How is the Italian last name Majone pronounced?
Ma-yo’-neh.
Thanks!
It’s an odd last name for an Italian, since there is no “j” in the Italian language. I’m guessing its origin is foreign or maybe a dialect. But yes, in Italian, when there is a j, it is pronounced with a y sound, like the soccer club Juventus (from the Latin), which is pronounced Yuventus.
Thanks. That explains why I couldn’t find a J in the pronunciation guides!
So the first syllable is Mah, not may?
Correct. The ‘-ay’ sound is normally signfied in Italian with the letter ‘e’.
How do they pronounce X? I know it only appears in a few words of foreign derivation, but none of the pronunciation guides I have explain it, and there are a few words: xilofono, xilano, xenofobia, etc. I’d guess /ks/, but they appear to have variants in s- which suggests it might be /s/ or /z/.
Your examples xylophone and xenophobia are derived from the Greek, so they would be pronounced with a /z/ sound, like in English. With other foreign words with an X in the middle of the word, I would think it would more often be /ks/, mirroring how they sound in the foreign language.
I love the Italian alphabet because it only has 21 letters. They’ve weeded out a lot of the chaff. Plus, it’s nice to cut directly from V to Z.
Be careful though. I believe an initial ‘x’ in Catalan/Menorquin is pronounced like an English ‘ch’; the same pronounciation could apply to other Mediterranean dialects.
A Catalan initial X is a Sh… it’s pronounced like Xabier and xylophone.
Out of curiosity, when you say an English ‘ch’, do you mean as in chocolate? I ask because I’m pretty tired of having to correct people who try to pronounce the ch in my lastname as a k (no, it’s ch as in chocolate…)
How does this follow? Both Ancient and Modern Greek pronounce Ξξ (xi) as /ks/. Not saying you’re wrong, just not sure about the logic. Wikipedia says X is pronounced /z/ in the Venetian dialect, for what it’s worth.
Hmm, well I’m way out of my depth here, so my conjectures are not worth much for GQ purposes. I would guess that both English and Italian have transmuted the initial /ks/ sound to a /z/ since a /ks/ sound at the beginning of a word is not common in either language.
Don’t we have any Italian Dopers? Che cazzo fanno, italiani?
Your logic seems to be that because English reduces /ks/ to /z/, Italian must also do so. This does not follow, obviously.
Italian has reduced -x- to -ss- in spelling (Maximus > Massimo), so maybe that gives a hint as to how to pronounce an x when it is spelled, but then again, maybe it doesn’t.
But it is true that many consonant clusters in Latin have been simplified generally in Italian, whether or not it was “because” they didn’t occur at the beginnings of words.
So in addition to /ks/->/s/ you have /ct/ -> /t/, /pt/->/t/, /ns/->/t/, probably along with others I don’t remember right now. I think most Romance languages went through a similar process. On the other hand, medieval Spanish scholars deliberately reclaimed some of the consonant clusters that had been lost, resulting in a bifurcation between popular and educated speech, or sometimes standard-language word having variants for different senses or constructions. From the same link,
If nothing else I can see that advanced Spanish is much more difficult than I imagined!
My buddy who studied Italian tells me that x is pronounced as /s/, but that maybe in the North there might be people who say /ks/. Still, no actual Italian to confirm this.
These are examples of changes in spelling; Does the fact that -x- in Latin became -ss- in Italian tell us that 'x’s that are actually there in Italian are pronounced as /s/ instead of /ks/? I don’t think that necessarily follows.
While waiting for human experts, ht tp:/ /ww w.dizionario-italiano.it gives xilòfono [ksi’lɔfono]; xenofobìa [ksenofo’bia]; xèno ['ksɛno] (the element xenon). It also gives bordeaux ['bordeauks], which gives me pause. Really? Bor-de-a-uks? I can’t imagine that’s accurate.
Ooh! http://www.dizionario.rai.it/ricerca.aspx has sound files!
ksilòfono; ksenofobìa; either ksèno or ksènon; and bordò (not exactly as in French; different -o). At least one, xumellese, is pronounced like an Italian z (dz), with an alternate spelling zumellese. It’s an ethnonym; from Xumello? Anyway, /ks/ seems to be the default. Most of the words with medial or final -x were from English or French, where it was either /ks/ or silent, and most of the initial-x words seem to be Greek in origin.
I am not Italian but I speak some. And I think what you said here is obscene. 
I think you meant “Che cosa fanno, italiani?”
ETA: I dunno, maybe you meant to be obscene.
Nice find. I am surprised. I’ve taken many years of Italian, but I don’t ever remember discussing the X, or xylophones coming up in casual conversation.
Sorry, yeah, I meant to be obscene. But I should have said, “Che cazzo fate, Italiani?” I got the plural you mixed up with Spanish. Unless I was being extremely respectful of our non-existent Italian dopers.
(Correction of my earlier post)
(changes to /s/ not to /t/)