How to pronounce the name of Holger Martin, German professor, 1942-2016

Factual Questions
1

How should I pronounce the name “Holger” be pronounced? Holger Martin was a German engineering professor who lived 1942-2016. Would the “g” be hard or soft?

Is the rest of the pronunciation as we American English speakers would typically say it?

2

Hard g. The rest is best pronounced non-rhotically, i. e. [Holgeə Ma:tin].

3

I’ve known a Holger in a professional context. Whole’-grr

4

Where else but the Dope, right?

THANK YOU BOTH!!

5

Except that the o in Holger isn’t followed by a u sound the way “whole” is in English (oʊ). The o in the Hol- syllable in Holger is more like the o in “boss” than the o in “whole”.

6

He and his colleagues said it Whole’-grr but it may have been Englishized/Americanized. I guess it the German should rhyme with vulgar in English.

7

Well, expanding your knowledge is always worthwhile, but it’s not like you have a lot to talk to him about these days.

8

hɔlɡɐ, more or less.

9

A monophthong for sure, but “boss” is going to be far too open in most NA accents I know, i.e. /ɔ/ or /a/ (depending on merger)

Anyway, the Wiktionary entry has a recording I find unobjectionable:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Holger

Also, German not being monolithic, the guy may very well have said it with /oʊ/

10

I’m not sure that Americans do use [oʊ] for the /o/ phoneme before an /l/ phoneme. I don’t think I do. To me, it sounds like the [ʊ] is replaced by the semivowel [ɫ], aka “back L,” similar to how I say /or/ as [oɹ], not [oʊɹ].

Of course, that German link doesn’t have a back L, so maybe that’s what sounds different. But I’d be more likely to transliterate a name like Holger into my native phonemes, rather than affect a German accent when saying the name. So I would say [ˈhoɫ.ɡɚ], “HOL-guhr.”

11

Yeah, yeah – but I have to present about a project that uses him as a reference, so I still gotta be able to say it.

I listened to Wiktionary and wind up with “Hoilgar” as an English approximation. Having spent a lifetime not pronouncing the German language, I’m not likely to do much better than that.

Thanks!

12

If in Germany, I would say something like “Holl-ga Mah-teen”. In an English-speaking context, I would probably Briticise the surname a bit, with the “i” in Martin like the “i” in “it” (and unstressed).