PRONUNCIATION OF FOREIGN NAMES 4840 PRONUNCIATION OF FOREIGN NAMES 



dents confess that they hesitated to say "It Is I" 

 or to answer "I" to the question. "Who is it?" 

 because of a feeling that it savors of affectation. 

 This is sheer absurdity. 



Her and me are neighbors, for She and I are 

 neighbors. This is a frequent error among chil- 

 dren and illiterate people. The objective form of 

 the pronoun cannot stand as the subject of the 

 sentence. 



Between you and I, he invited only we two, for 

 Between you and me, he invited only us two. If 

 we transpose the two objects of between, saying 

 beticccn I and you, and omit the numeral after 

 the pronoun, to make the sentence read he in- 

 vited we, the mistakes take on added clearness. 



That canarii of hcr's is molting it's feathers, 

 for That canary of hers is molting its feathers. 

 One frequently sees this misuse of the apostrophe. 

 The forms hers and its are already possessive. 



Outline on Pronoun 



I. Definition and Derivation 

 II. Classes 



(a) Personal 



1. Simple 



2. Compound 



(b) Interrogative 



(c) Relative 



(d) Demonstrative 



(e) Indefinite 



III. Parsing the Pronoun 



(a) Essentials to be stated 



(b) Type sentence 



IV. Common Errors 



PRONUNCIATION, pro nun si a' shun. OF 

 FOREIGN NAMES. The French and Ger- 

 mans, in speaking proper names of other na- 

 tionalities than their own, usually give to such 

 names the pronunciation they would have in 

 French or German. The English custom, how- 

 ever, differs from this, and requires that a for- 

 eign proper name shall be pronounced as nearly 

 as possible as it would be in the language to 

 which it belongs. In the United States it is 

 becoming a common practice to speak all for- 

 eign words with ordinary English pronuncia- 

 tion; this custom is endorsed by leading schol- 

 ars. Thus Americans feel it quite proper to say 

 Don Quicksote instead of Don Kehotay for 

 Don Quixote. 



Almost all of the European alphabets were 

 derived from the Roman, but many of the 

 letters have acquired such different values in 

 the various languages that it is almost impos- 

 sible for a person acquainted only with English 

 to tell anything about the pronunciation of for- 

 eign names unless he has specific information 

 as to the different letter sounds. It would be 

 impossible, for instance, for an Englishman or 

 American to guess that the Spanish words La 

 Jolla sound more like La Hoya than any other 

 English equivalent. 



This article aims to give information which 

 it is hoped will be sufficient to assist one in 

 pronouncing names in any of the European lan- 

 guages. There are few general rules which can 

 be stated. It may be said, however, that in 

 most languages except English each vowel is 

 sounded, except in cases of double vowels, when 

 the two usually make one syllable, as in Dutch 

 Baas, pronounced bahs. It is possible, there- 

 fore, to tell at a glance how many syllables a 

 foreign word has as many as there are vowels. 

 Accent. In almost every speech, one syllable 

 of each word is stressed more than the others, 

 but in no other language is this accent as strong 

 as in English. Unaccented syllables are in gen- 

 eral given more nearly their full value, and the 

 accented syllable is not dwelt upon emphati- 

 cally. To foreigners, the English seem to 

 drawl, because they exaggerate the length of 

 the vowel in an accented syllable. 



In French the accent is particularly weak, 

 some linguists declaring that there is no accent 

 at all; but the slight stress falls uniformly on 

 the last syllable. The German system of ac- 

 centing closely resembles the English, and one 

 who is familiar with the latter language can 

 almost invariably place the accent correctly in 

 German words. In Italian the accent usually 

 falls on the next to the last syllable, while in 

 Spanish and Portuguese it falls on the last syl- 

 lable, unless that syllable ends with a vowel, 

 or, in Spanish, with n or s. In such cases the 

 next to the last syllable is accented. In Hun- 

 garian the accent is always on the first syllable, 

 while in Welsh and Polish it is usually on the 

 next to the last. The accent of a Greek word 

 is determined by the accent mark of the writ- 

 ten word, and Turkish resembles the French in 

 placing a light accent on the last syllable. Rus- 

 sian admits of no general rules, each case re- 

 quiring special knowledge. 



Phonetic Value of Letters. The following 

 list, while not exhaustive, gives the chief values 

 of the vowels and consonants in the modern 

 languages of Europe. If nothing is indicated as 

 to the sound of a letter, it is pronounced as in 

 English. 



A has in most languages one of the more open 

 sounds, as in English father, grass, or even hat. 

 In Hungarian a without a diacritical mark most 

 closely resembles o in not, while 6, is like a in 

 far. Certain East Indian languages have a short 

 a like u in shut. 



A. in French is like a without an accent mark, 

 and resembles a in car; in Rumanian it is like i 

 In pin. 



A is but another way of writing ae. See below. 

 A in Rumanian is like e in fern. 



