# Are you pronouncing the names correctly?



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Ive heard some awful pronunciations of foreign names, not least of composers (obviously not on TC).. are you pronouncing your favourite composers name correctly?

Links provide audio

*Bach *
http://www.forvo.com/word/johann_sebastian_bach/#de

*Bartok*
http://www.forvo.com/word/bartók/#hu

*Beethoven*
Phonetic Pronunciation: BAY-"toe"-vuhn
http://inogolo.com/audio/Beethoven_4719.mp3
*Brahms
*http://www.forvo.com/word/johannes_brahms/#de
*Bruckner*http://www.forvo.com/word/bruckner/#de
*
Chopin*
http://www.forvo.com/word/fryderyk_chopin/#pl

*des Prez*
http://www.forvo.com/word/josquin_des_prez/#fr

*Dvorak*
_*DVOR*-zhahk_
http://www.forvo.com/word/dvořák/

*Debussy*
http://www.forvo.com/word/debussy/

*Falla*
http://www.forvo.com/search/de%20falla/

*Handel*
http://www.forvo.com/word/georg_frideric_handel/#de

*Haydn*
http://www.forvo.com/word/franz_joseph_haydn/#de

*Liszt
*http://www.forvo.com/word/ferenc_liszt/#hu

*Mahler
*http://www.forvo.com/word/gustav_mahler/#de

*Mendelssohn*
http://www.forvo.com/word/felix_mendelssohn/#de

*Mozart*
MOtsart
http://www.forvo.com/word/wolfgang_amadeus_mozart/
*
Ockeghem
*http://www.forvo.com/word/johannes_ockeghem/#fr
*
Palestrina
*http://www.forvo.com/word/giovanni_pierluigi_da_palestrina/#it
*
Poulenc
*http://www.forvo.com/word/francis_poulenc/
*
Puccini*
http://www.forvo.com/word/giacomo_puccini/#it

*Ravel*
http://www.forvo.com/word/maurice_ravel/#fr

*Saint-Saens*
http://www.forvo.com/word/camille_saint-saëns/

*Scarlatti*
http://www.forvo.com/word/domenico_scarlatti/#it

*Schoenberg*
http://www.forvo.com/word/arnold_schoenberg/#de

*Schubert*
http://www.forvo.com/word/franz_schubert/#de

*Schumann*
http://www.forvo.com/word/robert_schumann/#de

*Varese*
http://www.forvo.com/word/edgard_varèse/#fr

*Vivaldi*
http://www.forvo.com/word/antonio_vivaldi/#it

*Wagner*
http://www.forvo.com/word/richard_wagner/#de
(Ignore the first name )

I know a similar thread was posted 2 years ago, but i had the spare time and a lot of new members have come in that time.
Feel free to post others.


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

Haha,...yeah, I am and if I'm not then I have twenty years worth of public radio jockeys to thank for the wrong way. It actually brings up a funny and annoying story with an old boss. I see he 'knows' something about classical so i try and begin to exchange with him and then Richard Strauss comes up; which I've always heard as 'ree-chard'. He freaks out when he hears me and instead of trying to say it is the typical way of pronouncing it, he busts out 'ri-kard'! It was one of those moments where a guy who is thirty years older than you and you think is informed tells you something you know to be wrong; well, it kinda made me question what I knew for I had never heard anything like that. Turns out, he was the only person I've ever heard say that monstrosity yet I have to hear it in my head every single time I think of my favorite Strauss.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Richard is my middle name so your story is quite shocking to me!

*Richard Strauss*
http://www.forvo.com/search/strauss/de/


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

I can speak Spanish, English and German; Berlioz, Mussorgsky and their respective fellow countrymen will have to live with my pronunciations


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## kv466 (May 18, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> Richard is my middle name so your story is quite shocking to me!
> 
> *Richard Strauss*
> http://www.forvo.com/search/strauss/de/


Thank bog I've been saying it right! That was the only one I was worried about.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

emiellucifuge said:


> Richard is my middle name so your story is quite shocking to me!
> 
> *Richard Strauss*
> http://www.forvo.com/search/strauss/de/


In that spoken example the 'ch' sound is somewhat smothered. What _is there_ is certainly not 'hard', but it isn't really 'soft' either. It isn't Koo-Koo, but it ain't Choo-Choo either. Also, I wonder if the name is pronounced differently in Vienna than it is in Berlin.


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## Cnote11 (Jul 17, 2010)

I went through them all and I am happy to come away unscathed. I never knew how Dvorak was said but I've been saying it correctly the whole time. Now I can feel more confident speaking his name in public!


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## aphyrodite (Jan 9, 2012)

I admit at first I had pronounced Chopin as "Chop-in" and luckily my best friend was there to correct me. Such an embarrassment but I'm glad now I can pronounce it the right way.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Well theres a bunch of different pronunciations here:

http://www.forvo.com/word/richard/#de

In dutch were probably closest to the way the french example is.


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## Meaghan (Jul 31, 2010)

More useful pronunciation guides:


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I love those pronunciation videos!


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Cnote11 said:


> I went through them all and I am happy to come away unscathed. I never knew how Dvorak was said but I've been saying it correctly the whole time. Now I can feel more confident speaking his name in public!


There seems to be some variation among the Czechs. There is a slight trilled 'R' sound in the pfarkas sample.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Hearing how these are actually pronounced and comparing it to how I pronounce them makes me feel like George Bush....


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Please give us some examples VD, im dying for a laugh?


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> Please give us some examples VD, im dying for a laugh?


Well, nothing too bad. I pronounce them alright. But I sometimes don't add the finesse to my pronunciation that it takes to make the pronunciation sound authentic so I am thinking if I went to the respective countries of the composers and pronounced the names like I usually do I would sound like a total hick lol

For example, I usually just say Shernberg instead of Shoenbaerg with the tongue roll and everything.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Being in Korea helps me a bit, because they spell most things rather more phonetically, although without distinguishing between f/p, b/v and of course l/r (thus "I'm so ronery"). A couple years ago I was looking for "Dufay" and I found out that in Korea it's "Du Pah-ee" rather than "Du Pay." So now I know. But it's not always helpful: Mo-jja-ruh-tuh.


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## aphyrodite (Jan 9, 2012)

science said:


> Being in Korea helps me a bit, because they spell most things rather more phonetically, although without distinguishing between f/p, b/v and of course l/r (thus "I'm so ronery"). A couple years ago I was looking for "Dufay" and I found out that in Korea it's "Du Pah-ee" rather than "Du Pay." So now I know. But it's not always helpful: Mo-jja-ruh-tuh.


I think Japanese's pronounciation of Mozart is that too. Haha


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Common mistakes : Khatchaturian is pronounced "Chatchaturian as in Chutzpah , gutturally . 
Mussorgsky is accented on the first syllable, not the second as commonly pronounced .
Russian names such as Sergei and Andrei are accented on the second syllable, not 
the first . 
The ch in Rachmaninov is prounounced gutturally 
Kodaly is pronounced KO- die, not ko-DIE- ee .
Bartok is pronounced Bar -toke, to rhyme with wheel spoke, not as in the English word
talk .
Modest as in Mussorgsky is pronounced ma-D'YEST ,not as in the English word modest .
Kirill is accented on the second syllable . 
Kabalevsky is pronounced Ka-bal- yev-sky, not Kabal-evsky . It's difficult to 
indicate palatization, or adding the Y sound to workds, in English .
In Hungarian, what looks like an accent on vowels in not an accent, but indicates that the 
vowel is pronunced long . The stress in Hungarian is always on the first syllable .
Same for Czech and Finnish . In Polish, it's the next to last syllable. In Russian, stress 
totaly unpredicatable, and frequently falls where you least expect it !


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Kodaly is an interesting one:
http://www.forvo.com/word/kodály_zoltán/


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## waldvogel (Jul 10, 2011)

If you played the excerpts, the pronunciations for Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss are different. Wagner was from Leipzig, so they spoke the Saxon dialect there, while Strauss was from Munich where the dialect was Bavarian. I'm pretty sure uniform German pronunciation probably started to occur after unification in 1871. 

You can hear this in how a German pronounces the pronoun Ich. Does it more or less rhyme with sick or with fish?


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

^It doesn't rhyme with any of those. Ich is pronounced (to write it in English, quite difficult), eehxhxg.... 

Now you all know who Borjak is...


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## aphyrodite (Jan 9, 2012)

I believe most of the time I decided to be lazy and just pronounce Rachmaninoff as it is. 

Rather than Rakkkhhhhmaninoff. JK. Sounds fun.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Vladimir is pronounced vla- DI -mir, not VLA-dimir.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I usually enjoy a glass of Par-tagger while listening to Da-busey.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I've had a problem that if I pronounce it correctly, people don't know who I'm talking about. Of course, on this forum, I always pronounce it correctly.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

LOL I'll be honest, when people ask me who my favorite composers are, sometimes I'm scared to answer because I know I'm totally butchering some of the pronunciations. I think I do ok with most but a few give me trouble still (darn you Dvorak!!)


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

How hard can it be to pronounce "Handel"? I did once or twice hear "Hand-dell", ("dell" as in Dell Computers).


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Hilltroll72 said:


> In that spoken example the 'ch' sound is somewhat smothered. What _is there_ is certainly not 'hard', but it isn't really 'soft' either. It isn't Koo-Koo, but it ain't Choo-Choo either. Also, I wonder if the name is pronounced differently in Vienna than it is in Berlin.


The correct pronounciatin is as in Third Reich, as in shush. You are quite right it's an in-between sound.
Yes, a lot of difference between Berlin and Vienna, Vieannese softer. But as with local accents everywhere ,for teaching purposes I would think they aim for the equivalent of what was BBC English.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

HarpsichordConcerto said:


> How hard can it be to pronounce "Handel"? I did once or twice hear "Hand-dell", ("dell" as in Dell Computers).


Well, many people dont know how to pronounce the umlaut on the a; ä


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

emiellucifuge said:


> Well, many people dont know how to pronounce the umlaut on the a; ä


With the umlaut wouldn't it be pronounced like "Hen-dell"more or less, or "Haen-dell"


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## bassClef (Oct 29, 2006)

Yep for years I was wrongly educated about the pronunciation of Dvorak - and this was by music teachers.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

If "Wagner" proves too difficult, you can always just say "Gott".


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Of course there is a problem here, if I say to a friend "I'm off to Paree for the weekend they will think I'm a twit' Also do I say Wien in conversation, I think not. I was told that showpan is a Frenchified version and that in Poland it would be cop like the policeman and then in as in tin. What is the truth of that? This may be a can of worms.


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## tgtr0660 (Jan 29, 2010)

Couchie said:


> If "Wagner" proves too difficult, you can always just say "Gott".


You would probably still mispronounce it (if you do it like "got" with an extra "t" )


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

In Fantasia 2000, Mickey Mouse pronounces Stokowski as "Stow-COW-skee". It's odd because he knew the proper pronounciation in 1940.


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

The name is too hard to Handel for most people !


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

bigshot said:


> In Fantasia 2000, Mickey Mouse pronounces Stokowski as "Stow-COW-skee". It's odd because he knew the proper pronounciation in 1940.


Americans also say Mos-COW.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

A reporter was interviewing Stoki on TV and all through the introduction, she kept mispronouncing his name. Stoki finally interrupted her and said, "Excuse me, but there are no COWS in my family."


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## An Die Freude (Apr 23, 2011)

Is Respighi pronounced res-PEE-gee? I've been saying it like that for ages and I don't know if I'm right.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

http://www.forvo.com/word/ottorino_respighi/#it

Respighi


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