What is Reddit's opinion of
Forvo?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
So you know how to pronounce things properly. So helpful for me as I suck at processing how words sound in my ~~heard~~ head. I have to just go from memory and this site is a god send.
Searched for a bit regarding the name, found a small town in India called Hogenakkal (sounds similar, perhaps his possible Australian accent would make it difficult to clarify). It has a giant forest about a mile away from town, and is prone to vicious cyclones, with that specific area being affected the most in India. A little over 8 years ago, there was one, Nisha, which killed about 100 people in that area. Not saying this is what he was talking about, but it's a bit eerie!
here is audio
and a more in-depth guide: http://www.travlang.com/languages/icelandic/Icelandic.pronounce.html
the d looking character makes a th sound, like in "the" i believe.
A word that English needs comes to mind: Backpfeifengesicht. A German word that basically means, "A face badly in need of a fist."
Edit: Special bonus! If you don't know how to pronounce it, here you go!
"REPAWST"
/facepalm
It's pronounced "Re-post". Source: I'm a fencer.
edit: Some people have been saying that's the British or French pronounciation. Neither is true.
If you listen to it, he's pronouncing it almost like "Re-pahst", where in British English it's "re-POLL-st", and in French it's "HREE-post". I've heard both Britsh and French version of it before... neither of which sounds like him.
Now the dilemma: Do you pronounce it properly and be accused of pretentiousness or do you purposely butcher the pronunciation (like in the video) and risk looking ignorant?
Although if people use an English pronunciation, they should really say chaise long, since that's what it means anyway (long chair).
It's definitely not Chan, the "ch" sound corresponds to the Turkish letter "ç", just like the "ç" in Çalhanoğlu. So, Chan would be "çan" in Turkish, which means "bell" in English.
The correct pronunciation should be something like how you pronounce the name John in an American accent. The first pronunciation by ohiyesa is how you pronounce it.
I couldn't figure out how to explain it using English words because I don't think there is any that make that particular sound. This site has a voice that does the correct sound. And yeah that's how you would spell it.
Try Forvo. It's a site where you can find native recordings of thousands of words.
I would also recommend listening as much as you can - music, audio courses, podcasts, kids shows... even if you don't understand everything, it helps to get used to hearing the language. Also check out YouTube if you're struggling to recreate any particular sounds, there are plenty of people who teach more in-depth pronunciation of most languages there.
These are actually two completely different sound changes.
phonics and all other words with phon- come from Greek φωνή - phonos. The sound represented by <ph> was originally an aspirated plosive, like in English pie, but it was then changed to an f sound.
The <gh> in tough originally represented a velar fricative, which was then changed to an f sound somewhere in the transition from Old English. So tough woulda sounded something like this back in the day.
Except you wouldn't pronounce the n at the end, so -onne is incorrect. http://www.forvo.com/word/prononciation/#fr
Also, in French it's spelled pron*onciation, so there shouldn't be a *u in there making it difficult.
No, actually, it is not like the English word "new" but more like "no" with a hint of a "u" sound on the end. It is very hard to explain, I am from Madrid but I have friends from Barcelona and I've heard them say it like this, and the Spanish commentators say it as well. Because I can't really explain it, here is a link of two men from Spain pronouncing it. One of them is from near Barcelona and I believe it is is the first link, he does a good job of enunciating.
He seems to be from Croatia. In the Croatian language Europa is pronounced a bit like AIR-opa, so "an European" would probably make sense in a Croatian English accent.
(Pronunciation according to Forvo)
The actual, French pronunciation is "pü-ré", which is still different from "pure A". However, when it comes to words borrowed from French, "purée" is well down on the priority list.
Because I get it. The "é" sound might be uncanny to English-speaking people's ears, and the French "u" has no equivalent in English, so, okay, I can accept an "Englishization" of the word. Same goes for rendez-vous (because the French "r" is a nightmare) or crème fraîche. It's fine.
But I will never, ever give up the fight on lingerie. Who in their right mind can read that word and think "Oh, yeah, lin, that looks like it should be pronounced with an "o" in the middle. Yeah, and rie is obviously meant to be pronounced like "ray"."
No. Nope nope Aisha Tyler-style noooooope. Lingerie, as its writing reveals, is pronounced "lin (like the word "un") - je (and not "dje") - ree".
If the "j" and the "r" are tough to your tongue, 't's alright, you can say "lindjewee", I don't mind. But for God's sake, that may be the one word in French that is actually pronounced like it is written and people butcher it.
Fun fact: it is intended to be pronounced the same as one pronounces "sumo" (as in "sumo wrestling") in Japanese (which is not how you say it in English): 相撲
http://www.forvo.com/word/simo_h%C3%A4yh%C3%A4/
The more I think about it the more it starts to sound a combination of a hyena and Brazilian. Instead of "Huehuehuehue" you hear "häyhäyhäyhäy" and bang.
>How do people pronounce "almond"? I heard a lot of people say "al-mond", but when I use the dictionary app, it reads "o-mond".
I would pronounce it "al-mond," though I suppose there may be accents that would pronounce it closer to "o-mond" or "ol-mond".
>"Didn't", my school teaches "di dent", and I heard some people say "dint". Which is correct?
I would pronounce it more like "did-ent" but "di-dent" and "dint" would probably be acceptable as well.
>A lot of people in my country pronounce "flour" as "flar". But, when I check, it is same sound as "flower".
>And "won", this, a lot of people pronounce it "w -oh- n", but actually it's same sound as "one".
Correct.
Also, if you're not aware of the site, Forvo is a great site when you're not sure how a word is pronounced. It has tons of native speakers pronouncing individual words and the speakers are from all over so you can hear US, British, Canadian, Australian, and other accents for the word.
It's not entirely correct, better than the first one though.
The G in the word gyllen is a soft G, almost like a Y and there is no throaty "ch"-sound in the word haal.
It's just details though, didn't mean to sound douchey.
edit: tyrroi posted this, it's the right pronouncitation http://www.forvo.com/word/gyllenhaal/
His Russian is quite horrible to be honest (I shouldn't be judging though as I'm not a native speaker, just grew up playing with Russian kids and half-assedly studied it as a third language at school). But to me personally his accent is quite alien, you can understand the words but in general it sounds like he's trying to pronounce Russian language sounds as if they were written in English letters. For example in this video he says "Zdravstvuite" (hello) to the soldiers and you can compare how it's properly pronounced here and how different it sounds coming from his mouth.
One interesting thing is how in his reaction to the firecracker he uses a oy (ой) in a very slavic manner (I am aware that Oy! or Oi! is used in UK but in Russia saying ой is the equivalent to "oh shit" or in the case of this video "ohshitohshitohshit")
It is pronounced, but not always. Here I'm singing "Fener ağlama" with a more hearable ğ, but sometimes it does do nothing but make the preceding vowel longer.
Usually you can hear it more clearly when it is between two vowels e.g. in tuvalet kağıdı
Idk, a non native could think pronunciation of bağlama (a musical instrument) sounds just like baalama (baalama isn't a word btw), but I can distinguish because in bağlama the first "a" is not long at all.
To be a bit more specific, the っ (called the sokuon), marks a geminate consonant. A geminate consonant is basically a consonant which is pronounced for longer. For a sound like "t" or "k, it resolves itself by essentially pronouncing the consonant twice, with the little pause, so まって is "mat-te" because you can't exactly pronounce a longer "t"
However, with an "S" it is slightly different because you can extend an "s" sound. I would compare these two words here, first is [一緒](#fg "いっしょ") pronounced here while the second is [衣装](#fg "いしょう") which you can hear here. You can see that in the case of an "s" it is resolved differently because it is a fricative, instead of a stop, like the others.
It's pronounced pretty much exactly how Boze says it. I don't even hear him exaggerating it at all.
Ninja edit: here's a bunch of Spanish speakers pronouncing it.
I'm happy to concede that the Italian way of saying 'Ricciardo' is 'Richardo' or whatever if that's what you say, but it doesn't change the fact that every F1 fan, commentator, media personnel, the man himself and his family pronounce it 'Ricardo.' He has even said that he gets annoyed if people pronounce it any other way. So that is how OP should pronounce his name.
My uncle lives in Russia and has this curse in which he defecates golden ingots instead of human feces. This allows him to travel to whatever country he wishes to at any time. While he was in Russia I asked him if he could pick up a Vostok for me (pronounced as Va-stohk). He bought this watch, specifically model 219471 from the Komandirskiye line. (The reason I put in the "y" is to emphasize that the letter "e" is pronounced. Actual pronunciation: Kah-man (think Jamaican accent)-dir-skeeh-yeh. ~~Literal translation "Of multiple commanders"~~ Literal translation "Commander's").
For a roughly $27 dollar watch, it's phenomenal. It has a mechanical movement (not automatic) containing 17 ruby jewels with a screw-down crown. The back is decorated with the glorious Russian coat of arms, while the front has an eloquent star with an anchor in the middle. My only complaint is that leather band. It's horrible. Strands are poking out and it looks hastily done. Despite the band, it's pretty and I shall wear it with my Bosco Russian Olympics tracksuit, shouting "Glory to mother Russia!" everywhere I go.
EDIT: Grammar.
I'm english and I pronounce it sqwi-rl. It definitely doesn't rhyme with swirl or curl.
It's a Hebrew word (שדים) pronounced <em>she-deem</em>. The word originates from Babylonian/Akkadian, but the -im suffix comes from Hebrew (the word is actually plural in Hebrew; a single demon is "Shed").
The equivalent word in Arabic is شياطين, pronounced Shayatin, but I think that it has a different origin (Hebrew "Satan", or an older source that influenced both).
> Enerģija
On this website, to my ears it sounds as though he's saying "ener-dier" but I imagine there's more going on inside the mouth with this voice palatal stop.
The "ã" is a nasal sound. Similar to saying "mmm" mixed with "uh". Here is a sound file, just press play twice in a row to hear our onomatopoeia for barking.
It's pronounced "poka tehrra".
Just the wheels. So you would say "pouca-terra pouca-terra (...) chu-chu!" if you wanted to include the whistle.
http://www.forvo.com/search/hispania/ http://www.forvo.com/search/espa%C3%B1a/
Also keep in mind that "hispania" is the latin ancestor word of españa. It's not unusual for a language to progress from /nia/ -> /nja/ -> /ɲa/
The Japanese language doesn't have emphasis on any syllables. I'm constantly chastised by my Japanese girlfriend for mispronouncing names/words by placing emphasis on certain sections. Kagawa is pronounced just as it looks: ka ga wa.
If you want to hear his full name pronounced, go here: http://www.forvo.com/word/kagawa_shinji/#ja
http://www.weblio.jp/content/%E9%A6%AC%E9%B9%BF
Examples for how to interpret the numbers: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Japanese/Pitch_accent
Using audio from http://www.forvo.com helps a ton
The description below uses other English pronunciations to translate - so could be problematic to understand if the examples are not clear, but here I think are two of the common English versions according to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lava:
*(US), (UK) IPA(key): /ˈlɑːvə/
*(Canada) IPA(key): /ˈlɑːvə/, /ˈlævə/
Where:
* 'ɑː' sounds like the "a" in "father, palm".
* 'ə' sounds like the "a" in "about".
* 'æ' sounds like the "a" in "cat, bat".
It sounds like Etho says 'lævə' which is a pronunciation in Canadian English, but not in UK or US.
Edit: I cannot figure out editing of reddit at all....
Edit again: Fun site (totally unofficial translations but) http://www.forvo.com/word/lava/
Considering this is minecraft, maybe the correct pronunciation is the Swedish version on that site. :)
none of them;
wikipedia says english pronounciation would be:
>Jolla, in Finnish, is pronounced 'yolla'.
the word means a small Sail Boat
random site from duckduckgo search: http://www.forvo.com/word/jolla/ contains a recording of the pronunciation with some mic-whine-noice :P (is correct -source: I'm from Finland)
I guess you're right. It's not like they can use internet there or have 30 seconds to spare for something as meaningless when there can be a drunk "celebrity" to report about at any moment.
Very well done. But as a Serb, I just have to point out two minor mistakes regarding serbian names used.
1) It is not Vel*i*jko Čubrilović, it is Veljko Čubrilović.
2) In surname Princip, "c" is pronounced as "zz" in pizza, like "Prinzzip". The way Indy keeps pronouncing it just sounds weird.
> Either "Dovi*dz*enja" as Valens said
I said "Doviđenja". Tipični Sarajevac, ne zna razliku između mekih i tvrdih glasova.
I agree on "prijatno", it's a nicer thing to say to older people. Here's the pronunciation.
I've tried it for a couple of random words and it's decent I guess. The stress was correct. It does lag on certain words, so that sounds somewhat strange. Personally, I also just don't like the way it sounds, but that's me.
You can try using forvo. Search for the word you want to hear and it usually has a recording (often multiple) of native speakers pronouncing that word.
There is no Ы sound in English.
Maybe this would make it clearer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB61Fi1LluY
If you want examples go to frovo and look up words with ы in them.
Мотыга, сыр, дыра, живопыра, костыль, камыш, малыш, пузырь, мыло, прыгалки, прыгун, кавыль, кобыла, калмык, кумыс, пыльца, рыльце (рыло), пыль, пылинка, былинка, лыко, упырь, бобыль, копыто, корыто, быль, пыль, ссылка, крынка
I believe the original word and sound was norðrmenn; the character Ð/ð sounds like -th in English "them". The name was "northmenn" in other words.
You can hear an accurate version of "norður" in Old Norse/Icelandic here.
You might want to check out Forvo. It basically a site where people record words from their native language, to let others hear how they're pronounced. I took a French class online this past summer, and it really helped me out a lot. It's free, and easy to search (or contribute).
Please stop butchering Inoue's name... you might actually confuse people who know how to pronounce it
http://www.forvo.com/word/inoue/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yz8-SmxOBg
here's a couple of guides
Here's a bunch of examples of Quoc:
http://www.forvo.com/search/Quốc/
And the second syllable here has the same accent as is turning up for names containing Tram:
http://www.forvo.com/word/nam_trầm/#vi
So, my best guess is Wuck (rising accent) Dram (falling accent).
There are pronunciation rules in French. Of course there are many exceptions, but most of the time you can tell how to pronounce a word from the way it's spelled.
Here's a good website to start: http://ielanguages.com/frenchphonetics.html
And if you want to look up individual words and hear them pronounced by native speakers, use this: http://www.forvo.com/ (use the search bar)
The company originally had a multiword name that they knew would be awkward. So they renamed it after the company's first president, Jujiro Matsuda. They shortened it with an eye towards making it catchier to Westerners, and it became Mazda. But check out the top 3 links on this page to hear it pronounced by various Japanese people.
> Fjaðrárgljúfur
Try Forvo.com
[The pronunciation from a native (click the blue play button for audio)]
To a layman like me, it sounds like: "Fh-yahr-reh-harg-luh-goorrrrrrrrrrr"
One problem here is your list is a weird mix of Welsh, Irish, English and Anglicised Irish words. I suspect at least one of them to be a Scots gaidhlig spelling too. Morva appears to be Hungarian. It certainly isn't Irish because there is no letter V in Irish. So with all the goodwill in the world we can't give you the correct Irish pronunciation of words that aren't Irish.
This site might be of some use to you.
Ewa is pronounced like Eva. Here is Michalak.
In short, the complete opposite of how I've been pronouncing it in my head...
How do brits pronounce "hat" and "twat"?
EDIT: Jeez, that wasn't well received. I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I honestly was curious. In Wisconsin, 'hot' rhymes with 'twat', and 'cat' rhymes with 'hat' (see "The Cat in the Hat"). EDIT 2: Turns out I'm not the only one who pronounces it "Tw-ah-t."
The ä is actually pronounced a lot more like the a's in Manhattan than the a: http://www.forvo.com/word/trollh%C3%A4ttan/
But focus, guys, it's the name that's funny, not the god damn pronounciation!
it's hard to describe how to pronounce the arab letter 'ein to an english speaker. it's like a combination of a (as in dark) and e (as in bed), and it... takes some practice.
here is a pronunciation of the first word.
It might be best just to listen to a French person pronounce it:
http://www.forvo.com/word/faux_pas/#fr
Because there are certainly other people out there who, like me, don't share your particular accent and pronounce the "pa" in "passenger" differently than in "paternity" and "Pasadena".
Either you work for this company and are doing backwards publicity or this website was made in heaven for you. hahha I think this is what you requested. Although I havent used the site myself, it looks to be exactly what you wanted.
You know, I thought I had it down, but apparently I (and every commentator) have been saying it wrong.
http://www.forvo.com/word/wojciech_szcz%C4%99sny/
Hit the little blue arrow.
Sh ten sney
And this is how you say 'Llwyfen'
When I used to speak to foreign customer service people they used to try and pronounce it. Most of the time it would come out something like "lus len", was actually quite amusing.
Interesting. I never realised the Americans pronounce it different.
http://www.forvo.com/word/bologna/#en
British and Irish speakers (of which I am one (a Briton) say it the Italian way, from which the Americans deviate. Pretty much the same with lingerie, Ibiza etc.
I don't think that's how a modern Pole would pronounce it. If I'm not mistaken, the pronunciations provided here are more accurate. Transcribed into English the pronunciation is closer to Vwadyswav than to Vladislav.
edit: Having said that, in his time, the pronunciation most likely would have been closer to Vladislav since the sound represented by ł changed from the velarized alveolar lateral approximant (/ɫ/) to the labio-velar approximant (/w/) only after the 16th century. Even afterwards, the older pronunciation has continued to persist in pockets of Eastern Poland.
Also, learn how Lapua is pronounced ( http://www.forvo.com/word/lapua/ ) & where it comes from (Finland).
Not only will you weed out the losers, but the guys that know will be MUCH more interested in you...
Fun facts from the top of my head: Budapest has the second oldest underground railway line in the world (after London, so basically it was the first in mainland Europe), and it still operates today.
The language is very unusual in Europe and in the world. The origins of biggest part of our vocabulary (about 30% of our words) are unknown. The rest are Uralic, Slavic (20-20), German, Turkish (10-10), and other (Latin, Greek, Romance languages). Little anecdote for you: A group of people from several countries once held a little competition on which language has the most beautiful word/phrase for saying "I love you". The Hungarian man in the group thought that the actual word (szeretlek) sounds a bit too harsh, so he went on and said the word is "lenolaj" (sounds a bit like len-o-loy), which actually means... linseed oil. He won. :)
^^hope ^^I ^^am ^^not ^^late...
It's actually "oiler." Dude was swiss...german swiss.
Here, from wikipedia: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/De-Leonard_Euler.ogg
another german dude: http://www.forvo.com/word/leonhard_euler/#de
I'm almost sure Japanese has no phenomic dipthongs; it certainly has phonetic dipthongs.
Here're some examples; to my ears all of the pronunciations are definitely [ai].
You can hear two people pronounce it in Sanskrit here. The two recordings are a bit different, but it gives you an idea of regional differences existing today.
atchIzna! pragrEssa i mIra zvezdU
ti pErvoy zazhglA nad zemlEyu.
slAva naUke, slAva trudU!
slAva savEtskamu strOyu!
Capitalized sounds are stressed. That's how it's pronounced, not how it's spelled, hence all these 'o' -> [a], 'e' -> [i] etc.
[u] in this case is pronounced as 'oo', as in 'foot'.
[au] are two different sounds, like [au] in 'down', not like [o] in 'Australia'.
'Ti' is not a very accurate transliteration of 'ты', but you can listen to the original here.
How's this?
Vamana: http://www.forvo.com/word/vamana_purana/
Bakasura: http://www.forvo.com/tag/bakasura/by-date/
If that is right, i'm surprised--it sounds like the final "a" is silent on both of those names?
I half expected to see one of my accidental, gutting, honest comments there. I never quite realized I've done this, but I too have been taken by surprise by the unexpected, near unbearable emotion I've felt when hearing a certain song, perhaps for the first time in decades, and have left a comment talking about extremely emotional and personal experiences.
Saudade, what a great word, I had to look up the pronunciation.
>Because the magic thing about the wonderful, jagged narrative found in the comments of YouTube videos is that it’s all a big accident. You couldn’t intentionally design a site that elicits the kinds of heartbreaking, personal stories I find in YouTube comments. A site specifically for sharing memories would attract people who are adept at writing or already used to sharing. But not everyone knows they have a story to tell — not until a song starts playing and the memories come rushing back. And sometimes, often, the stories they share are truly profound.
This immediately made me think of postsecret.com. After the first few hundred thousand "jagged narratives" over the years, you do start to wonder if people are being authentic or just attention whoring. The thing about 'sad youtube' is that everyone knows their comment might be buried within a day or even hours. No one is sharing for posterity, only for that moment.
You'll need better questions
> Why did you decide to have Homer working in a power plant?
>PLAYBOY: Why did you choose that job for Homer?
>GROENING: I thought the idea of a nitwit like him working at a nuclear power plant was funny
- > How do you really pronounce your last name?
I think hes answered the one about futurama too but i cant find a source on it.
Icelandic pronunciation is weird. I think it's more like gill - veh. Gilfy is probably the closest most of us English speakers can get without sounding dumb.
A lot of times it's transcribed as [əɹ], but I think more accurately (or at least alternatively) it could be transcribed as an r-colored vowel, [ɚ]. Also you get syllabic R's sometimes, just like you get with other consonants in non-rhotic dialects (e.g. words like "cuddle" could be transcribed as [kʌdəl] or [kʌdl̩]).
You can hear audio of an American woman (second clip) saying "lecturer" here. She does articulate it quite clearly though. If I were speaking rapidly I think I would end up saying something like [lɛkʃɹɚ].
Here's a native saying it.
Are you reading Pushkin by chance?
Я помню чудное мгновенье
Передо мной явилась ты
Как мимолетное виденье
Как гений чистой красоты
I'm guessing: raj-ini-kanth
with Raj rhyming with Taj, as in Taj Mahal.
and kanth with an a as in f*a*ther)
edit: formatting and this audio clip.
edit 2: seeing other pronunciations where it's more like ruh (or reh) - genie - kaunt
with genie as in I dream of Genie
and kaunt as in taunt rope.
(I'm Californian, so don't take my word for it.)
Trust me, taking the time to learn the script will make things a lot easier in the future. Relying solely on transliteration will only get you so far as no one really uses it in every day life.
If you're worried about the spellings and pronunciation you can use voweling to help you out. Also, check out Forvo it is a database of native speakers saying words which I found really helpful when I was learning. Lastly, I find writing the script really enjoyable and you can make it look really beautiful.
Wasn't sure what you meant by a source for that but this is a link on how to pronounce it. If you look at the Tibetan version of the mantra you will notice ཧཱུྂ which is a special Tibetan cluster to transliterate the devanagari हूँ
Edit: Seems Reddit doesn't really support Uchen. Sorry. Anyway, as mentioned earlier, Hum and hung are alternate transliterations, but aren't really exactly how you pronounce it. But if it makes you feel better, the pronunciation of this mantra varies a lot; Tibetans are unable to pronounce Vajra, and pronounce it as Benza...but I guess the mantra still works :) so you shouldn't worry too much about Hum or Hung
There are a lot of rules to consider, but thankfully, once you know them, you'll be able to pronounce words accurately maybe ~80% of the time based on their spelling.
You need to associate written combinations of letters with the sounds they make. Here's a website that might help: http://ielanguages.com/frenchphonetics.html
You can also look up words on Forvo to hear how they are pronounced, and practice by yourself. Like, look at a new word, guess its pronunciation, then listen to it on Forvo to see whether you guessed right.
http://www.forvo.com/ (search bar in the top right corner)
It's different languages, but they are pretty similar. I can understand and read both Danish and Norwegian, and I think that goes for most swedes.
Take the sentence "I am a hunter" for example.
Swedish: Jag är en jägare.
Danish: Jeg er en jæger.
Norwegian: Jeg er en jeger.
A bit different in terms of spelling and pronunciation, but definitely understandable.
Finns on the other hand: "Olenmetsästäjä".. don't think I need to explain why we don't understand them.
The Persian pronunciation on this page
It's a guttaral consonant produced by kind of choking yourself. The French R can sound somewhat similar.
Not sure if serious, but it has been pointed out many times that this is not how Granny would pronounce his name in Finnish. Doc wanted to know how Granlund pronounces his name in Finnish and Granny answered. This is not very hard to find from the internet if it really is such a great mystery.
Ключевская сопка (Klyuchevskoy stratovolcano) - with this you can just focus on the first word.
Too bad it's not a silent NG. It's actually just a sound that doesn't appear at the beginning of syllables (let alone words) in English (or most European languages, for that matter), so English speakers tend to omit it.
No, I found it on another subreddit. Helped me learn some german words, which I was having a hard time with.
The website is online since January 2008, and the owner is from San Sebastián (Spain).
I would say those three words don't rhyme with each other. I'm not Swedish, but I can speak Swedish reasonably well.
You can listen to some pronounciations on Forvo and Lexin. Lexin only has the 'basic' form of the word, i.e. verbs in the present tense, nouns in the singular indefinite. On Forvo you can request a word to be pronounced if it isn't already there and someone will pronounce it within a day or two.
I think perhaps 'lejonet' is just a tricky word to rhyme with. I think that words that rhyme with 'mycket' will have to have an 'ycke' in them because there is very little stress on the last syllable. I don't pronounce the 't' at the end of 'mycket' so words like 'stycke' and 'smycke' rhyme to me. It will probably look a bit off written down though. Lots of words rhyme with 'vet'. The rhyming dictionary works well here.
So is this actually a legit linguistic theory that's nowadays been disproven?
I haven't thought about it all that much, but surely there are some different tones in English as well? I've read somewhere that English isn't a "melodic" language and that for example Swedish is, though I've got no idea what that actually means.
But for example, take the word "apa" (monkey) in Swedish as pronounced here on Forvo. We only have those two sounds for A (apart from long and short depending on the number of trailing consonants), so it's obviously not as extensive as in mandarin, but this is a tonal system as well isn't it? If you pronounced both of those A:s the same it sounds like some kind of foreign accent.
Would this people then suggest this difference is unintelligable when whispering? If so, isn't that a theory that takes about two seconds and a native listener to disprove?
(After writing this I may have come up with an English example. Wouldn't the sounds in "accent" and awe be pretty much the same?)
Actually a Japanese person would consider it to have 4 mora, causing the pronunciation to edge towards ko ma i nu. But really it ends up being half way between that and ko mai nu.
How to most Western people pronounce a Chinese name like "Mao Zedong" when they see it written in Romanized letters?
How different is it from the actual Mandarin pronunciation?
When you're always around people who would be butchering your name, it's really no different than it being a different name altogether. May as well choose something memorable and gender-obvious.
Follow up question.. (I have never heard it spoken since I have only seen it online)
Is it pronounced like it is spelled? or is the G pronounced like the Germanic languages? (Hard G) since Groot should mean "Big" in Dutch.
I wouldn't say that. Sounds really weird since Käpt'n is read to mean Kapitän. Since the female form is Kapitänin (at least that's what I found on Duden, I think it's not uncommon to use the male form for women as-well here), it would be more appropriately shortened to something more akin to "Käpt'n'n". But since it's not formal in any way, that's just sort of depends on the local dialect or whatever.
Also Käpt'n isn't pronounced as "CAP-ee-teen", it's pronounced like the English word "captain".
mad has a tensed ae sound that's mostly unique to dialects in the region (at least as being a distinct sound from the lax), sad's the same as general american. This includes someone from Philadelphia: http://www.forvo.com/word/mad/#en
"Llamo" as pronounced by a Chilean. Notice how they say "Iamo/Yamo".
"Llamada" pronounced by a Spaniard. A "y" sound with a very slight "j" sound as well.
On this page, scroll down and listen to the pronunciation of "hallar" as done by "Pablo2012 (Male from Argentina)". Hallar. He pronounces it as "ah*shar*" with an English "sh" sound.
In your dialect, "ll" may always be pronounced as a "J," but there are other, acceptable pronunciations for it, as there are several varying dialects of Spanish.
Also, I did not downvote you. I only made the comment.
Edit: Looks like /u/juluqu2 already beat me to it. Ah well.
Both the 'boh-ner' and 'bay-ner' pronunciations are incorrect. Imagine someone with a non-rhotic accent saying the word 'burner' and that's how it really should be pronounced. The 'oe' is just another way of writing an 'ö', which makes a different sound than just 'o'. You can listen to the difference between 'Bohner' and 'Böhner/Boehner' <strong>here</strong>.
Pronunciation of 'Azpilicueta'
Please note that pronouncer girl has not a Spanish (from Spain) accent (pretty sure is from latinoamérica). In Spanish from Spain the word is very similar, unless the 'z' isn't sound like a 's' --> Aspilicueta. NO!!!
In Spain we pronounce that 'z' as 'th' --> Athpilicueta. YES!!! (It's kinda like 'south') :)
I'll just leave that here for you. Just press the play button and it pronounces it quite clearly, I think. better then trying to explain it by writing ;)
edit: Oh, and I forgot, GO GUNNERS!
If you don't try, how do you find out? Your friend should get points (& a some kind instructions) for making the effort. How do you pronounce Sequim (a town in the Pacific NW)?
On the other hand, 'colloquially' was mispronounced in a professional capacity. That's just lazy.
Edit: bonus link
Can you blame us? Apparently Polish is impossible to figure out.
The "real" pronunciation of his name has a "ten" sound. No idea where the hell the Poles got that from "Szczesny".
It's mostly a matter of emphasis, which should be on the second syllable rather than the first. http://www.forvo.com/word/%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8A%D1%80_%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2_dimitar_berbatov/
The syndrome is literally named after the man, and he was Austrian. It stands to reason that it should then be pronounced as the name is pronounced. The second and third syllable rhyme not with "burr" but with "bear".
Listen to the German pronunciation here to get an idea of what it should actually sound like in high German. In Austrian, you may well wish to roll the middle R in addition - he likely used both versions, depending on who he was talking to.
For kicks, listen to the French version as well and realise how awful it sounds when you randomly pronounce a name as if it was written in your native language.