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Presenters who mispronounce foreign names

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  • willie1foot
    replied
    I did not know the correct pronunciation of Milngavie until I was in my early teens. To be fair, I’d never been there and had only seen it on the destination boards of corporation buses.

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  • ad hoc
    replied
    Just thinking out loud about something that occurred to me reading another thread, is there a tendency at all to filter pronunciations through more than one language in the case of, say Mesut Ozil? In Germany is his name pronounced in the Turkish way, or in a slightly altered way? I know that a number of English commentators tend to start his surname with a long "o" rather than the correct way. Though, having said that, I have thankfully never heard anyone pronounce Ilkay Gundogan's name with a second hard "g".

    And of course there are questions of identity - I presume some Turkish Germans for example have taken on a more German pronunciation of their name, just as many US Americans have changed their names (or their ancestors did) to be easier for the wider culture. My ex-grandmother-in-common-law in California was from a german Jewish background, but she corrected me when i pronounced her surname (Ulrich) in the most "authentic" way that I could - she used a short u and a final "tch" sound

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  • Lang Spoon
    replied
    Tannadeechay is brilliant, sounds like a resort.

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  • Lang Spoon
    replied
    My granda would have an exasperated explosion at the telly on the rare occasion Kirkcaldy made the U.K. "national" news. "Do they no dae any bloody research, were in the same bloody country" as some bools in the mooth type rhymed the middle syllable with pal rather than paw.

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  • Felicity, I guess so
    replied
    Seems appropriate to remind ourselves of BBC newsreader overcompensating in the other direction and pronouncing Tannadice ‘Tannadeechay’.

    Must’ve been early in our Euro glory years because by the end surely everyone knew.

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  • Duncan Gardner
    replied
    In my favourite Walsall pub there's a song on the jukebox about the local area.

    instant Caldmore gonna get ya

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  • ad hoc
    replied
    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
    This guy was a "Tolliver"



    I take Safire's point that it is the US version of Cholmondeley/Chumley
    See also Magdalene College, Cambridge

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  • Duncan Gardner
    replied
    Janik- report to my office at 0900. Your punishment will be to watch Branagh in all 3 Billy plays

    As a Wallander fan agreed that the English language adaptation is a bit rum. The Swedish-German ones are far better.

    Veteran commentators George Hamilton, Alan Green and I all attended the same school. But rest assured there are no plans for a commentary stint at Walsall or Burton, with Staffordshire yokels gurning that I sound like Reeves or Mortimer ...

    A Lieutenant Sebag Montefiore features in Spike Milligan's WW2 memoirs. At some point a fellow squaddie urinates on him
    Last edited by Duncan Gardner; 22-10-2020, 06:13.

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  • Sporting
    replied
    Our son's name, which is not rare, is pronounced differently in German, English and Spanish; the vowel sounds change in all three; syllable emphasis changes in Spanish. I say this merely to remind people that pronunciation isn't easy. I would also add that those of us who have learned foreign languages as adults know that for various reasons certain sounds and combinations (for example, consonant clusters for Spanish speakers or the trilled Spanish r for most native English speakers) are very difficult to master.

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  • willie1foot
    replied
    Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
    Ironically read in Hungarian the first syllable of Falkirk would be pronounced as it should be
    So the bugger might have been intentionally winding up the Scottish viewers? Nasty...

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  • ad hoc
    replied
    Ironically read in Hungarian the first syllable of Falkirk would be pronounced as it should be

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  • willie1foot
    replied
    In Australia, the revered late football broadcaster Les Murray (born Laszlo Urge in Hungary) who spoke perfect English used to take great pleasure in pronouncing the most complex of European football team and player names correctly but couldn't get 'Falkirk' right, pronouncing the 'Fal' like 'Mal'. I had a lot of time for Les, but that used to give me the screaming irrits.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    This guy was a "Tolliver"



    I take Safire's point that it is the US version of Cholmondeley/Chumley

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  • San Bernardhinault
    replied
    If that article is correct then, ironically, pronouncing Epstein's name as "Ep-stine" (as I instinctively do) is actually making it less Jewish.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Speaking of announcers missing names. I forget who it was, but there was at least one hockey announcer who insisted Patrick Roy’s last name was pronounced Rue-ahh.

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Helpful.
    That article also mentions Taliaferro sometimes, but not always, being pronounced Tolliver. There is (or was, at least) a Taliaferro Hall at W&M pronounced Tolliver. I never understood that. Why not just change the spelling?

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    ON LANGUAGE; STINE OR STEEN? https://nyti.ms/29QsDxS

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  • Hot Pepsi
    replied
    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
    Ooh Ooh

    One if those very rare occasions on which I get a Guy reference

    https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/20/jerem...name-11186885/
    I would have guessed Epp-stine. My recollection is that, in German words with “ei” or “ie” you pronounce the second letter.

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  • Benjm
    replied
    I remember that, Janik. The side-by-side juxtaposition was bizarre.

    IIRC, the Branagh Wallander had that internal inconsistency where the dialogue is in English but whenever the characters look at written material it is in Swedish. The same thing came up in an old episode of Van der Valk I watched recently and it is always distracting.

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  • Janik
    replied
    The opening post reminds me of weird bit of continuity announcing that I heard on BBC 4. Remember the Kenneth Brannagh series of Wallander films? Well, as they were made in English with an English cast, someone took the bizarre decision to have the main name pronounced as if it were an English one. One of the episodes of this series ran with a documentary directly after about the Wallander books. The makers of this show opted to used the Swedish (or: correct) pronunciation for their programme. Leading to this from the continuity person:-
    "WALL-ander returns at the same time next Friday.
    "Next on BBC Four: In Search of Kurt val-AN-der"

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  • elguapo4
    replied
    Originally posted by Diable Rouge View Post

    George Hamilton is noted for this, perhaps to the point of pedantry, and is the only one I've heard going the full oo in Lindeloof (given the diacritic doesn't display).
    Pity he has no powers of observation or knowledge of the basic laws of the game. At least he's better than Siobhan Madigan ( n.b how I also managed to fit in a difficult to pronounce name for the Sasnaigh )

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  • Diable Rouge
    replied
    Originally posted by Toby Gymshorts View Post
    It's even worse when it's sport commentators doing it. It's your bloody job to talk about these people, why not do a tiny amount of research and do it properly?
    George Hamilton is noted for this, perhaps to the point of pedantry, and is the only one I've heard going the full oo in Lindeloof (given the diacritic doesn't display).
    Last edited by Diable Rouge; 21-10-2020, 16:38.

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  • ursus arctos
    replied
    Ooh Ooh

    One if those very rare occasions on which I get a Guy reference

    https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/20/jerem...name-11186885/

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  • Evariste Euler Gauss
    replied
    Yeah, Kuntz.

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  • Sporting
    replied
    I mean, for Fuchs' sake.

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