I have to call a client in a little while, and I do take pride in trying to pronounce names correctly. This guy is from Poland, and his first name is spelled Grzegorz.
Is is just “Gregor”?
ZHEH-gorsh.
If you want to say it in proper Polish, the “g” is pronounced, and there is no “r”. (“Rz” is a digraph like “ch” and “sh” are in English, and usually it takes on the pronunciation “zh,” but in certain cases, also “sh.”) It’s approximately “GZHEH-gohsh.” If you can read IPA, it’s /ɡʐɛɡɔʂ/. Or here is an audio sample of the name Grzegorz Lato pronounced by a native speaker.
That said, in English, Chefguy’s approximation is common, I think, although I can’t think of any Grzegorz that goes by anything but “Greg” in English.
Much thanks! Ignorance fought.
I figured you’d be along to give the question it’s due. My wife is of Polish extraction, and I was approximating her pronunciation. The gutturals of some languages are very difficult for the western tongue.
Wow, that Forvo.com site looks handy-dandy for people like me who read unusual names and words more than we hear them.
Yeah, if you look at the IPA, the “zh” and “sh” sounds aren’t exactly the same as the English ones. I’m fairly certain I no longer pronounce them correctly. And the “o” sound is more like the “o” in “dog,” in most American dialects. What’s odd to me is that even though the IPA symbol /ɔ/ is supposed to represent the Polish “o” and American English “aw” sound, they don’t sound alike to me. “Dog” pronounced by a Polish speaker will have a slightly different vowel than “dog” pronounced by an American English speaker.
It takes awhile to do the nasal short ‘o’ that you’re referring to. The easiest way I can describe it is that you say ‘aw’ but leave your nasal passage open, instead of blocking it as you would in the English ‘dog’. It makes the ‘o’ resonate in the sinus cavity. Midwesterners are good at this. I always had trouble with the non-aspirated ‘p’ at the beginning of words, as in pao, the Portuguese word for bread.
I believe you’re describing the Polish ą, whose IPA symbol is /ɔ̃/. That one is a nasal. The Polish o is not a nasal. When I say and hear the Polish o, it seems to be slightly more forward in the mouth than American English “aw.”
I’ll take your word for it. My Polish is limited to ‘good morning’ and ‘thank you’.