Pronunciation watch

[gurnemanz]

When we went to the seaside town of Scheveningen a while ago we discovered that Dutch is even more guttural than German. We started pronouncing it as a German would, with a simple sh sound at the beginning, but soon realised people were saying the first 3 letters as s + a guttural ch as in the German "Bach". http://www.forvo.com/word/scheveningen/

[Pabmusic]

Isn't the initial "L" also actually pronounced more like a "W"? Your representation has one of the "L"s, not both.

At least it's just about possible to represent Polish sounds phonetically. My understanding of Dutch, which isn't much, is that even well known names such as "van Gogh" require throat clearing and throwing up practice in order to get an approximation of what native speakers expect.

Quite right. But it's only the fact that we've lost all guttural sounds in English (unless you're a Scot - they're still brilliant at them) that makes it difficult. After all, Dutch is (almost) the nearest we can get to modern-day Anglo-Saxon. A word such as knight (or cnyȝt, as it was) would have been pronounced something like k-ni-gh-t (where the i is short and the gh was the guttural sound of loch) up until Chaucer's day at least. Modern Scots pronunciation preserves many of the old guttural sounds of Anglo-Saxon.

[jean]

Isn't the initial "L" also actually pronounced more like a "W"?

No - you may be thinking of the city of Łódź, another great trap for presenters, though I've only ever heard it mangled on Radio 4.

That Polish ł at the end of a word - in the name Michał, for example - when properly pronounced gives an excellent approximation to the despised Estuary English.

[Pabmusic]

When we went to the seaside town of Scheveningen a while ago we discovered that Dutch is even more guttural than German. We started pronouncing it as a German would, with a simple sh sound at the beginning, but soon realised people were saying the first 3 letters as s + a guttural ch as in the German "Bach". http://www.forvo.com/word/scheveningen/

Scheveningen was (it is said) used as a trap for German agents acting as Dutch - get them to speak the name and you sort the Dutch from the Germans.

[Historian]

Scheveningen was (it is said) used as a trap for German agents acting as Dutch - get them to speak the name and you sort the Dutch from the Germans.

So, Scheveningen used as a shibboleth.

[Pabmusic]

So, Scheveningen used as a shibboleth.

Indeed. It's not just the Sch- cluster; I think the -ingen causes problems for Germans, since it's definitely not 'in-gen' as it would be in German. I think it's in-hgn with an aspirate g (try coughing as you say it) or else it's ing-n, with no g sound. Or (more probably) it's either.

Nice beach though.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Isn't the initial "L" also actually pronounced more like a "W"? Your representation has one of the "L"s, not both.

Nobody ever pronounced it so in the composer's presence on the occasions when I was present; not even John Casken, who studied in Poland and knew the composer and his wife very well - everybody pronounced it more-or-less as frenchie has transliterated it. Perhaps Polish (like all languages?) has regional variations. (Or perhaps Lutos was too much of a gent to correct them all.)

[french frank]

No - you may be thinking of the city of Łódź, another great trap for presenters, though I've only ever heard it mangled on Radio 4.

Yes, an l (ell) with a stroke through it. Otherwise it sounds like an ordinary L. The first name Łukasz is another one that starts with a W sound. I won't suggest how the a is pronounced ...

It's almost always unsatisfactory to try to transliterate or suggest a sound in another language is pronounced 'like' a sound in English. The phonetic systems aren't exact. I was most taken aback to find I'd suggested that Lutosławski was pronounced with, as it were, a long English a. But I can see I did suggest that - I just has a different sound in my head

[Dave2002]

Or perhaps Lutos was too much of a gent to correct them all.

Your comment makes sense, but it is possible that sometimes people put up with the pronunciation most English speakers do to mangle their language. I'm fairly sure this happens with Swedish and Dutch speakers. They know we're going to get it wrong, and they do understand what we are saying, so they "politely" tolerate what we manage to articulate.

[Angle]

Keen ears are needed:

http://www.pronunciationguide.info/sounds/lutoslawski.mp3

Don

It might be easier to say what we feel. We often don't pay much attention to the French, either

[jean]

Another reason (not mentioned here yet) why we don't stop to think about about how to pronounce Lutosławski is that we're so familiar with all those Russian names that contain the element -slav or end in -slavski and we don't realise Polish pronunciationis different.

That familiarity also helps us get the w right, although it didn't help the family of Monica Lewinsky - who also gave up on trying to persuade people that she should really be Lewinska.

.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There's something very wrong. There is no-one on this who irritates me more that Alison Graham, an oxygen bandit who infests Radio Times each week with opinionated drivel. But this week, I find myself agreeing with her. She comments on the accent of Breakfast TV's Steph McGovern, whose English is ungrammatical and horrendous to listen to. it makes me embarrassed to be a northerner. I don't doubt that AG is trying to be annoying, but can it really be that I have to choke on my own words re this so-called "TV Editor" (who appears to do no TV editing)? Am I now in league with a hostile character from 101 Dalmations?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Watching the repeat of the last episode of Downton Abbey, it was odd to hear several of the cast referring to the "bizarre" rather than the "bazaar". A bit of a difference, I would suggest.

[Richard Tarleton]

Never mind Tárrega, I wish the BBC Pronunciation Unit would sort out "Trierweiler", I've heard it pronounced about 8 diffeent ways by BBC reporters

[gurnemanz]

I heard a French speaker say it and it was stressed on the last syllable, as French words usually are. It comes out as something like "tree er vellair". Like you, I also wish that the BBC (and others) could be bothered to get it right.