Last Saturday I was performing in a concert with the Exeter Recorder Orchestra. As per usual, the concert was shared with another group, in this case the Exeter Youth Orchestra. For the EYO's bits it fell to individual players rather than the conductor to announce each piece. One of the pieces was Ravel's Pavane and I was rather shocked to hear the composer's name pronounced to rhyme with naval. Perhaps unsurprisingly the hapless announcer gave the title of the piece in English. (Allegedly Ravel came up with the title Pavane pour une infante défunte solely to use all the different nasal sounds in French!)

Not the first time I've heard a composer's name mispronounced, alas. My school's head of music, no less, once pronounced Verdi to rhyme with nerdy.

Am I being overly picky?

No you're not being picky, I feel the same.

Reminds me of a documentary I had to watch years ago for A level Music. It was a BBC 2 programme and it was announced as The Life and Works of Persil!!!!!

or maybe I'm picky too

See the thread I started on How Do You Pronounce Purcell, and this post in particular!!!

Oh cripes, now I'm confused!! Not going to start on that one, I'll admit to ignorance

It's a difficult one, because there seem to be names which have a conventional English pronounciation which is not actually entirely correct - and the Germanic composers in particular are the ones I notice in this context: Mozart and Beethoven in standard English diction sound differently from how they would spoken by native German speakers, many English people can't say "Bach" and call him bark, and of course with Händel we have the added problem that two countries claim him as their own, and pronounce him differently too. I really really can't abide Mozart being pronounced "mozzart" but cope with "mow-tsart" because that is the conventional English way to say it - and people look at me as if I'm being pompous if I say "maw-tsart" with German vowels and consonants rather than English ones....

So what I'm trying to say really, is, okay, try to pronounce things as nearly as you can, but don't bust a gut over it, and for others making mincemeat of names, just put it down either to ignorance or a lack of linguistic ability.

I have been acquiring a lot of Polish patients over the last few years, and have suuuuch fun trying to pronounce all those Szcz combinations .

How is Beethoven pronounced in German?

Lut-vic fan Bet-ho-fen

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...n_Beethoven.ogg

There's not too much you can do wrong with Beethoven as long as you don't pronounce the "Beet" bit like "beetroot"

How do you pronounce Pachelbel and Faure?

I should probably know the pronunciation of Pachelbel seeing as he's German, but somehow I don't

Since the word is pronunciation not pronounciation maybe it's best not to throw stones in a glass house.

I agree that we are very rarely pronouncing these things correctly as the composer himself would have done, so I am not sure it matters how close to convention we get, it's just something that has been conventionally construed as a mark of ignorance. Spelling is another area of irritation, particularly with Russian composers. My old school teacher fussed at me about the spelling of Tchaikovsky and (because I was a pain in the butt kid!) from that moment on I always wrote it in cyrillic script. Tchaikovsky never began with a T, it began with a "tcha" or a "tche" depending which area of the former Russian empire you were in at the time.

The only correct way to spell proper names (since they cannot be added to a formal dictionary) is the way the original owner of the name spelled it. In those days that left a great deal of scope for variation!

Beethoven is usually pronounced wrongly in English though - and it's a vowel sound which isn't easy to reproduce with the English set of vowels unless you live in Scotland, where the ee is a little similar to the Scots "eh" as I hear it said in Edinburgh or Glasgow. And the o is also more of an aw sound than an English oh, and the v in German is an f sound - these things may sound insignificant to English speakers, but they are differences a German speaker would pick up on. What I was trying to say was - we can be really pedantic and take things as far as that, demanding perfect pronunciation for everything, or accept that there need to be compromises (and I am advocating the latter, cos life's too short to be that picky.) I must admit though, I'd love it not to get those looks if ever I do say German names correctly - there seems to be the impression that it's pretentious to do so .
The ch of Pachelbel would be the same as that in Bach - as he is when properly pronounced, that is .

RoseRodent -sorry about my extra u in one of my last -my keys slipped .

Thanks for that explanation - I'm sort of fluent in both German and English, so I can read things both ways, if that makes sense. It can get somewhat confusing

Err... how are you supposed to pronounce "Verdi"? - I thought it was like the German "wer" and english "dee"

German "wer" is pronounced "vare".

[quote name='anacrusis' date='Nov 9 2009, 11:22 PM' post='893713']I have been acquiring a lot of Polish patients over the last few years, and have suuuuch fun trying to pronounce all those Szcz combinations ./quote]Sorry, I know it's slightly but I know this one! And since Anacrusis didn't say so, the Polish szcz is pronounced as English sh + ch as in pushchair.

My intention was to highlight there being a bit of an accent on the "er" - I couldn't really think how else to put it... hence not quite sounding like "nerdy"... *shrug*

Ok whilst we're at it, how do you pronounce Reinecke. If I'm going to perform it at some point in the future I really should know

I think Aeolienne was saying that someone incorrectly made Verdi rhyme with nerdy.

my guess is

Rye - nuh- kuh might be a fair approximation - but not too 'closed' on the uh sounds.

but please some expert correct me if needed!

I think the e should be more like the first e in werewolf. That's the only word I can think of

I think maggiemay's Reinecke pronunciation looks right

So almost rhyming with Heineken then, without the 'n'. Should be easy for me to remember that

This may be considered ever so slightly off topic, but people do pronounce things differently depending on their everyday accent. For example, my surname starts with the letters PAL, and some southerners pronounce it as pal (same as friend) most Midlanders as pol (same as Moll) , and Northeners as paul!

Yes, more or less .... the e in the middle is followed by a ck which makes it shorter, and again closer to the e in elbow.

As far as my Polish goes - I have had to bookmark a link to pronunciation on the work computers, which annoyingly have all had their soundcards disabled, would you believe it so that we don't listen to music at work ? This means picking through hilarious approximations just as we're trying to do on here. Szcz is hardest when you have to start a word with it - somehow it's easier if there is a run-up and run-out from the sound. I'm also helping some folks with their German pronunciation at the moment, and notice how particular sound combinations really make them struggle when they are second nature to me...maybe another reason to be a bit tolerant of diversions from accurate reproductions of names?

'Gone to lunch, Bach at 2, Offenbach earlier.'

More on Polish pronunciations: one that upsets me is the pronunciation and spelling of Lutos?awski. Not a straightforward mispronunciation - more that it contains the character ? not used in English. So many official sources print it with an English (lower case) L that a lot of people now believe the name is spelt with an L! For those to whom this is news, the pronunciation is lu-to-swaf-ski.

Here's another question: how do you pronounce Shostakovich?
Most people say sho-sta-co-vitch.
I have heard the occasional person refer to him as sho-sta-kov-itch. It sounds less Anglicised and more authentic - but is it right?

As if any of us would do such a thing!

Overall, I'd say it really doesn't matter much. There are I don't know how many languages in the world and how many of us can make a convincing stab at Chinese, Japanese or Arabic names? I'm perfectly happy with a "received pronunciation" for most things.

With regard to the case in point, there is a common and received pronunciation for "Ravel" in English and the announcer clearly wasn't aware of it, but "Ravel" pronounced in English doesn't sound the same as in French and would presumably be slightly different for German, Japanese or Swahili speakers…. So long as it's recognisable within the linguistic context (i.e. in this case Britain) that should do.

Other languages contain sounds that are quite simply beyond our "perceptual set" and there's little point in struggling with them only to mangle them to the ears of a native speaker of that language. When someone is really at ease with the "correct" (i.e. original language) pronunciation of a foreign name it doesn't usually jar in a sentence, when they're not it can sound dreadful and far less fluid than a received pronunciation. Much of the rest, I'm afraid, is snobbery….

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Mezzo - I sympathise! I get called both the English and German version of Claudia

Quite right in general, but in the case of names of people who are still alive and you are actually talking to, I would see it slightly differently. As I said earlier, I have given up, simply because it causes problems, but I also cannot help the notion that some people don't make an effort because they think: "That's the way we pronounce it here, end of."

I always feel like bursting into a certain Ting Ting's song then

If they were genuinely incapable of shaping certain sounds because of their native tongue, that would be a different matter. Many people are perfectly capable of pronouncing foreign names the right way however - by just taking the time to listen (and maybe practising them a few times):

I experience this on a daily basis when I teach my students German Lieder. There are people who give up quite easily, and there are the ones that pick it up very quickly. The latter ones show however that nothing prevents an English native to pronounce German app. the right way (and vice versa - I still ask my students/friends if I pronounce things correctly when I am unsure, because otherwise I won't learn).

I would agree with Mezzo's comment about making as big an effort as you can when pronouncing the name of someone you're wanting to talk to: my maiden name is not one that German speakers find all that easy to say based on the letters given, and I have on a number of occasions found I didn't respond to it being called because my brain was wired to pick up the right way to say it, but not the wrong one: on one occasion I even got told how I should be pronouncing it . Again, I'm usually needing to say unfamiliar names in order to catch attention, and if I get it badly wrong, then the hapless patient goes on sitting there and appears not to have arrived. On the other hand, I once produced such a good rendering of someone's name that I caused a patient to light up and ask me did I speak Italian...and I had to admit I didn't: my effort to pronounce the name well backfired .
When giving assistance in pronouncing phonemes, I find most people can produce pretty good approximations relatively well, but that it's the combination of these which gives trouble - especially when there are clusters of consonants which include the German uvular r. (Not that the southern German palatal r is actually any easier to do - it is a much darker sound even than the Scots rolled one). Thus spr-, as in "sprechen" - which sounds like shpre-chen, the ch being like the initial sound most English speakers would give to the name Hugh, and the r being a uvular one - causes a fair bit of difficulty, because so many unfamiliar sounds come together. It's a bit like practising music - no sooner does a teacher manage to get you to play one bit right, than another goes wrong in compensation .

Snobbery? Elephant, it sounds like you are lucky enough to have been blessed with a name that people don't get wrong. I agree however that it should sound fluid, and Mezzo has a good point about it being different when you are talking to the person with the name in question - in this case it is always worth making the extra effort to pronounce the name properly, whether that's the accepted Anglicised version or the native language version. As somebody who has a foreign name I think it's the height of rudeness when people don't even try to pronounce it properly - particularly when I've just told them how to say it. I would far rather they attempted the Anglicised version and got it wrong than didn't bother trying.

The title of this thread was pronouncing composers names "properly", not the names of people you may be speaking to or who may be speaking to you. My point about "snobbery" related to that.

On the seemingly more vexed question of having people pronounce one's own name "correctly", personally I frankly don't care one way or the other. I've spent some of my formative and all of my adult years outside of the UK (speaking French) but have an English name. No French person I have met, including Mrs Elephant, has ever pronounced it quite the way I and other English speakers do, and I don't mind one bit.

Of course it's important that things be recognisable (viz. Anacrusis having fun wrestling with Polish consonantal clusters) but otherwise I don't see why it's important to folk other than linguists. I don't really understand why I should require others to "make an effort". I live in a country where a particular set of letters gives rise to a particular pronunciation (with a good few variants obviously when the combination is an unfamiliar one). And yes, if I happened to be called John and went to Germany and became "Yohn" I wouldn't mind one bit.

People who use my name are usually attempting to communicate with me and I can think of nothing more off-putting for some poor French person to be told "it's pronounced ‘Elefant’ (subtext, you French clot). They're not going to get it "right", they're just going to be embarrassed about trying again. Great way to break the ice!!

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French speakers don't pronounce the last letter of my surname because it doesn't have an "e" after it. The children in my daughter's class were once given letters to take home with the parents' names on them. The teacher read out the names on the enveloppes and the children had to put up their hand to claim the letter. My daughter failed to recognise my name pronounced French style, earning her a scathing comment from the teacher about not even knowing her own mother's name.

Going back to composers' names. Almost all the composers are pronounced slightly differently in French. All the music teachers order music from a shop in Paris but it doesn't have a website and you have to phone up and say what you want. Before I discovered online shops, I tried to use this one but I never seemed able to pronounce the composer's name in a way they could understand and always ended up having to spell it.

My former piano teacher used to use the latter pronunciation, until he asked a Russian student of his who said it the more usual way.

<<French speakers don't pronounce the last letter of my surname because it doesn't have an "e" after it. The children in my daughter's class were once given letters to take home with the parents' names on them. The teacher read out the names on the enveloppes and the children had to put up their hand to claim the letter. My daughter failed to recognise my name pronounced French style, earning her a scathing comment from the teacher about not even knowing her own mother's name.>>

I guess we've all had similar experiences. I once missed my turn for a medical examination when names were called out in the waiting room and have had to listen hard when waiting for administrative appointments. I've also experienced it when going forward to pick up sports trophies after a competition. If I sense that the person handing out the awards is having any difficulty or hesitating I just go forward and announce my name myself. It can be irritating of course, but one just has to bear in mind that it's not done out of badness (or only very rarely in my experience) and that the person making the effort has also been put in a potentially embarrassing situation.

"Scathing comment", unfortunately, doesn't surprise me from the French school teaching establishment... but I don't want to get started on that....

Re my comment on snobbery... it was an add-on and I can now see it wasn't at all clear.

I didn't mean that pronouncing names "correctly" (i.e. as in the original language) was in any way snobbish. What I have seen, and frankly dislike intensely, is knowledge of a language being used as a put down.

Now, I'm (sincerely) 100% convinced that none of the people contributing here come into that category and did not mean to imply that, but I have seen instances of people being made to feel embarrassed by: "actually it's pronounced...." in front of others when they may, for example, have made "Verdi" rhyme with "nerdy", etc. and when the person doing the correcting would choke on a Chinese, Indonesian, Russian or French name. I'm sure I'm not alone in disliking this kind of thing. (And once again, I am not implying that any of the contributors here would do such a thing, but it does exist). Hope that's clearer.

Back to work, so bye for now

E

Try teaching in a laguage other than your native tongue. I have always tried to pronouce composers' names correctly in their anglicised verson as I learnt when at school - which at least seems comprehensible. But it isn't consistent - we pronouced "Fauré "correctly with the pronounced "é" as in French and "Debussy"
with a nasal "u".

Now I battle with the French pronunciation - to say nothing of the explaining the pronunciation of Italian terms to my French pupils.

I did once spend a long time wondering why my Larousse Dictionary of Music had no entry for a composer as important as "Shostakovitch"

Hi Aquarelle,

is "laguage" what we teach when we have a bab cobe and a stubbed ub noze ?

Sorry, I know it's only a typo, but couldn't resist it.

Hi elephant

I hope you are not forecasting here!! My partner does have a stinking cold and I've been trying mind over matter all week in an effort not to catch it. If I do there will be a lot of "bab laguage" in the air!

Help may be at hand: Vicks First Defence is now available in France (or so I'm told). I've found it pretty effective in avoiding infection when Mrs E has been barking and sneezing for a week or so (+ all of the washing hands, etc.). Its called "Première Défense" (as you might expect)...

Unlike the film Speed, which wasn't called 'La Vitesse', oh no....

(...though First Defence would be a bit late for me now too... .)

A couple of points if I may...

As I speak German I can pronounce Bach properly but seldom do for fear of giving the impression that I am ignorant of the "proper" (English ) way of pronouncing it or being regarded as a clever ####.

Why did no one mention Dvor (v) ak ? I was congratulated on my ability to pronounce it properly when I spoke to some Czechs. I felt it only fair to tell them that we have a similar sound in Irish, similar to the r(v) that is. Also the DV is pronounced that way not as a V, which is what I commonly hear.

Now would anyone like to have a go at Gigli and van Gogh ?