Clearly, you haven't been watching SUPERGIRL lately.
But, yeah, that's a tricky one.
Pronouncing the unpronounceable
- Thread starter Extrocomp
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Clearly, you haven't been watching SUPERGIRL lately.
But, yeah, that's a tricky one.
Basically "Shuh-vahn."
I knew the name from "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge".
That hasn't helped me pronounce it, though....
People have great fun trying to pronounce the Irish name Aoife
(And no that is not my name. My real name is equally diffcult to pronounce Irish male name which is why in Starbucks I am known as Bob or Mark
)
That was the first time I heard it outside of my family. Later, there are a couple of mentions on Monty Python (that I didn't notice until after I bought the scriptbooks), the NASA Scientist who was in charge of the Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, and an Ambassador in the MJF Trek novel "Faces of Fire."
That was the name of Bo's mother on Lost Girl, and they pronounced it "Ee-fuh." It was quite a while before I discovered how it was spelled.
I think we Irish would lean more towards "Ee-fah" but only marginally more so than "Ee-fuh". The Irish accent may be difference between two.
Yeah, American/Canadian English tends to turn vowels into schwas a lot more than British Isles accents do.
One of my mates sisters is called that, so I always knew how they pronounced it. (It was only later that I found out how it was actually spelt though)
I think Irish is mostly confusing just because the orthography->phonology mapping is so different than it is in English. It's still largely internally consistent and once you learn the rules for Irish it makes sense, it just departs a lot more from English orthography->phonology mappings than a lot of other languages that use the Latin alphabet. Like, if you pronounce a German, Spanish, or French word as though it were an English word, you'll be at least somewhat close much more often than if you pronounced an Irish word as though it were an English word.
The only reason I know how to pronounce Siobhan is because of SNL (Siobhan Fallon).
My wife is Irish and was glad to get rid of her surname and replace it with mine when we married, although I was more than willing to replace mine with hers.
Going off on a tangent a bit, does anyone know how actress Galyn Gorg pronounces her first name? I read that her last name is pronounced like "George," but I've never been able to find out how her first name should be pronounced. Is it like "Gay-lynn" or "Gallin" or what?
Your name it is unpronounceable
Distorted and illegible
I never figured out what that was
If I couldn't then I doubt I ever will
Distorted and illegible
I never figured out what that was
If I couldn't then I doubt I ever will
Wait... so that's how Mrs. S's name is spelled? I just always assumed Chevonne or something.
My favorite peripheral Legion of Super-Heroes character is the Science Police officer Shvaughn Erin. It's a much more graspable spelling.
Yeah, but only if you're already familiar with how the name "Vaughn" is pronounced. To the uninitiated (say, someone from China or Japan or India), the idea that the "gh" is silent would be as confusing as the spelling of "Siobhan" is to non-Irish speakers.
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