conspiratemus1

Only an English speaker would say this. In European countries where English is not the dominant language, you will hear television newscasters making (usually excellent) attempts to pronounce English proper names to sound the way English speakers say them. This is often quite a stretch for native French-speakers particularly as the sounds of many letters, not just the vowels, are different. The effect is startling: a speaker is rattling on in a to-me incomprehensible stream when out of the blue jumps a perfectly pronounced McDonalds, or Wichita, or Saskatchewan.

noglider 

Those are three bad examples of English names.

ThermionicScott 

Yeah, but wouldn't a French person pronounce the first one more like "Luke"?

rhm

To the latter point, yes, I am familiar with this phenomenon. But also with its inverse, where Germans have just as much trouble with American words as Americans have with German ones.

To the former point also, yes, I'm well aware of it. Please note: we are conversing in English here. We are all English speakers on this forum. When we speak to one another, what matters is that we communicate. We do not need to pronounce words as if we were speaking another language.

For example, Americans of a certain political bent pronounce "Iraq" something like "E Rock." Americans of another political leaning are more likely to say "eye rack." We understand either one. We would probably not understand the same word as spoken by an Iraqi (in whose language it sounds entirely different: different consonants and different vowels).

To say that we don't pronounce it the way Iraqis do is not to say we pronounce it wrong. We are speaking English, not Arabic.

Choke 

As for Ciöcc, the word doesn't mean anything according to the man himself. Here's how he pronounces it....

16Victor

Gosh I was just funnin'.

thumpism 

Chrysler named its car the Cordoba (cor-DOH-bah) but the cities by that name in Spain and Argentina have the accent on the first syllable (COR-doh-bah) so it must have killed ol' Ricardo, a native Spanish speaker, to have to mispronounce that word. On the other hand, the company probably paid him a boatload to do so.

NJgreyhead

I was talking to a Reynolds rep at the Philly Bike Expo a few years back. I knew to say "five-three-one," but when I said "five-two-oh" he corrected me with "five twenty." Maybe because it is not high-end stuff?

And I guess it is properly "chin-ELL-ee." However there was a famous restaurant in these parts that was spelled the same and was pronounced by one and all as "sin-ELL-ee's," and that old habit dies hard.

thumpism 

Alternatively: "Pelizzoli apprenticed with a builder in Bergamo and learned how to build frames. After working with other frame builders for a time, Pelizzoli established his own company in 1969. According to Pelizolli, Ciocc was a nickname (“Poker Face” in the dialect around Bergamo) given to himself, his father, and his grandfather – so he put it on his bikes."

Bergamo, while we're at it, is pronounced BEHR-gah-moh.

noglider 

Brooks: BRO ahks

Just kidding.

McBTC

Eddy Merckx

Pronounced: Aidy Mairks

WildRalph

Tomato - Tow-mah-toe...
accoutrement - ah-koo-tree-ment.
accouterment - ah-kooter-ment.
Webster's says they're both corrrect. Pronunciations are usually a local convention; it is respectful to make an attempt to get it right, to pay homage to a culture, an originator, or to tout your "worldliness." But if you research semantics, language origins, and proper usage..., of any language, you'll find dialects, contradictions and exceptions a-plenty. Say it the best you can and ignore the "down-the-nose" looks.

Murray Missile 

Deore? I pronounce it 'dee-or-ay', makes it sound Italian although I know it's a made up name by a Japanese company.

athrowawaynic

Funny to hear I'm not the only one who pronounces it DU-RA-A-CHEE, initially as a joke, but now, all the time.

Andy_K 

So what about gugificazione? Is the second 'g' silent there too? Goo-ee-fa-cahz-ee-oh-nay? Or does the lack of a consonant after the 'g' make it a hard 'g'? Goo-gi-fa-cahz-ee-oh-nay?

And I'm still waiting to here back on the verb forms. Present perfect: Gugificazata'd?

gugie 

@noglider, he maybe no speakie Itie, but pronunciare, va bene!

mountaindave 

I just about died laughing when someone around here said he heard that and now pronounces Race Face in the same way: Rah-chay Fah-chay.

On a more serious note: Viscount = VIE-count.

Gitane = zhee-TAHN but I usually say the G like ginormous so it comes out like dji-TAHN.

The Golden Boy 

When I was a kid, I was stationed in Panama- of course we'd listen to the radio- I couldn't understand much of anything that the DJ would say, but it was entertaining to hear "bidde bidde bidde bidde bidde y Ma-donna bidde bidde bidde bidde New Keeds On The Block..." the way they'd slow down and very deliberately pronounce whatever American named act.

non-fixie 

In our language we luckily have official Dutch versions of many place names, mostly because we once owned them or traded there. So "Paris" is "Parijs", "Lille" is "Rijssel" and "New York", of course, is "Nieuw Amsterdam".

rhm

Of course!

Here in the US it is common for people to claim this or that country as our place of ancestry. People take great pride in being Irish, Lithuanian, whatever. As well they should; it's what makes them Americans. My ancestors were mostly from Germany, but I also have ancestors from other countries. When people (even on this forum!) brag about their Italian ancestry, I like to mention that I'm descended from the Pusinelli family from the town of Dresda.

Dresda, of course, is the Italian name for Dresden, in northern Germany but I'm rarely challenged on this.

16Victor

How about SRAM? sram or s-ram?

Hardrock23

Someone posted this in another one of these threads - https://forvo.com/search

I can't believe I've been saying Bianchi wrong this entire time...

SRAM is just SRAM.

gugie 

Dresden, surprisingly lovely city. Went there on business abut 8 years after the wall fell, the Frauenkirche was still being reconstructed.

Andy_K 

Bah. I've traced my paternal family line back more than 200 years to my 5x-great-grandfather (who along with my 3x-great-grandfather had the same name as me) living in the same rural county in what's now West Virginia where my grandfather was born. Near as I can tell my people grew out of the trees in the hills of Appalachia. My brother likes to tell people he's Irish and Jewish, based on the couple of threads we can identify in our mother's line, but ultimately, like most Caucasian Americans we're basically mutts. I think there's something very American about not knowing where your people are from too.

As for the disregard for pronunciation of proper names, we come by it honestly. A significant number of Americans got their current family name from those who were here before them mispronouncing and misspelling the name the family had before they immigrated.

Andy_K 

shram