About phonetically-challenged people
Slovenia recently got a new president. His first name is irrelevant for this rant. His surname however is the main point of it. Türk. Notice the two little dots on the u? That means that the letter isn’t read as a normal u but differently. Now how differently?
Official Slovenian phonetics simply sux. S-U-C-K-S! And here’s why.
What pronunciation rules do we use for specific words/names? Various. It obviously depends on the “importance” of the person though.
The rule in Slovenian is that if a certain letter doesn’t exist in Slovenian, we try to replace it’s sound with our nearest equivalent and pronounce it like that. Because of that rule, München becomes Minhen (or even Minken), Müller becomes Miler, Köln becomes Keln and I sincerely hope that I never get to hear something as ridiculous as Österreich getting pronounced as Esterajh, because then I really doubt I’ll be able to restrain the urge of throwing something heavy but pointy at the person who utters that heresy.
Anyway, if it doesn’t look too weird, people just read everything the Slovenian way. Merkel becomes Merkl, (It’s a bit too late to look for the IPA font but just ask somebody, who speaks decent German, to pronounce that surname. And then imagine a Russian saying it in a low budget Holy-forest movie), Sarkozy luckily stays Sarkozy (since the y is pronounced as the i anyway and we got that in our language). For some ka-razy reason though, George Bush stays George Bush. Everybody uses the English pronunciation of that name. Georg is a bit German-sounding, but other than that perfectly pronounceable in Slovenian. Bush sounds weird but with the schwa (if you don’t know what that is, go look at the IPA webpage) being (over)used in Slovenian, that wouldn’t be a real problem as well. So, GWB is lucky enough that most Slovenians still regard him as one of the most important people alive (which obviously he is, but I mean in the phonetical sense), since even my grandmother, who knows nothing of English, can pronounce his name quite well. On the other hand, our own president’s misfortune lies in the inability of like 50 % of Slovenians to actually pronounce the ü as it’s supposed to be pronounced. And yes, the phonetics-rule-maker is also in those 50 %. Now let’s research the ü a bit.
Ü is used in quite a few languages. The obvious one is German, followed by French, in which it doesn’t have the same look, but the sound definitely exists, in one of the most phonetically-rich language, Hungarian, and probably many more. EVERY high-schooler has to learn at least 2 languages, one of them mostly being English and the other usually German, French or Italian. The fact that teachers actually allow mispronouncing the ü (and ö) even at foreign language classes aside, at least the reporters should be able to pronounce the president’s name correctly. I’m quite sure some can but don’t do it though.
One might argue that we can’t accommodate every single sound which we don’t have already. And I’ll call that statement BS! It’s because people don’t want to learn. Especially the ones in command. For example. My native dialect, and quite a few neighbouring ones, do not have the ô in their vowel-set. Does anyone care? No. We just get major minus-points for mispronouncing or wrongly marking the o-s in exams. We don’t use the schwa where it’s not absolutely necessary, so things like Pes [ps] or Megla [mgla] don’t happen. Anyone care? Of course not. “You just have to speak in normal Slovenian!” they say. Then again, we DO have ü, ö, something sounding like a mix of a and o, 3 different pronunciations of the e etc. So we DO have the means to pronounce a simple word like Türk correctly. But no. It’s wrong. WTF!? So if we don’t have it and you do, it’s ok. If you’re the one that doesn’t and we do, it’s not? PHSCK YOU!
Now I’m not a pronunciation freak. My surname gets mispronounced on a regular basis. According to the native speakers of Portuguese, even I myself am struggling with it’s proper pronunciation (probably because I only heard it pronounced the correct way 5-6 times, having grown up in Slovenia). I do acknowledge, that some sounds are hard to produce. But that are the clicking noises of some African languages, or some Chinese or Arabic sounds and not quite regular European sounds! I don’t really mind, if you mispronounce my name. I laugh at it. I also don’t mind, if you mispronounce a name of someone unimportant, even though it might hurt them (if they understood Slovenian, which they usually don’t: João => Žvau (derogatory expression for the word animal) comes to mind). But butchering names like Goethe, München etc, which are known worldwide is an outrage! Slovenian already has names for many foreign places. Klagenfurt became Celovec, Villach is called Beljak, Paris (with the beautiful French r) became Pariz (again Hollywoodilly-Russian-sounding), Budapest became Budimpešta, Roma became Rim etc. I don’t like most of them, but I don’t mind if people use them. However mispronouncing the PRESIDENT’s name does make me angry. How is anyone else supposed to take us or him seriously, if even his own fellow Slovenians don’t bother to say his name as it’s supposed to be said?!
And then there’s the (invalid) option of saying Turk instead of Tirk. And a phonetician has the nerve to say that it’s wrong?
With all due respect, I believe that you might have graduated with straight 10s or whatever. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU ALWAYS KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!!! Saying Tirk means nothing. It looks wierd written and sounds awful. Actually only by reading it my ears bleed! Saying Türk is obiously the correct way to go, whether the rule-makers like it or not! Saying Turk is at least correct as far meaning is concerned, since Türk means somebody from Turkey (which our president obviously is not but word etymology is a funny thing), and the Slovenian word for a Turkish man being Turek, which in speech shortens to Turk, that obviously is WAY MORE CORRECT than Tirk or any other retarded way of saying the name!
LEARN THE BLOODY SOUNDS! Ü AND Ö ARE EASY! IF I CAN LEARN TO SAY FSCKIN GÔRA OR VÔDA, YOU CAN SAY BLOODY TÜRK!
p. s. If you think that Türk is hard to say, try correctly pronouncing something like the beautiful Hungarian city-name Székesfehérvár. Check google for Hungarian pronunciation rules :P Or try saying my favorite phrase for bugging phonetically-challenged people: “Šou san za küjkel dödöle gejst!”