How to Pronounce Your Favorite Director's Name

A subforum to discuss film culture and criticism.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
HistoryProf
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:48 am
Location: KCK

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#376 Post by HistoryProf » Tue Dec 04, 2012 12:33 pm

Tommaso wrote:The problem is, if for example you're speaking at an international meeting of scholars, that you simply don't know if someone speaks the language in question. But if so, I personally would want to avoid making a fool of myself by, for instance, pronouncing Goethe as "Go-thii". I heard that myself, and I couldn't help it: it gave me the chuckles.

Thanks for the help with Rye, guys!
Funny story: My specialty is American Indian history. My first conference presentation happened to be at the largest gathering of the year and my advisor - a giant in the field - made sure that everyone who was anyone was in the audience for my panel. no pressure at all. On top of it somehow we had finagled the dean of Cherokee studies to chair the panel. It was an all star session with one exception: Me. Fortunately, I had uncovered a fabulous topic and my paper was very well received with one exception. I was discussing "red progressives" in Oklahoma in the 1910s and 1920s, among them were various Osage tribal members. I pronounced it Oh-sazh as I had read it in all the documents. I got a great response from the crowd, good questions, and even the chair pulled me aside and said something about "you're too green to know how good a topic this is, keep it up". My advisor ambled up with his proud papa smile, leaned in, and said "It's Oh-Sage."

Prof deflated.

User avatar
Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#377 Post by Tommaso » Fri Dec 14, 2012 8:30 pm

And another one of which I was sure about the pronunciation until someone insisted otherwise: Georges Méliès. I hitherto always pronounced the final 's' in his surname. Is that right? Wikipedia seems to support me, but they speak of an 'english pronunciation' of that name. So how would a French speaker pronounce his surname?

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#378 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:56 pm

It's mel - YAY I believe. French names tend not to pronounce the final -s. See: Francois.

Mathew2468
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:40 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#379 Post by Mathew2468 » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:07 pm

Mel-YES. or technically Mayl-YES. In most words you don't pronounce the last letter but names are unpredictable.

User avatar
Matt
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 12:58 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#380 Post by Matt » Fri Dec 14, 2012 10:54 pm

Yeah, the accent grave over the second E indicates that the S is pronounced. Mail-YES (or Mayl-YES, as above) is about right.

Mathew2468
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:40 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#381 Post by Mathew2468 » Fri Dec 14, 2012 11:06 pm

To be sure I had to friggin' look it up in the one place I remember hearing it: Godard's short shorts wearing librarian in JLG/JLG says it. But yeah, I can't think of any words that end on a pronounced è.

User avatar
Tommaso
Joined: Fri May 19, 2006 10:09 am

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#382 Post by Tommaso » Sat Dec 15, 2012 5:58 am

Thanks for the clarification, guys!

User avatar
Mr Sausage
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:02 pm
Location: Canada

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#383 Post by Mr Sausage » Sat Dec 15, 2012 9:10 am

Matt wrote:Yeah, the accent grave over the second E indicates that the S is pronounced. Mail-YES (or Mayl-YES, as above) is about right.
Ah, shit, that's right. My elementary school French is fading pretty bad.

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#384 Post by MichaelB » Tue Dec 18, 2012 5:43 am

I've always pronounced it "Mayl-YES", and I've uttered the name in front of French people on many occasions, without them noticeably flinching.

And Serge Bromberg, who is undoubtedly French, would appear to feel the same way - "Méliès" is the first spoken word in this interview.

User avatar
HistoryProf
Joined: Mon Mar 13, 2006 3:48 am
Location: KCK

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#385 Post by HistoryProf » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:29 pm

Pierre Etaix anyone? I know Pierre of course...but I polled some coworkers and none of us had a clue how to take on Etaix. Just something like "Eh-Tie?

Mathew2468
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:40 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#386 Post by Mathew2468 » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:33 pm

Ay-tay but french-like.

Étaix. The É is pronounced Ay, if it was Etaix it'd be Euh-tay(?).

Wha, wiki says Ay-teks. I was thinking of 'paix', but with this name apparently it's different. Iunno.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#387 Post by swo17 » Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:17 pm

Just a tip: With Chinese and Korean names, you can usually tell the family name from the given name based on the placement of the hyphen (i.e. the family name doesn't have one). Names from these countries should generally always list the family name first. With Japanese and Hungarian names, it is acceptable to list names the American way, even though they reverse it natively.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#388 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:23 am

Then again, in Japanese, very occasionally a hyphen is used simply to indicate two short vowel in succession (rather than a long vowel, which can be transliterated by doubling the vowel in question). Example, Kore-eda (variously, Kore'eda, Koreeda). Kore'eda is Hirokazu Kore'eda's last name. ;~}

The best practice for East Asian names -- putting the family name in ALL CAPS (at least when the person is first introduced in a written piece).

OZU Yasujiro
Akira KUROSAWA
LEE Chang-dong
ZHANG Yimou
Maggie CHEUNG Man-Yuk (western personal name, then given name, then Chinese given name).

User avatar
Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
Location: East of Shanghai

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#389 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:35 am

Hyphens are used to romanize Korean names, but not Chinese.
Park, along with Kim and Lee, are the most common Korean surnames:

Image

Percentage of family names in South Korea
Kim
Lee
Park
Choi
Jung

Korean and Chinese names should have the family name first, but there is a recent trend for some Chinese, especially celebs, to invert the order in the West, which I find a bit confusing.

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#390 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Sat Mar 23, 2013 10:54 am

The clearest tipoff is that Korean and Chinese surnames almost never have two syllables. There are only a tiny handful of surviving two-syllable surnames in Korean and Chinese, and the number of people who have them is similarly tiny. Speaking anecdotally, I've lived in China for over five years and have never met anyone with one of these names. I can't think of any reasonably prominent film figures with a disyllabic surname either, except Ma-Xu Weibang (who combined his wife's surname with his own) and a couple of Szetos in Hong Kong.

Of course this is no help when both names have only one syllable, which is rare in Korea. It is common in China (about 15% of the population, including Gong Li, Jiang Wen, Lou Ye, etc.), in which case you'd best check Wikipedia if you're uncertain. Some local jurisdictions in China actually require newborns to have polysyllabic given names to cut down on the number of people sharing a name, so names like these will become less common as time goes on.

User avatar
Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
Location: East of Shanghai

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#391 Post by Lemmy Caution » Sat Mar 23, 2013 11:44 am

I know a couple people with the surname Ouyang, which I think is the most common two-character Chinese surname. But you're right they are fairly rare. A few of the two character Chinese family names were originally official titles. Sima = Master of the Horses and the family name was granted to them sometime back in history (at least 2500 years ago as one of Confucius' disciples had that surname). Pretty neat if you can trace your family name back to a decree from the emperor. And actually the Sima's moved up and became emperors themselves of the Jin Dynasty (265 - 420 CE). Redirecting back to film a little, in Chinese Tv dramas, they often give the male lead the family name Ouyang, as it's considered distinguished and adds a bit of flair.

I prefer when Chinese names are written with every character starting with a capital letter, such as OuYang or Mao ZeDong. Makes it easier to pronounce and clear where the character break is (though usually it's easy to tell). Last decade there was a big trend for one character Chinese given names, which were for some reason seen as modern and fashionable.

User avatar
andyli
Joined: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:46 pm

Re: Stoker (Park Chan-wook, 2013)

#392 Post by andyli » Sat Mar 23, 2013 12:28 pm

The trend of using two-character family name (compound surname) in Chinese dramas can be traced back to the tradition of Wu-Xia/martial art literature, in which masters of certain martial art disciplines are often given compound surnames because they sound rare and mysterious. It has become a cliché and often joked about.

On a side note, almost all Hong Kong/Taiwanese/Korean/Vietnamese family names share the same origins with their Chinese counterparts. For example Cheung, Park, Kim, Lee, Nguyen are Zhang, Piao, Jin, Li, Ruan in China. The different spellings arise from different romanization rules established by authorities from these countries, but in character they are exactly the same (if you disregard the simplified/traditional Chinese discrepancies).

User avatar
TMDaines
Joined: Wed Nov 11, 2009 1:01 pm
Location: Stretford, Manchester

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#393 Post by TMDaines » Mon Mar 25, 2013 3:18 am

I've always found the trend of East Asians taking a Western given name a rather curious phenomenon. It's not as if the majority of Chinese, Korean or Japanese names are difficult to pronounce. It's rather strange to know and live with people who would refer to themselves with one name when with Westerners and another name when with other diaspora. It always comes across as a little fake to say your name is "Sally" when you're telling me in broken English. It's not as if this happens to any great extent with people from South Asian, West Asian or Eastern European cultures. What's the origin of this behaviour and why is it so prevalant with East Asians, particularly with Chinese? Does the reverse happen in China with Westerners adopting a Chinese given name?

User avatar
MichaelB
Joined: Fri Aug 11, 2006 6:20 pm
Location: Worthing
Contact:

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#394 Post by MichaelB » Mon Mar 25, 2013 3:40 am

I suspect Hong Kong's British ties throughout most of the last century played a role here.

User avatar
Lemmy Caution
Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 3:26 am
Location: East of Shanghai

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#395 Post by Lemmy Caution » Mon Mar 25, 2013 8:11 am

TMDaines wrote:I've always found the trend of East Asians taking a Western given name a rather curious phenomenon. It's not as if the majority of Chinese, Korean or Japanese names are difficult to pronounce. It's rather strange to know and live with people who would refer to themselves with one name when with Westerners and another name when with other diaspora... What's the origin of this behaviour and why is it so prevalent with East Asians, particularly with Chinese? Does the reverse happen in China with Westerners adopting a Chinese given name?
Hmm. I think part of it is that Asian names are considered a little difficult for Westerners to remember and sometimes pronounce. Also, in post-open&reformed China, English names became cool and sounded modern and so many people like using them. I know Western companies often require that everyone has an English name, with some insisting they they are used. I've dealt with some Western companies in China where colleagues didn't know each others Chinese names.

In China it's not uncommon for people to use different names in different situations. For instance, someone might have their full official name, a simpler name they use everyday or among friends, plus a nickname that family and close friends use. So I think an English name is seen as just another variation. Some use their assumed English name a lot, some just in business or among foreigners. I also have had friends who change their English name now and then.

As for your other question, in China, not only do they prefer if a Westerner has a Chinese name, but it's a full name complete with a surname. I found that a bit odd, trying to adopt a Chinese family name. I was given a full Chinese name by some friends, but it wasn't easy for me to pronounce correctly and make people understand it easily. So I scrapped it and just transliterated my American family name into Chinese, which works well because it's 3 syllables and the same pronunciation as the name of a well-known city, so everyone knows what I'm saying without a hitch. Some Chinese find my Chinese name a bit dissatisfying because the first character (for the family name) isn't a Chinese family name, although it is a homophone for one. But as a foreigner you are allowed to do something wrong or foolish -- it's almost expected ...

I was amused one time when a teenage Chinese girl stuck out her hand and said "Hello, I am Linda Green." Rare for a Chinese person to take a Western family name. And she was very earnest. In that case, she had translated her family name Liu.

User avatar
jindianajonz
Jindiana Jonz Abrams
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:11 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#396 Post by jindianajonz » Mon Mar 25, 2013 10:55 am

Lemmy Caution wrote:I was amused one time when a teenage Chinese girl stuck out her hand and said "Hello, I am Linda Green." Rare for a Chinese person to take a Western family name. And she was very earnest. In that case, she had translated her family name Liu.
Is that how you pronounce that last name? I always thought it was pronounced "loo", whereas the color green verges on being an inpronouncable (to me, anyway) monosyllabic "loo-EE" or more accurately "lwee".

User avatar
Shrew
The Untamed One
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2007 2:22 am

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#397 Post by Shrew » Mon Mar 25, 2013 9:43 pm

Liu is actually a different family name, pronounced leeoo as one syllable. The color green is a different character, written as lv or lu with an umlaut over the u. It sounds like the French u (round your lips like an o but say a u or ee with your tongue). I don't think green is a normal Chinese surname, but it may be an uncommon one. More likely her name just rhymes with green (probably the same last name as Lu Bu for anyone who knows Romance of the Three Kingdoms or has played too much Dynasty Warriors).

To make it more confusing, there are other Chinese names written Lu with an regular u sound (as in the writer Lu Xun), which rhymes with new or you.

User avatar
The Fanciful Norwegian
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:24 pm
Location: Teegeeack

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#398 Post by The Fanciful Norwegian » Mon Mar 25, 2013 10:01 pm

The lu-as-in-green (or "Lu Bu") should be written as "lü," which is actually pretty intuitive, since the sound corresponds exactly to the German ü. In China it's frequently but unofficially romanized as "lv," because the "v" key is used as a substitute for ü in pinyin input methods; this spelling sometimes sneaks into movie credits. "Lyu" is sometimes used in Taiwan. Writing it as plain "lu" is the worst option, since there's no way to distinguish it from lu-as-in-Lu Xun. Just to make things a little more difficult, the same "ü" sound is spelled "yu" at the beginning of a syllable (yu, yuan, yue, yun).

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#399 Post by knives » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:48 pm

This is a more a general language question, but in German how is the ß pronounced? I've been using a very hard B sound like in Bub, but I obviously don't know for sure.

Mathew2468
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:40 pm

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#400 Post by Mathew2468 » Fri Jul 19, 2013 7:51 pm

It's "ss".

Post Reply