What is the proper pronunciation of the Italian name Beccaria (as in Cesare Beccaria, who published Essays on Crime and Punishment)?
As long as we’re at it, let’s make it a twofer. Am I correct in pronouncing vaguely Republican liberal author Camille Paglia’s name as PAH-lee-uh?
I’ve heard Italians from different part of Italy pronounce the same name differently, but my versions would be:
beh© CAR ya (Whether the C was doubled was one regional discrepancy I discovered)
PAHL ya (based on a classmate name Camiglia that said ca MEEL ya)
In some dialects, the double “c” is a sort of drawn-out “c…” sound, not a double “c-c” sound. Also some rules for most Italian words are that all the vowels are pronounced and the accent goes on the second to last vowel, I think it is.
So it would be
becca Ree-a (“i” is usually pronounced like our “e”, like with Paglia)
The “gl” sound is a sort of throaty “gluh” sound, so Paglia would be
pah GLEE-a or pag-LEAH
However, many names of people and places are not pronounced according to the general rules, so you never know!
How Italian!