How do YOU pronounce "Van Gogh"?

Smith

Can’t we just all get Van Gong?

As do I . And really, anyone to whom I’m likely to be saying “Van Gogh” is most used to hearing “Van Go” and might think I was being snooty and pretentious. (Or that I was stupid for saying it wrong.)

Same here and Van Go sounds like I am trying to say it like a Frenchman would, which makes no sense whatsoever.

Voted Van Goff, but actually Van Goch. I’m english, and I think most people here would use one of those. Van Go just sounds a bit silly to be honest.

Van Go. How many Americans here remember Deputy Dawg’s friend, Vincent Van Gopher?

I usually give it the ‘Ven Goch’ version. Close enough to the British ‘Gof’ that I don’t stick out, but not quite ‘Van Go’.

Interestingly, people seem to have maybe heard it as ‘Gof’ in Britain, as Waldemar Januszczak (a British art critic) showed a church register/list from his time in Brixton with the name rendered as ‘Gof’. Januszczak points to this inability to say/spell the name from hearing it as the reason he starts signing as ‘Vincent’.

The 1991 French film, Van Gogh, by Maurice Pialat has the most different pronunciation I’ve ever heard- ‘ven Goh-geh’.

It looks like the Dutch pronunciation is like this, but anyone in the US who doesn’t pronounce it like this, comes off as very pretentious.

Van Go. I didn’t even realize there was a different pronunciation until I heard that guy who played Slartibartfast saying Van Goch (like loch) in a Doctor Who episode last year.

It’s funny that many people in this thread are saying “Van Goch (like loch)” because it starts bringing into question how “loch” is pronounced. I thought “loch”, as in “loch ness monster” was pronounced “lock ness monster” in the US, i.e. similar to /ˈlɒk/ in IPA.

Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia say that loch is pronounced either as /ˈlɒk/ or /ˈlɒx/.

The sound is really not so difficult, it’s just a bit unusual to American ears. It does sound the tiniest bit like clearing your throat, but it’s actually just an “h” with more sound. That is, incidentally, also how “Bach” is pronounced.

We all had to learn the “th”, at least try and give us the “ch” in return (although I see that doing so might come out pretentious, just like an American saying “Aluminium” might be looked at sideways).

So if a British person were in the states and said “Van Goff” (as they would be apt to do) what would most Americans think? That he was stupid/wrong, that he was trying to be pretentious, or that that is how it’s pronounced in his country?

Most American’s is a hard one. Depending on where you are the pronunciation would either be not noticed because that’s just how the Brits talk, blinked at a bit because you were being pretentious, or met with momentary (possibly permanent) incomprehension. Stupid/wrong probably wouldn’t be in the running though.

Another Brit using the standard British pronunciation: Van Goff.

Ditto. And ditto.

WHAT?

Van’t Hoff. At least trying to get somewhere near the Dutch. But I’d mostly have to translate for my fellow Englishmen anyway. Fortunately, I’ve spent most of my life doing that.

I’m wagging wrong or pretentious. I think most Americans would be surprised to learn that there is a different pronunciation of Van Gogh in Britain.

Other: they wouldn’t know who you were talking about. If they did figure it out from context, they would most likely consider it wrong. It takes most people a little bit to make the connection that some words are pronounced that differently.

And the American pronunciation isn’t how we pronounce gh, but just that we tend to drop the sound if it is soft at the end of words, and replace it with [f] if it’s strong.

Van Go.

I’d never heard any other way until I saw this from Woody Allen’s Manhattan.

Me too. In fact, I’d never heard it pronounced any other way until the Doctor Who episode where he was featured.