Upamecano always seems a hard one, does anyone actually know the proper pronunciation..
Pronunciation of footballers' names
- Thread starter horsechoker
- Start date
Both Brazilian and European Portuguese are weird as feck and that’s how they pronounce things. Brazilians really struggle with certain vowel sounds at the ends of words so tend to either change the consonant or add a vowel. The Portuguese just mash most of the middle of a word into a big nasal vowelly mess.
That’s the one! And I’ve just googled that and apparently that’s correct as well. I’m questioning everything now.
I've heard people pronounce it Twan Zu Bay as well, but he grew up in Rochdale so I can't see him having a much different pronunciation of his name to the first version.
It's basically phonetic surely?
Yeah but you (and most Brits) know that.
It’s the ones that are actually spelled as you’d pronounce them in English that you struggle with for some reason.
A-jax or Ay-axe? As it’s a figure from Greek mythology, I’ve often wondered
How do you say Koopmeiners?
Is it coop-miners?
Is it coop-miners?
He’s such a horrible case! I keep pronouncing him like Pulisić should be pronounced originally, but I’m pretty sure that he prefers an Americanized version with “sic” being pronounced like, well, an English “sik” and it really grinds my gears
It's aye -ass (sort of) in Greek.
Lean L Messi
He’s such a horrible case! I keep pronouncing him like Pulisić should be pronounced originally, but I’m pretty sure that he prefers an Americanized version with “sic” being pronounced like, well, an English “sik” and it really grinds my gears
That's the worst version though! There is a diacritic on the s as well. So it's either Pulishich for the correct Slavic pronunciation or -sick for the Americanised version. I also can't bring myself to use the latter, wrong on so many levels.
I always find it weird how Ole has been in English football for a quarter of a century but many pundits still butcher his surname into something like “Sol-ski-ar”. How have they spent this long listening to people pronouncing the “skj” cluster as “sh” and just thinking they’re being quirky for the sake of it?
I also find it mental how all the fans on AFTV would pronounce Wenger incorrectly. He’s one of the greatest figures in the history of your club and you must’ve heard his name said properly a million times. It’s not like they’re your typical Brexit lot either. It’s a massively multicultural group.
Perišić is the same. I’ve never heard that said properly either.
That's celtic languages for you. In Glasgow, there's a place called Milingavie and it's pronounced "Mill - guy".
In saying that, there's no excuse for Doherty.
Toni Cruise
Kope-main-eh-(rolled r)-short s?
I love that Italians just don’t give a feck and call Bayern Munich “Bayern Monaco”.
UEFA actually posted a few articles about posting players' names correctly. Sadly, the last time they did this was in August 2019, but it's funny to see how, despite their articles, a bunch of people still mispronounce names.
Fun fact: almost everyone pronounces Xherdan Shaqiri's name wrong. It's supposed to be "Zher-dan Shat-cheery". The "q" becomes a "tch".
Sources:
https://www.uefa.com/uefanationslea...how-to-pronounce-the-players-names-correctly/
https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsl...how-to-pronounce-the-players-names-correctly/
Fun fact: almost everyone pronounces Xherdan Shaqiri's name wrong. It's supposed to be "Zher-dan Shat-cheery". The "q" becomes a "tch".
Sources:
https://www.uefa.com/uefanationslea...how-to-pronounce-the-players-names-correctly/
https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsl...how-to-pronounce-the-players-names-correctly/
Fifa 21 calls Lindelof - Linde loof
A lot of these are incorrect though.
I only knew this already because I went to school with an Albanian girl who had the surname Zhaqiri and yeah she pronounced it with the ‘tch’ sound
Matthijs de Ligt – Mat-ice Dull-icht
It's not even terribly wrong but I don't think this will help anyone to get foreign pronunciation right. This sort of attempt (mental gymnastics more like) at transcribing foreign names using English phonetics also shows you how fecked up English spelling is. Good on them for trying I guess.
Edit: They also transcribed Manuel Neuer as man-well which is totally wrong. Manuel has three syllables.
Is it up-a-me-cano..
Not looked this up, but I'd say the Irish pronunciation of the name led to the "ch" just becoming a "h", even if it was Docherty we'd still say it as Doherty. We don't like pronouncing them middle syllables much, especially in words like water which is mostly waher or letter/leher.
Up a ye what?
Pronounce it in an Northern English dialect and it sounds like a line out of a Carry On film.
Matthijs de Ligt – Mat-ice Dull-icht
It's not even terribly wrong but I don't think this will help anyone to get foreign pronunciation right. This sort of attempt (mental gymnastics more like) at transcribing foreign names using English phonetics also shows you how fecked up English spelling is. Good on them for trying I guess.
Edit: They also transcribed Manuel Neuer as man-well which is totally wrong. Manuel has three syllables.
Learning IPA should be compulsory in primary schools imo.
Edit: Yeah and they also had Chiellini as four syllables when it’s actually three.
Hard to beat Diniyar Bilyaletdinov.
Matthijs de Ligt – Mat-ice Dull-icht
It's not even terribly wrong but I don't think this will help anyone to get foreign pronunciation right. This sort of attempt (mental gymnastics more like) at transcribing foreign names using English phonetics also shows you how fecked up English spelling is. Good on them for trying I guess.
Edit: They also transcribed Manuel Neuer as man-well which is totally wrong. Manuel has three syllables.
Thats pretty close for de Ligt though, no? (Surname bit)
I’ve taken only a handful of Dutch classes mind you.
Think so? Die-oat Up-a-me-can-oh?
Not sure how to embed videos, or if I have that privilege, so here’s a Scottish man attempting to speak Spanish
Well “ch” and “h” aren’t actually pronounced very differently. Both are voiceless fricatives.
There’s no logical reason for a hard K sound to appear. Although I guess a lot of English people pronounce loch/lough as “lock” so it’s at least kind of consistent.
As I said, it's not wrong per se. I just found it amusing to go from a simple name like de Ligt to dull-icht (and the ch isn't going to help English speakers either) and that makes it somehow more understandable.
/də ˈlɪxt/. /x/ is the phonetic symbol for the ch in loch (scottish pronunciation).
Is that not because he has the ö?
I really hate when I hear how they pronounce Slavic names but on the other hand for example Portuguese must feel the same. It's really not that hard to learn how to pronounce Jose, Fernandes or Coufal.
I get that some names like our own Solskjær are more difficult but if they learn it once they won't make the same mistake again. It's just ignorance.
I get that some names like our own Solskjær are more difficult but if they learn it once they won't make the same mistake again. It's just ignorance.
Why would Solskjær be more understandable? It's more phonetic to an English speaker than a c being pronounced Ts.
Commentators should do their homework and at least make a decent stab at pronouncing a person's name correctly. Including Fred.
It *is* pronounced Mee-lan, with the accent on the ee