I'm not a linguist so I'm not very familiar with phonetic alphabet, but I think the closest would be pəgə'ri:ɫəpjə or pɐgɐ'ri:ɫəpja depending on how particular was a person about pronouncing that name. In general conversation and when spoken quickly it would be closer to the first one, whereas if it was announced through a loudspeaker it would be closer to second.
Interesting/challenging names in skating
- Thread starter Daniel1998
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its a german name origin: Gleichenhaus
it is, he is likely russian of German origin.
I find Korean names difficult to pronounce as their romanticised vowel phoenetics are different equivalents.
Gim compared to Kim ?
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Yes, this is one of (any number) of things that I find annoying about the new transliteration norms from Chinese.
And so in our wonderful multicultural NA reality
- the Zhenyas I know are called Zen-ya (z as in zoo)
- the Genyas I know are called Jen-ya (except by Francophones who get it right)
- the Zhangs are called Zang (z as in zoo, rhymes with bang as you say)
One would wish that, if linguists feel compelled to phonetically define new two-consonant letter combinations for English Speakers, that they would at least land on the same phonetic sound when translating from various major language groups.
And by the way, with this reality of transliteration, it's a wonder the announcers produce as many recognizable names as they do. And given the uniqueness of Boston pronounciation within English, (it rated a whole episode in the PBS series the history of English ), it's not surprising that we heard some very interesting attempts at Worlds.
(I hold up the evolved Boston way of saying Faneuil, as in the name of a major historical landmark Faneuil Hall, as Fan-you-ull. I realized fairly quickly when I arrived in Boston that pronouncing the way I would 'Dubreuil', sort of Du-broy, would be completely unintelligible. It's their landmark, so I called it their way.)
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
:yes: "Michelle Guan" reverts to "Michelle Kwan" on Google.
Some names are long but relatively easy for American English speakers to work out phonetically even so.
Ged - e - van - ish- villi
Mur - vahn - eed - tse (schwa) (My fave, by the way. He always came onto the ice like he was the master of ceremonies and the owner of the arena.
)Seek - har - ood - leed - tse
Took - ta - mee - she va. (English speakers put a little too much MEE in this one.
)I guess its because in english j - is phoentically like "yelly"
the dutch surname "de Jong" is pronounced as "de Young" or the german "Jung" as "Yung"
I'll never forget the Icelandic skater who skated at JGP Riga and her name was Thuridur Bjorg Bjorgvinsdottir. And yes, with two 'Bjorgs'. And later I found out that it isn't even THuridur, the TH sounds more like PF. Confusing.
I'd also like to add that Latvian/Lithuanian and most Slavic European language (Croatian, Slovakian, Hungarian etc.) speakers are usually the best at pronouncing the foreign names because we have languages that have some words originated from Russian AND English (and others, of course, but you get my point). I don't have any problems with Russian or English names and the Asian names aren't so hard because they are usually quite short.
I'd also like to add that Latvian/Lithuanian and most Slavic European language (Croatian, Slovakian, Hungarian etc.) speakers are usually the best at pronouncing the foreign names because we have languages that have some words originated from Russian AND English (and others, of course, but you get my point). I don't have any problems with Russian or English names and the Asian names aren't so hard because they are usually quite short.
- Joined
- Jul 9, 2014
It can be confusing because a lot of people in Russia and the Czech Republic can speak English a lot better than people from the US can speak Czech or Russian. Here's Tennis Star Lucie Safarova saying her name as it's pronounced in her native language.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-ZkJn-dWc
I can't even imagine how Maria Butyrskaya understood me when I said her name because when you hear her introduce herself. I can barely understand her. This, from certified stalker, Me. Here's Maria being interviewed after winning Russian and landing 7 triples for the first in her career. It won't really help you with her name because they say it so fast that it's difficult to understand but, you can definitely see just how tiny Maria was in person. If you didn't know who she was you could walk right past when she was out of her skates and makeup because she looked liked like a junior.
Just watching this video brings back a lot of memories of this beautiful Woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xQewCpOWE
I can't even imagine how Maria Butyrskaya understood me when I said her name because when you hear her introduce herself. I can barely understand her. This, from certified stalker, Me. Here's Maria being interviewed after winning Russian and landing 7 triples for the first in her career. It won't really help you with her name because they say it so fast that it's difficult to understand but, you can definitely see just how tiny Maria was in person. If you didn't know who she was you could walk right past when she was out of her skates and makeup because she looked liked like a junior.
Just watching this video brings back a lot of memories of this beautiful Woman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xQewCpOWE
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- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
Just a quick tutorial on how to actually pronounce some Korean surnames and Korean skaters, if anyone is curious:
Kim--> Gim (to be more precise, it's Geem, but with the vowel sound spoken very quickly)
Park--> Bak
Yoo--> You (this one isn't botched as much and happens to be my last name)
Lee--> Ee
Lim--> Eem (said quickly)
Choi--> Che (rhymes with heh and meh)
Cha --> Cha (cha cha cha)
Any I sound by itself is actually an ee sound but said really really quickly. Like you're stabbing the syllable.
U sounds usually rhyme with bun, and will be listed as "eo" below unless otherwise specified.
Eunsoo Lim --> the EU is pronounced as the vowel sound in rook or Brooke. Eem (short) Eun Soo.
Jun Hwan Cha --> Hwan rhymes with Kwan and Jun rhymes with Moon. Cha Joon Hwan.
Yuna Kim --> Yun rhymes with bun. Geem (short) Yeon Ah.
Soyoun Park --> Youn is a misspelling and is the same letter as the Yun in Yuna's name. Bak Soh Yeon.
Dabin Choi --> Pretty straight-forward. Che Dah Been (short).
June-hyoung Lee --> June is the same as Jun in JHC's name and hyoung rhymes with young. It's not hyoong. Ee Joon Hyeong.
Jin-seo Kim --> Seo is pronounced suh- rhymes with mud. Geem (short) Jeen (short) Seo.
Yelim Kim --> Lim is a misspelling and should be an R sound. Geem (short) Yeh Reem (short).
Byun Se-Jong --> Jong is closer to owe or mow, not long or song. Similar to eau in French. Byeon Seh Johng.
Na-Hyun Kim--> Straight forward. Hyun rhymes with Byun. Geem (short) Nah Hyeon.
You Young --> Exactly what you think. It's worth noting, however, that You is her last name. You Yeong.
Kim--> Gim (to be more precise, it's Geem, but with the vowel sound spoken very quickly)
Park--> Bak
Yoo--> You (this one isn't botched as much and happens to be my last name)
Lee--> Ee
Lim--> Eem (said quickly)
Choi--> Che (rhymes with heh and meh)
Cha --> Cha (cha cha cha)
Any I sound by itself is actually an ee sound but said really really quickly. Like you're stabbing the syllable.
U sounds usually rhyme with bun, and will be listed as "eo" below unless otherwise specified.
Eunsoo Lim --> the EU is pronounced as the vowel sound in rook or Brooke. Eem (short) Eun Soo.
Jun Hwan Cha --> Hwan rhymes with Kwan and Jun rhymes with Moon. Cha Joon Hwan.
Yuna Kim --> Yun rhymes with bun. Geem (short) Yeon Ah.
Soyoun Park --> Youn is a misspelling and is the same letter as the Yun in Yuna's name. Bak Soh Yeon.
Dabin Choi --> Pretty straight-forward. Che Dah Been (short).
June-hyoung Lee --> June is the same as Jun in JHC's name and hyoung rhymes with young. It's not hyoong. Ee Joon Hyeong.
Jin-seo Kim --> Seo is pronounced suh- rhymes with mud. Geem (short) Jeen (short) Seo.
Yelim Kim --> Lim is a misspelling and should be an R sound. Geem (short) Yeh Reem (short).
Byun Se-Jong --> Jong is closer to owe or mow, not long or song. Similar to eau in French. Byeon Seh Johng.
Na-Hyun Kim--> Straight forward. Hyun rhymes with Byun. Geem (short) Nah Hyeon.
You Young --> Exactly what you think. It's worth noting, however, that You is her last name. You Yeong.
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Uhm, actually J in English is not pronounced "y" as in "yes". It's "j" and in "jump" or "juice" or "jelly"...
[I expect that was a typo...]There seems to have, at least at one point, have been a school of thought in transliteration from other European languages that use significant accenting or non-latin alphabets into English where the transcription protocol put "j" for a "y" sound. Why not use a Y for a "y" sound? Colleagues with a history of linguistics expertise would need to explain.... Perhaps it was just a matter of consistency with spelling from other European languages that use the latin alphabet.
Unfortunately, the "j" for "y" persists in one of the 3 transliteration protocols from Russian Cyrillic. Which is rather like the German names through Russian challenge noted by earlier posters. Not sure why the creators of that system felt that English speakers would better decode Katja than Katya for example.
And while immigrants to North America no longer have the spellings of their names decided by immigration staff at Staton Island and Pier 21, and can decide how they want their names transcribed in their new country, the ISU seems to have its own idea about how names should be transcribed. As I mentioned below, the international hockey governing body does. Or it could be that the ISU follows transcriptions provided by the national federations at first registration.
For example:
ISU version: Lubov Iliushechkina
Skate Canada [Canadian legal] version: Lubov Ilyushechkina
I suspect that Lubov had the choice of how to write her family name in English on her visa for Canada. From my perspective, she chose a version that is less likely to be mispronounced. [English speakers will tend to separate the "i" and "u" into two different syllables instead of treating them as a single vowel sound. "Yu" as in "Yulia" is easier to figure out.]
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2013
This is amazing!!! Thanks for sharing along the time to share.
right, an english speaker might mispronounce it.
as il-ou (omitting the i syllable) getting the y would be easier to not lose that syllable.
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- Jun 27, 2012
The Hungarian is not slavic language...You need to know..we are in same Finno-Ugric language family..
Omg, "Zang" it drives me crazy each time. Not only because both the opening consonant and the vowel pronounced wrongly, but worse, announcers somehow delight in the Zs.
"Zzzzzang" :hpull:
Okay, Mandarin is more of my neck of the woods. (Give way please, French and Russian)
Zhang should be pronounced like 'lung' not 'bang'. Depending on what is the actual Chinese word that is the surname, it can be (Zang) hard Z or Jiang (hard J) . The anglicized Chinese word does not represent the same word in Chinese. Zhang can be a number of different surnames in Chinese.
Conversely the same surname can have different anglicized versions. Example in my country, Goh, Ng, Wu, Woo, Ngo, Ngoh, Ngu is all the same Chinese surname 吴. (this is because the same word is pronounced differently by the different regions of China and the pronunciation is retained even after their ancestors have migrated to all over the world.
And then we go to the four tones of each sound (pinyin) in the Chinese language but that is for another day.
There is no soft Z, soft J, soft G kind of sound in Mandarin. (But there is soft and hard S) You kind of know if a Westerner learnt Mandarin as an adult/ as a second language (as opposed to growing up in a Chinese majority area) when he/ she speaks with lots of zh.
Thanks for this....I didn't realize that two very different sounding Chinese names were being given the same English transliteration under the new system....
Sigh...I thought I was doing well to keep track of the various transliterations through the successive generations of immigration to NA, and the differences in ideograms for the top names.
I think our point was that the Anglicized "zh" from French and Russian aren't the same as that in Chinese, but when a given letter combination is used to transliterate different sounds from various major languages, we end up with a number of persistent, but awful mispronounciations.
Sometimes I feel as though the folks that come up with these systems aren't trying to meet those of us who are sincerely trying to get it right half way.
And here is an article, and link to a pdf, with the solution that the IHF came up with for Russian Hockey Players. Could the ISU take this on for skaters? And not just for Russian?
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/pu...d-of-Russian-player-names-as-w?urn=nhl-319522
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- Joined
- Feb 27, 2012
But what about Lubov's first name? (I have wondered about it for a long time. Your post is the perfect excuse for me to finally ask about it.
)Is it not Любовь in Russian? Common first name (meaning "love").
If so, the first syllable would be pronounced as "lyu-".
Does she pronounce it as "lu-" instead???
Or does she pronounce it as "lyu-", but spell it as "lu-"???
ETA:
Thanks for letting us know.
Do you think that we can persuade the GS moderators to make this one of the threads that sits permanently at the top of the references?
Forgot to say that I see the mods already have granted your wish re the pronouncers thread over in the reference forum.
Thank you, mods
.
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The Hungarian is not slavic language...You need to know..we are in same Finno-Ugric language family..
Whoops. My bad
