# Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il name pronunciation **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 4, 2019, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282 "2019-10-04T20:32:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/21 "2019-10-05T22:27:55Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > You’d think transliterations could be a little more regular, since they don’t have traditional and no-longer-accurate spellings, and they’re not borrowed words being spelt according to some other language’s orthographic system. Like, why does Nissan have a double ‘s’ when a double consonant usually indicates the preceding vowel is short in English? AFAIK all the systems of romanization of Japanese (except maybe very old ones) do what is being done in transliterating 日産, which is pronounced にっさん, as Nissan. It’s signifying the elongated (‘geminate’) consonant in さ (normally ‘sa’), signified by the っ in hiragana, by doubling the ‘s’ in the Latin letter version. There’s more than one thing going on. The system could suggest to you (according to general English spelling v pronunciation ‘rules’) that the ‘i’ is long by having one ‘s’. Or it could assume you know all 'i’s in Japanese are long and instead signal to you the ‘long’ ‘s’, which isn’t always the case in Japanese. Again I believe all major systems have taken the latter tack, and it’s reasonable. But Japanese is easier to transliterate to English than Korean\* is, and there’s still no possible system that doesn’t tend to misdirect in some cases assuming zero knowledge of the language, and which ‘rule’ of English pronunciation the reader might assume applies or not. \*Korean ‘double consonants’ are also written in English as just two of the closest Latin (as used in English) letters, but aren’t the same as Japanese long consonants, but rather a different modulation in aspiration v voicing compared to the single version of the ‘soft’ consonant on one hand, and the fully aspirated different letter of the same general sound on the other hand (ㅈ vs. ㅉ vs. ㅊ, etc.) ---
**Author:** ![TonySinclair](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/49beb7/32.png) [@TonySinclair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TonySinclair)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/22 "2019-10-05T23:25:12Z")
It’s very simple. There was an old President named Kim Jong il. And he had an idiot son who also became President, named Kim W. il. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/23 "2019-10-05T23:46:06Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > Like, why does Nissan have a double ‘s’ when a double consonant usually indicates the preceding vowel is short in English? And here’s the other thing, terms like “short I” and “long I” are silly terms to use about English vowels, which aren’t differentiated by length, not for the last thousand years or so, since when they spoke an English that would be a foreign language to us. They certainly have less than zero application to pronouncing Non-English words. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/24 "2019-10-06T04:35:38Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > That might work for a language that has a reasonably regular orthographic system, like German, Italian, or Spanish. It doesn’t really work for English. No, but it’s still what an Anglophone transliterating using the English alphabet is trying to do. You even do it within your own language, when your writers try to reproduce somebody’s pronunciation (other languages do this only very occasionally; some Anglophones do it for every single bit of dialogue said by a character with an accent Not The Author’s). That English doesn’t have a consistent phonemic map is a problem with English itself, not with how transliteration works. And that people will take a transliteration done with phonemic map A and read it with phonemic map B doesn’t happen only within English, but also when transliterations cross languages (cf. Portuguese-based Ceilan vs English-based Sri Lanka, and multiple mispronunciations thereboth\*). - Is too a word! You understood it, didn’t you? ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/25 "2019-10-06T09:07:30Z")
Sounds like what’s really happening is that Japanese people have worked out a system to write the language with the Latin alphabet, at which point it’s no different to borrowing a word from eg Spanish. And it’s easy to see why they’d want a company name to be spelt the same in different countries anyway, whereas I’ve seen names of leaders transliterated differently in different languages, and even the same language (Gaddafi/Qaddafi/Kadafi). The only mystery is why TV adverts etc don’t pronounce the two makes correctly. Perhaps they think it would confuse people? > [@Acsenray](#): > > As Anglophones do we really want transliterations like “Kneesahn”? “Rawdayvoo”? They do it in other languages, eg ‘fútbol’, and it seems to work for them. But what’s a ‘rawdayvoo’? And what the heck is DPRK’s ‘hmoob’? Re “short I” and “long I”, that’s what we were all taught at school many years ago when learning to read. “Adding silent E makes the vowel long.” How do linguistics describe the relationship between eg the a in mat and the a in mate? ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 9:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/26 "2019-10-06T09:27:36Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > How do linguistics describe the relationship between eg the a in mat and the a in mate? For starters, we’d need to ask in which dialects. And to go on, in some dialects they’re not even two different vowels: one is a vowel and one is a diphthong. Once it is known which actual phonemes are you talking about, the answer could be defined. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/27 "2019-10-06T16:46:47Z")
**[Moderating]** > [@TonySinclair](#): > > It’s very simple. There was an old President named Kim Jong il. And he had an idiot son who also became President, named Kim W. il. You should know by now to keep the political jabs out of General Questions. This is an official Warning. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/28 "2019-10-06T17:54:22Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > For starters, we’d need to ask in which dialects. And to go on, in some dialects they’re not even two different vowels: one is a vowel and one is a diphthong. Once it is known which actual phonemes are you talking about, the answer could be defined. I meant specifically in English, where the ‘silent E’ changes the preceding vowel. Eg Mat -\> mate Bit -\> bite Not -\> note Jut -\> jute Could have used an umlaut or something like in German, instead of an extra letter, but there must be some relation between the pairs of vowel sounds. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/29 "2019-10-06T18:52:01Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > I meant specifically in English, where the ‘silent E’ changes the preceding vowel. Eg > > Mat -\> mate > Bit -\> bite > Not -\> note > Jut -\> jute > > Could have used an umlaut or something like in German, instead of an extra letter, but there must be some relation between the pairs of vowel sounds. Whatever relationship there was is entirely historic and pretty much dispensable to describing modern pronunciation. Basic phonetics doesn’t treat these pairs as having special relationships. Deeper linguistic scholarship might have ways of describing historical connections, but they’re not relevant to basic examination of pronunciation. Note how the general American pronunciations are transcribed phonetically — Mat -\> mate [mæt] [meɪt] Bit -\> bite [bɪt] [baɪt] Not -\> note [nɑt] [noʊt] Jut -\> jute [dʒʌt] [dʒut] Originally the long and the short of it was just literally different lengths a a: e e: i I: o o: u u: This relationship is so far lost in time that long and short describing a letter name isn’t a helpful concept when you’re talking about pronunciation in a third language. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/30 "2019-10-06T19:06:01Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > ? How are they supposed to be pronounced if not how they’re spelled? The American pronunciation is closer to the Japanese (well I guess Mazda is ultimately Persian, but that’s not the company’s primary intent). Also Jaguar is another one that neither country gets quite right, but the American is closer to the Spanish/Tupian. > [@Nava](#): > > Barsalona is actually pretty close to the Catalan pronunciation. “Eebeetha” bothers me much more. Of course there is tons of contentious history on the status of Catalan and Spanish, and one shouldn’t discount the Spanish speakers in Ibiza. But the general trend is that people who pronounce it that way _in English_ are being pretentious. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/31 "2019-10-06T21:24:51Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Originally the long and the short of it was just literally different lengths a a: e e: i I: o o: u u: This relationship is so far lost in time that long and short describing a letter name isn’t a helpful concept when you’re talking about pronunciation in a third language. But it is a helpful concept when you’re trying to teach the rules of English spelling (such as they are). For me it certainly feels like the first set of vowels are quicker to say than the second, but I don’t know how to test that perception. And maybe it’s not so for Americans anyway. (In America all vowels are long, especially in the south. ;-)) Do they teach the ‘silent E’ rule differently in schools there? Oh, and was ‘rawdayvoo’ meant to be ‘rendezvous’? I would’ve written it ‘rondayvoo’, which shows the problem with phonetic spelling. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2019, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/32 "2019-10-06T22:41:37Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > And what the heck is DPRK’s ‘hmoob’? That is how it is written in the Romanized Popular Alphabet. b is a high tone. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/33 "2019-10-07T06:48:00Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > I meant specifically in English, where the ‘silent E’ changes the preceding vowel. Eg > > Mat -\> mate > Bit -\> bite > Not -\> note > Jut -\> jute > > Could have used an umlaut or something like in German, instead of an extra letter, but there must be some relation between the pairs of vowel sounds. You do not seem to have read the line you quoted. Original quote mine, new emphasis as well: > [@Nava](#): > > For starters, we’d need to ask in which dialects. And to go on, in some dialects they’re not even two different vowels: one is a vowel and one is a diphthong. Once it is known which actual phonemes are you talking about, the answer could be defined. Different dialects of English will pronounce those words differently. And in some dialects of English, mate is pronounced with a diphthong, not with a single vowel. So, we need clarification. Thanks, **Acsenray** , for these; the ones I underline are diphthongs rather than single vowels: Mat -\> mate [mæt] [meɪt] Bit -\> bite [bɪt] [baɪt] Not -\> note [nɑt] [noʊt] Jut -\> jute [dʒʌt] [dʒut] > [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > “Eebeetha” bothers me much more. Of course there is tons of contentious history on the status of Catalan and Spanish, and one shouldn’t discount the Spanish speakers in Ibiza. But the general trend is that people who pronounce it that way _in English_ are being pretentious. Well, “eebeetha” is pretty close to the way it’s pronunced in Ibiza’s Spanish 😃 The problem isn’t between Catalan and Spanish; the problem is all within English. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/34 "2019-10-07T08:53:53Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#): > > “Eebeetha” bothers me much more. Of course there is tons of contentious history on the status of Catalan and Spanish, and one shouldn’t discount the Spanish speakers in Ibiza. But the general trend is that people who pronounce it that way _in English_ are being pretentious. Wait, what’s the “non-pretentious” way? “Eebeetha” is the standard way to pronounce it here (UK) and the only other version I occasionally hear is “Eebeetsa” to rhyme with pizza, which seems all kinds of wrong. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 10:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/35 "2019-10-07T10:14:52Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Different dialects of English will pronounce those words differently. And in some dialects of English, mate is pronounced with a diphthong, not with a single vowel. So, we need clarification. Thanks, **Acsenray** , for these; the ones I underline are diphthongs rather than single vowels: > > Mat -\> mate [mæt] [meɪt] > Bit -\> bite [bɪt] [baɪt] > Not -\> note [nɑt] [noʊt] > Jut -\> jute [dʒʌt] [dʒut] I looked up English vowels on Wikipedia, and all the first set are described as monophthongs, and the second set with ‘e’ on the end as either potential diphthongs or full diphthongs. In the chart giving pronunciations for RP, it does indeed divide vowels into short and long. All the first set are short, and the second set are either long or diphthongs, which explains my perception and what I was taught as a child. Plus the General American chart splits them into tense and lax vowels instead, which explains why Ascenray never heard of the idea. > **[English phonology | Vowels](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_phonology#Vowels)** > > English, much like other Germanic languages, has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes, and in addition the vowels of English differ considerably between dialects. Consequently, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole, lexical sets are often used, each named by a word containing the vowel or vowels in question. For example, the .mw-parser-output span.smallcaps{font-variant:small-caps}.mw... For comparison, my examples would correspond to Wikipedia’s ‘lexical sets’ like so: Monophthongs: mat - trap bit - kit not - lot jut - strut Potential diphthongs: mate - face note - goat jute - goose Full diphthongs: bite - price ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/36 "2019-10-07T10:58:45Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > That is how it is written in the Romanized Popular Alphabet. b is a high tone. I think my ignorance just increased. ☹ Google translate says ‘hmoob’ is the Hmong word for ‘good’, which doesn’t help much. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/37 "2019-10-07T12:26:54Z")
> [@DemonTree](#): > > which explains why Ascenray never heard of the idea. I didn’t say I hadn’t heard of it. It was part of the curriculum in first grade. My point is that it’s not a useful paradigm to apply beyond teaching a six-year-old to read English. It has no application to a conversation about cross-linguistic pronunciation and orthography. And yes, rawdayvoo is rendezvous. The fact that we disagree over the transliteration is part of my point. There isn’t enough agreement over pronunciation among native English speakers to establish a pan-Anglophone system for transliterating foreign words. And yes, Nava, Spanish transliterates football as fútbol, but that kind of thing hasn’t been common in English for many centuries. As far as transliteration of non-Latin writing, my personal preference would be to use a system that sticks as close to IPA as possible without using special characters. That system would make Pinyin inappropriate for English. I’d prefer a spelling like “Peitcing” to “Beijing.” (Really I think we should feel free to keep saying “Peking,” but that’s a different conversation.) I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts about the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/38 "2019-10-07T12:57:19Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > Wait, what’s the “non-pretentious” way? “Eebeetha” is the standard way to pronounce it here (UK) and the only other version I occasionally hear is “Eebeetsa” to rhyme with pizza, which seems all kinds of wrong. Ibeetsa, rhyming with pizza, is the _Catalan_ pronunciation. Catalan spelling, Eivissa. > [@Acsenray](#): > > And yes, Nava, Spanish transliterates football as fútbol, but that kind of thing hasn’t been common in English for many centuries. One, that wasn’t me. Two, it doesn’t happen when the original language uses whatever version of the Latin alphabet (you guys merely ignore any non-English symbols), but it still happens when the original writing isn’t in a variant of the Latin alphabet. ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/39 "2019-10-07T15:58:26Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > I didn’t say I hadn’t heard of it. It was part of the curriculum in first grade. My point is that it’s not a useful paradigm to apply beyond teaching a six-year-old to read English. It has no application to a conversation about cross-linguistic pronunciation and orthography. It’s a valid rule of English spelling whether you’re 6 or 60, and whether it’s applicable to a given transliteration or not. Maybe there’s a better way to describe it, but no one has come up with one yet, and you evidently understood perfectly well what I meant. > [@Acsenray](#): > > And yes, Nava, Spanish transliterates football as fútbol, but that kind of thing hasn’t been common in English for many centuries. It was me who said that, and the fact English hasn’t done this is one of the reasons for the current mess of spelling rules. I agree it would be a bit late to start now, though. > [@Acsenray](#): > > As far as transliteration of non-Latin writing, my personal preference would be to use a system that sticks as close to IPA as possible without using special characters. That system would make Pinyin inappropriate for English. I’d prefer a spelling like “Peitcing” to “Beijing.” (Really I think we should feel free to keep saying “Peking,” but that’s a different conversation.) That’s fair enough, though maybe not a mainstream view. The tendency these days seems to be to try and reproduce distinctions in the original language, rather than aiming at correct pronunciation in another. But sometimes ensuring the correct, or at a least a good enough pronunciation is important, as in the Nato phonetic alphabet with ‘Alfa’ and ‘Juliett’ spelled as such to prevent mispronunciations in other languages. > [@Acsenray](#): > > I’m wondering if anyone has any thoughts about the OP. I live in England, and I have only ever heard Kim Jong-un with a ‘j’ sound. But I don’t watch TV. If newsreaders and TV presenters start saying ‘Yong’, then ordinary people will eventually follow suit. That’s the real reason people in the UK say ‘niss-an’: the adverts, and the Nissan dealerships etc say it that way. Japanese culture and language isn’t nearly as well known here as in the US, and Korean even less so, so who knows what those people (guests or regulars?) on QI were doing. I found a BBC video from Feb where the presenter clearly says the name with a ‘j’, so it’s not some universal thing: [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/8-4AuwYRcBQ/maxresdefault.jpg "North Korea's Kim dynasty- BBC News") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-4AuwYRcBQ) ---
**Author:** ![DemonTree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/demontree/32/8646_2.png) [@DemonTree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DemonTree)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2019, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282/40 "2019-10-07T16:02:58Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Ibeetsa, rhyming with pizza, is the _Catalan_ pronunciation. Catalan spelling, Eivissa. Ah, I’ve been wondering how Eivissa was pronounced ever since I went there and was surprised to see the signs. Never would have guessed! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jong-un-kim-jong-il-name-pronunciation/841282.md?page=3)