How To Say my name! Pronunciation thread

[RedheadDane]

Obviously, accents will tend to butcher names, witness the names that touched off this particular controversy. It's probably enough to just try, within the limits of your own native tongue.

That wasn't really my point, though...
Matteo Jorgenson was being accused of butchering his own name because he doesn't pronounce it in Danish.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

How about when someone purposely anglicanizes the way they pronounce their own name? That just reinforces an incorrect pronunciation compared to how they would say it in their own language.

If it a case of "My name is [original pronunciation], but I don't mind if you say it as [adapted pronunciation to accommodate for the other party]", then that is a kindness that the speaker is offering: if I thought I could get close enough to the original without it being tantamount to an insult to his family and language I would try the original, but I would appreciate the offer.

If it is the situation that "The name was originally [Fooian pronunciation], but that contains sounds absent from the language of the place where we now live, so we now pronounce it [adapted version]", then that version is their name, and it would be extraordinarily arrogant to deny people the right to determine what their own name is.

If I see a name like Jorgenson, my default would be to pronounce the J as a Y (but not to try to imitate Danish/Norwegian vowel sounds, because I wouldn't know what I am aiming for, yet alone be confident of emitting them), but once I am told that the carrier of the name prefers to use a J sound, that's the end of the subject.

I think it's a shame that people find it necessary, on migration, to change their name, but I understand it. Maybe it is a kindness to the majority population, maybe it is a path of least resistance, a choice to remove a an obstacle to commerce or opportunity, or simply an admission of defeat and avoidance of embarrassment: it happens.

I wince inwardly when I hear Kinsella or Costelloe said as though they are Italian names, Mahoney as three syllables, or names of Polish origin ending "-cow sky", but that's my fault, not that of the people who use their names in that way. They have the right to choose.

tldr: Original is nice, but not necessarily correct.

 

[SafeBet]

Is this pronunciation of Anders Foldager correct?
Can any Danish poster give some explanation of that? It doesn't even sound like the same word to me.

 

[theyoungest]

If it a case of "My name is [original pronunciation], but I don't mind if you say it as [adapted pronunciation to accommodate for the other party]", then that is a kindness that the speaker is offering: if I thought I could get close enough to the original without it being tantamount to an insult to his family and language I would try the original, but I would appreciate the offer.

If it is the situation that "The name was originally [Fooian pronunciation], but that contains sounds absent from the language of the place where we now live, so we now pronounce it [adapted version]", then that version is their name, and it would be extraordinarily arrogant to deny people the right to determine what their own name is.

If I see a name like Jorgenson, my default would be to pronounce the J as a Y (but not to try to imitate Danish/Norwegian vowel sounds, because I wouldn't know what I am aiming for, yet alone be confident of emitting them), but once I am told that the carrier of the name prefers to use a J sound, that's the end of the subject.

I think it's a shame that people find it necessary, on migration, to change their name, but I understand it. Maybe it is a kindness to the majority population, maybe it is a path of least resistance, a choice to remove a an obstacle to commerce or opportunity, or simply an admission of defeat and avoidance of embarrassment: it happens.

I wince inwardly when I hear Kinsella or Costelloe said as though they are Italian names, Mahoney as three syllables, or names of Polish origin ending "-cow sky", but that's my fault, not that of the people who use their names in that way. They have the right to choose.

tldr: Original is nice, but not necessarily correct.

There's a certain intellectual laziness that comes with being a native English speaker. There's just not the need nor the will to learn any foreign languages. That's why when people actually try to pronounce words correctly they come off as pretentious snobs. Conversely when they pretend to do so but actually do a very bad job, English speakers aren't able to tell the difference either.

For reference: every Dutch accent ever done in any Hollywood movie or series. All equally terrible, all sounding nothing like a Dutchman. That's an experience you'll never get to have when you grew up speaking English: watching Oppenheimer and hearing Cillian Murphy supposedly speaking Dutch, but doing such a terrible job that not a single Dutch speaker understood a single word he said... and he won an Oscar for that role!

 

[ingsve]

Is this pronunciation of Anders Foldager correct?
Can any Danish poster give some explanation of that? It doesn't even sound like the same word to me.

Welcome to Danish. As a swede the only explanation I can give you is that danish people have a potato stuck down their throat and that is why their language sounds like that.

 

[AmRacer]

Welcome to Danish. As a swede the only explanation I can give you is that danish people have a potato stuck down their throat and that is why their language sounds like that.

I have heard that every Swede can speak Danish after a few 🍻

 

[ingsve]

For reference: every Dutch accent ever done in any Hollywood movie or series. All equally terrible, all sounding nothing like a Dutchman. That's an experience you'll never get to have when you grew up speaking English: watching Oppenheimer and hearing Cillian Murphy supposedly speaking Dutch, but doing such a terrible job that not a single Dutch speaker understood a single word he said... and he won an Oscar for that role!

Hehe, don't get me started on Hollywood and languages. I'm online friends with the guy who invented the Dothraki language and other languages for Game of Thrones and let me tell you that hardly anyone on that show pronounces the language correctly. The one that does it best is Jacob Anderson who played Grey Worm.

The most widely spread word from the Dothraki language is the title Khaleesi and let me tell you that no one pronounces it correctly. The proper Dothraki pronunciation is /ˈxa.le.e.si/ for those who can read IPA.

 

[Netserk]

Is this pronunciation of Anders Foldager correct?
Can any Danish poster give some explanation of that? It doesn't even sound like the same word to me.

Correct, but in normal conversation I'd smooth it out more. After the F, you can keep your mouth open.

 

[Red Rick]

For reference: every Dutch accent ever done in any Hollywood movie or series. All equally terrible, all sounding nothing like a Dutchman. That's an experience you'll never get to have when you grew up speaking English: watching Oppenheimer and hearing Cillian Murphy supposedly speaking Dutch, but doing such a terrible job that not a single Dutch speaker understood a single word he said... and he won an Oscar for that role!

Thanks for reminding me, my morning is ruined once again.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

There's a certain intellectual laziness that comes with being a native English speaker. There's just not the need nor the will to learn any foreign languages. That's why when people actually try to pronounce words correctly they come off as pretentious snobs. Conversely when they pretend to do so but actually do a very bad job, English speakers aren't able to tell the difference either.

For reference: every Dutch accent ever done in any Hollywood movie or series. All equally terrible, all sounding nothing like a Dutchman. That's an experience you'll never get to have when you grew up speaking English: watching Oppenheimer and hearing Cillian Murphy supposedly speaking Dutch, but doing such a terrible job that not a single Dutch speaker understood a single word he said... and he won an Oscar for that role!

That's quite a sweeping generalisation: there is certainly a privileged position in having a near-universal language as one's mother tongue, but every school pupil is taught at least one modern foreign language at school, and many pride themselves on learning beyond that.

But there is sometimes an inverted snobbery towards those that display education in any field outside an immediate professional millieu: I can't comment on whether that is unique to the English speaking world.

And yes, Polish friends tell me that the dialogue between Helen Mirren and Henry Lloyd-Hughes in Thurdsday Murder Club was incomprehensible.

 

[tobydawq]

Welcome to Danish. As a swede the only explanation I can give you is that danish people have a potato stuck down their throat and that is why their language sounds like that.

As a Dane and keen observer of my surroundings as well as of myself, I can debunk this theory.

But yeah, our pronunciation is neither logical nor pretty.

 

[tobydawq]

Is this pronunciation of Anders Foldager correct?
Can any Danish poster give some explanation of that? It doesn't even sound like the same word to me.

The first name: The d is silent and the A is pronounced like it would be in an Italian word. The ers ending is pronounced quite like the English word 'us'.

The second name: This d is also silent. Fol is not pronounced weirdly, but the 'ager' is probably not that easy. This a is flat (meaning it's pronounced like in the word flat), while the g functions like a less festive version of the Spanish y (it's not a hard g so you can barely hear it). The 'er' at the end is not emphasised and is basically like it would be at the end of an English word.

Daniel Friebe also tried to say this during the Vuelta but despite all of his linguistic prowess, he did not succeed.

 

[SafeBet]

The first name: The d is silent and the A is pronounced like it would be in an Italian word. The ers ending is pronounced quite like the English word 'us'.

The second name: This d is also silent. Fol is not pronounced weirdly, but the 'ager' is probably not that easy. This a is flat (meaning it's pronounced like in the word flat), while the g functions like a less festive version of the Spanish y (it's not a hard g so you can barely hear it). The 'er' at the end is not emphasised and is basically like it would be at the end of an English word.

Daniel Friebe also tried to say this during the Vuelta but despite all of his linguistic prowess, he did not succeed.

I listened to that episode and I genuinely had no idea of the rider he was talking about. Thanks for the comprehensive explanation. I normally take pride in trying to pronounce foreign names correctly but I'll take a pass on Foldager.

 

[Armchair Cyclist]

The first name: The d is silent and the A is pronounced like it would be in an Italian word. The ers ending is pronounced quite like the English word 'us'.

The second name: This d is also silent. Fol is not pronounced weirdly, but the 'ager' is probably not that easy. This a is flat (meaning it's pronounced like in the word flat), while the g functions like a less festive version of the Spanish y (it's not a hard g so you can barely hear it). The 'er' at the end is not emphasised and is basically like it would be at the end of an English word.

Daniel Friebe also tried to say this during the Vuelta but despite all of his linguistic prowess, he did not succeed.

And that's where the commentators' dilemma comes in: He may know that Annus Folayuh is a better approximation than applying rules of English phonetics to the letters in Anders Foldager, but if he does so, will his audience know who he means, and if they do not, is he serving his main purpose as a commentator? Is he race describer or educator?

I appreciate efforts at the original (I probably watch enough that I will become used to it and learn to recognise it), but we know from comments in the Hatch thread and elsewhere that many don't.