion Lloyd Jones was born in Cardiff. [He went on to skate for France with Pernelle Carron, with whom he became 2013 Universiade Ice Dance Champion, and is now a choreographer].
• 2011 British Ice Dance Champion Owen Edwards was born in Wrexham. [He is now married to his Ice Dance partner, Eurosport commentator Louise Walden].
• 2025 Men's Junior World Champion Rio Nakata (JPN) was born in Cardiff. [His mother is Welsh].

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I can think of.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Mathman]

My very favorite hymn is Cwm Rhondda.

I understand it is also the Welsh national anthem, but I learned that much later.

I always considered the tune to be similar to "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly (a Welsh folk song), sung slowly and with reverence, and leaving out the la la las.

I guess I was wrong, though. I just Googled it and Google AI ridiculed my suggestion.

 

[skatedreamer]

I always considered the tune to be similar to "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly (a Welsh folk song), sung slowly and with reverence, and leaving out the la la las.

I guess I was wrong, though. I just Googled it and Google AI ridiculed my suggestion.

AI: who cares about a bot's opinion anyway?

Fa la la: this shows up in lots of madrigals. Technically it's just filler, but one of my college Music History profs had a theory that it was code for snogging. I always liked that.

 

[Diana Delafield]

I always considered the tune to be similar to "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly (a Welsh folk song), sung slowly and with reverence, and leaving out the la la las.

I guess I was wrong, though. I just Googled it and Google AI ridiculed my suggestion.

Google AI has a tin ear. You're quite right. I've sung in choirs where the tenor section (always the jokers in a choir) have substituted the Deck the Halls lyrics in rehearsals.

 

[Mathman]

Fa la la: this shows up in lots of madrigals. Technically it's just filler, but one of my college Music History profs had a theory that it was code for snogging. I always liked that.

OK, so now I have learned yet another new word: snogging.

 

[skatedreamer]

Google AI has a tin ear. You're quite right. I've sung in choirs where the tenor section (always the jokers in a choir) have substituted the Deck the Halls lyrics in rehearsals.

Never trust a tenor!

Of course, tenors say the same thing about sopranos. (I'm a soprano.)

 

[Diana Delafield]

Never trust a tenor!

Of course, tenors say the same thing about sopranos. (I'm a soprano.)

So am I. Although I usually get to stand between the 1sts and 2nds, or between the soprano and alto sections, because my range lets me help out if the lower line needs ballast at certain points.

Everybody is jealous of the sopranos because we usually get the melody line while they do all the backup harmony work, or so they claim

 

[iluvtodd]

I like doing the backup harmony (I'm an alto) in the chorus. Every once in a while we altos get to do the melody line - I'm not jealous about that.

 

[skatedreamer]

@Diana Delafield
@iluvtodd

It's lovely to meet some fellow singers!

 

[Diana Delafield]

@Diana Delafield
@iluvtodd

It's lovely to meet some fellow singers!

I like doing the backup harmony (I'm an alto) in the chorus. Every once in a while we altos get to do the melody line - I'm not jealous about that.

It's certainly more challenging, and challenge is something I like. My old singing teacher used to put me and another soprano in duet competition events. We had similar voices but she had a shorter range so I got to do the mezzo part. (Our accompanist was her then-boyfriend -- who I married a couple of years later and she sang at our wedding. But that's wandering WAY .)

 

[Mathman]

^ Well... you won THAT duet contest.

 

[Diana Delafield]

^ Well... you won THAT duet contest.

And at the time the other soprano and I were singing together, with her dating my future husband, I was dating her brother. It was kind of a genteel soap opera story line with a classical music soundtrack.

 

[Minz]

I think that there was a cultural sea change in the U.S. somewhere around the 1970s. In previous decades many immigramnts wanted to become as American as possible as quickly as possible, and especially so for their children. And for good reason -- each successive wave of immigration occasioned new targets for prejudice and discrimination.

Over the last several decades I think that there has been an upsurge in taking pride in one's roots and a greater interest in preserving for the new generations the values and traditions of the "old country."

Basically, with any Russian name, shift the stressed syllable to where it sounds weird to an English speaker. I haven't heard a single Russian name stressed correctly by an English speaker intuitively, not sure why, even really short ones. There is, of course, an added inconveneice that Russians simplify spelling to avoid dots over e for 'yo' sound in typing which is always the stressed syllable. Metelkina is a good example.

Losing your name is a part of immigrant experience, and Malinin's team went through it twice with him to ensure his success. Skornyakov to Malinin, and Malinin to MAH-linin.

Just adding in my 0.02. If you look at how Ilia's last name is pronounced by native Russian coaches, athletes, etc, you'll see that they pronounce it differently than to how Ilia says it.

My parents are immigrants, and my sister and I were born in the US. Minz is a nickname, but both my sister and I pronounce our actual names "wrong," so to speak. We both know this, but at this point it's natural for us. Even my parents have Americanized pronounciations of their names. If you were to ask an older relative, they'd pronounce our names differently.

And to add more nuance, although both my parents grew up in India, their first language was also English because the British spread the English language throughout India and that stuck.

So it's not a universal situation to any extent.

 

[dorispulaski]

Exactly - each person is the only expert on how their own name should be pronounced!