On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 22:14:27 +0000, Rowan Collins rowan.collins@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 13:44:20 -0700, Mark Williamson node.ue@gmail.com wrote:
I think what he meant is, do we need a file of somebody pronouncing "Gerard Meijssen" the Dutch way on the English wiktionary, or a file of somebody pronouncing the way it is usually pronounced in English?
Jacques Chirac is pronounced /ʤɑk ʃɪ˞ɑk/ in English from my experience, while in French it would be (I think) /ʒɑk ʃɪɾɑk/.
Although kind of intriguing from a linguist's point of view, knowing how an Englishman pronounces "Jacques Chirac" isn't all that informative - an Englishman will already know, a Frenchman won't care and nor will, say, a Dutchman (unless, as I say, they are enthusiasts of some sort). It also immensely increases the number of target sounds to do it that way: every word available in every language as opposed to every word once (in its own language).
So I think it's best to stick with (and this seems to be what Gerard is describing) one "native" pronunciation for each term.
An amusing anecdote that's kind of relevant though is a piece on Channel 4's coverage of the Tour de France some years back (before they gave up covering it) in which they attempted to work out how to pronounce "Richard Virenque" - they showed a series of some half a dozen French people, all pronouncing it *completely* differently, and concluded that we should carry on using whatever pronunciation seemed best.
The moral of which is probably that we need multiple pronunciations for each term, even within the restriction of them being "native". :)
Of course, the definitive pronunciation for any person's name is the way that person pronounces it (or maybe the way that person's mother pronounces it :-) ).
For some famous people, we ought to be able to get audio snippets of them pronouncing their own name -- George W. Bush pronounced his own name at his inauguration, didn't he?
Would such a audio snippet fall under fair use or equivalents?
--Rich Holton en.wikipedia:User:Rholton