The actress in the New movie, The Lovely Bones, is getting a lot of press mentions, but I have yet to hear anyone attempt her name: Saoirse Ronan.
Brett Favre. I want to pronounce it Fov-ray instead of Farve.
And how do you pronounce Nguyen and Ng?
Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, from Oz, Lost etc.
Help?!
jah-NEEN gah-ROF-ah-low It probably should be gah-ROF-o-low, but Americans slur.
About the closest Americans get to Nguyen is “wen”.
I knew someone who’s first name was Nguyen, and she pronounced it “Win.”
ETA: That’s how she introduced herself. Maybe “Win” was the closest she thought we could come.
That tends to be the way it’s pronounced in English, but there really shouldn’t be an “r” in there–at least if you’re trying to pronounce it as in German. Although, here in Chicago, it’s often “goath” or “GAIR-tuh” for the street named after him, which is even farther away from the German pronunciation.
“Win” is the anglicization, but there is an actual “ng” (velar nasal, like the “ng” in “sing”) that is pronounced by Vietnamese speakers. There’s two sound files in this link which have the pronunciations by Northern and Southern dialect speakers. Note the initial consonant.
This thread is full of Nguyen.
Seer-sha. I’ve met a couple of people with that name. Though I know one English child given the name by a family with no Irish connection (traditionally-spelt Irish names have been pretty popular here for the last few years) and her name’s pronounced sore-sha.
Euler (took it me a while to find out it’s pronounced oil-er).
And about Brett Favre’s name. Do other people with that surname pronounce it (farv) or (fahv)? Something tells me pronouncing the v and r in the wrong order is just an affectation, like how Sade (the singer) pronounces it “Shah-day”.
He-row’-nee-muhs Boss
-row’- to rhyme with low, not with now; All vowels shorter than in English, no consonants aspirated (i.e. if you hold your hand in front of your mouth you don’t feel it being hit by exiting air when you say ‘p’ or ‘b’); the -uh- in -muhs is a shwa, but I couldn’t be bothered to find the symbol.
Actually I think you might be supposed to pronounced a diaeresis on the e, separating it from the i, in which case it would be more like
He-yuh-row’-nee-muhs Boss
which would eventually become:
Yuh-row’-nee-muhs
which corresponds with the modern Dutch name Jeroen - Yuh-Roon.
Pretty much sound it out remembering that the e at the end of words in pronounced like the ‘ay’ in ‘hay.’ Adday-Wahlay Akin-u-oy-ay (the u is very quick and hardly discernable) Ag-bah-jay (hard j like in judge).
Zbygniew Brzeziński- Zbeek’-nyev Bzheh-zinj’-skee
Željko Ivanek
I can’t even spell it. I had to search for it. I usually think of him as “That guy from…” Homicide, Heroes, Big Love, just to name a few.
That’s not an affectation, it’s not an English name. It’s Nigerian, her full name is Helen Folsade (pronounced foal-sha-day) Adu. The affected pronunciation is when people put an R into it, for whatever reason, and call her “shar-day.”
And the person I know with the Saoirse says it “sheer-sa” with the h sound in a completely different place. Huh. Maybe we should just translate and call them all “Freedom.”
I’ve heard people pronounce “Nguyen” as “New-Jin” and also as “New-Yin.” I’m not sure if either is correct.
Had a classmate once whose last name was “Ng” and he pronounced it like “ing.”
T. Coraghessan Boyle
Ya beat me by three minutes.
Also Ngaio Marsh. (Marsh is not the problem.)
Say “Nai-o” only instead of “nnnn” say “ng”.
Joe Mantegna