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 Nessie
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 #3 (permalink) Wed May 21, 2008 17:28 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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or some dictionaries of proper names.  It is difficult to find the pronunciation of such names. I tried to find such dictionaries in our bookshops, but I failed.
_________________
I am an incurable optimist. |
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Inga
I'm here quite often ;-)
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| #4 (permalink) Thu May 22, 2008 12:22 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| daemon99 wrote: |
| Can someone please tell me how the words given below should be pronounced? |
The English pronunciations of these names would be:
1) Gucci [ʼgu tʃi]
2) Fibonacci [fai bo ʼna tʃi]
3) Chevrolet [ʃɛ vrə ʼlei] |
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Jamie (K)
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Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #5 (permalink) Thu May 22, 2008 12:43 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| nessie wrote: |
By the way, please tell me some websites where we can listen to pronunciation of proper nouns, names of countries...
Is there any rules of pronouncing English proper name?
(You know, when first reading the books of "Harry Potter", I and my friends just thought Hermione's name should be pronounce /her mi wan/ and not /her mai ou ni/  |
The problem is that the pronunciation of proper names in English can vary from country to country and from person to person. You may find more than one Hermione somewhere who pronounces the name in either of the ways you mentioned. It's anybody's guess how it should be pronounced, because it's an unusual name.
A further problem is that Americans use the etymological pronunciation, and the British, particularly in broadcasting, are liable to pronounce foreign names as if they are reciting the English names of the letters they're spelled with. So if a name is Spanish, for example, Americans will usually try to pronounce it the way it's pronounced in Spanish (as far as they are able), and the British are liable to devise some "English" way to pronounce it. Adding to the confusion is the fact that this British spelling pronunciation might sound cultured to them, but if it's used in America it sounds ignorant to people. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #6 (permalink) Thu May 22, 2008 12:49 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| Inga wrote: |
| or some dictionaries of proper names. It is difficult to find the pronunciation of such names. I tried to find such dictionaries in our bookshops, but I failed. |
I've looked for these, and I don't seem to find them.
You could look for a pronunciation manual for broadcasting, but they're hard to get. You can still get used copies of the NBC Handbook of Pronunciation, but the latest edition came out in the 1990s. It's still possible to get the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation, but I would be suspicious of that because of the British penchant for making up crazy pronunciations of foreign names. However, it's probably very reliable, and much, much better than nothing. |
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Jamie (K)
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Nessie
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| #8 (permalink) Thu May 22, 2008 20:51 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| nessie wrote: |
| Hic, this matter of proper name pronoucing is so complex... (+_+) What can we non-native speakers do with them? (+_+) |
The same thing we native speakers do. We use our best guess, and if we guess wrong, someone who knows the correct pronunciation helps us. Native speakers frequently guess the pronunciation of proper names wrong. |
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Jamie (K)
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Nessie
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| #10 (permalink) Fri May 23, 2008 18:39 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| nessie wrote: |
| Jamie (K) wrote: |
| someone who knows the correct pronunciation helps us. |
=> Hihi, now another problem has arisen: what is the standard to decide which pronuciation is correct? How can you be sure "someone" here has the correct pronuciation? |
There is no standard, because English doesn't have any central academy that decides on those things. The best you can do is to look at dictionaries or the pronunciation manuals for broadcasters, but those can vary.
And individual people throw a monkey wrench into the works all the time. I knew a older lady whose last name was "Miesel". According to the American custom of keeping the pronunciation as close as possible to that in the original language, the name should have been pronounced [ʼmiː zəl], but that sounds too much like the illness "measles", so her family pronounced it [mai ʼsɛl]. Other families with the same name don't mind that the name sounds like a disease, and they probably pronounce it [ʼmiː zəl] anyway. There are all kinds of cases like that, so you're never sure how to pronounce a name until you ask the person who's got it. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #11 (permalink) Fri May 30, 2008 13:54 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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I'd like to mention to people who've been reading this thread that I've bought a copy of the Oxford BBC Guide to Pronunciation, and it is absolutely EXCELLENT! The pronunciations it gives are not freakishly, exaggeratedly British and could be used anywhere in the world. It takes rhotic speech into consideration, so it shows where the R's should go if you're in the US or Canada. I would recommend this book to anyone.
I should also mention that the ordinary Merriam-Webster dictionaries, such as the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, have biographical and geographical dictionaries in the back, and those contain the pronunciation of various names. In addition to this, the same publisher puts out full biographical, geographical, legal and medical dictionaries that all show pronunciation.
So there are plenty of resources for pronunciation of proper names, although not all of them contain every name imaginable. |
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Jamie (K)
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Nessie
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| #13 (permalink) Sat May 31, 2008 20:11 pm Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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I don't think there's any download, Nessie. Or at least I can't find one.
The best you can do is go to one of the online dictionaries that lets you hear pronunciation of proper names. The best ones I can find right now are these:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
http://dictionary.reference.com/
Maybe someone can guide you to still others. |
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Jamie (K)
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Nessie
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| #15 (permalink) Sun Jun 01, 2008 11:37 am Pronunciation of words: Gucci, Fibonacci, Chevrolet |
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| nessie wrote: |
| Could you please give me another example about that usage this way? |
"Still" in that sentence means something like "even".
We had still more problems.
= We had even more problems.
He asked still more questions.
= He asked even more questions.
They walked still further.
= They walked even further.
These sentences don't mean the same thing as:
We still had more problems.
He still asked more questions.
They still walked further. |
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Jamie (K)
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| Which is wrong? (They foolishly drove into the desert with no extra water) | "solution to" vs "solution for" |
... something we never have again, I know... I guess I really really know..