Grand Forks daily herald., 1914-12-16
HOW TO PRONOUNCE WAR NAMES
IMPOSSIBLE WITH ABSOLUTE COR
RECTNESS THESE SUGGES.


New York Times: There is a laud-
able desire on the part of the Ameri-
can public to pronounce correctly the
foreign names that are daily appear
ing in the dispatches from the seat of
war. Both the French and Germans
have scientific method by which
foreign names are adapted to thei"
respective languages in spelling and
pronounciation. We have none.
Neither have the English, who usually
proceed along the lines of least re-
sistance and spell and pronounce as
fancy moves. ignoring anything which
savOrs of authority-as, for example,
the perversion of the beautiful word
"Livorno" to the uncouth "Leghorn."
In both French and German, proper
nouns aften defy the rules of pronun-
Polish, Servian, Montenegrin and Hun
garian names the difficulties are al
most insurmountable. The principal
reason Is that these words come to- US
in Roman characters through English,
French or German sources. For ex-
ample, the Slavonic v may be either v
or # in English; W in French, and
either au or W in German, while as a
matter of fact the SlavOhic y is pro-
, nounced about as it is in America, as
are the other Slanovic consonants, the
vowels being pronounced exactly as
they are in Italian. But there are
thirty-siX letters in the Slavonic al
phabet invented by the Greek monk
Cyril, in the ninth century. ten Of
which have no equivalent In English.
In French the e, o, u, and the nasal
English equivalents, and, in the case Of
German, the u, o, ch, and sch are en-
tirely missing from our language.
Thus it is perfectly plain that no
paradigms of English sounds, no mat
ter how ingeniously arranged, could
enable one to pronounce absolutely
correctly all of the foreign names
which are appearing in the war dis
patches. The following scheme, how
ever, it is believed, will approach the
correct sounds as nearly as it is pos
sible to give them with the sounds
used in English speech.
1t should be remembered that
French is an entirely unaccented Ian
guage-that is, every syllable Of a
word is pronounced in the same tone
with a rising infection, but never an
accentuation. at the end-while Ger
man follows the English tendency,
and the Slavonic languages are strik-
ing in their variety of accent. In the
first list the emphasis is, indicated by
an accent at the end of the Stress
syllable. In the second list, principal
ly made up of French words, the
apostrophe is employed to denote a
quickly disappearing sound.
AS Turkeys entrance into the war
| is likely to produce a new batch Of
| words, it may be we'll to remember
that the consonants in Turkish are
pronounced, with few exceptions,
about as they are in English. and the
vowels as in Italian. The tendency
to give the French sound to the Tur-
kisl j is incorrect. 1t is always hard,
as in Jelly" or "jam." In Turko-
| Rumanian and Turko-Seryian words,
however, there is a tendency to soften
the Turkish ]. The Bulgarian, Ser
Wan and Montenegrin languages, like
| Russian, are Slavonic, the Rumanian
| is Latin, and the Hungarian is Finno-
Ugric, with many Turkish characteris-
tics.
Words from eastern war area.
SIavOnic, Hungarian and German.
-. Augustowo-Oh-go
Biatystok-Bia-te tees stock.
Observation-Disclosures -beerg.
Bucharest or Bukharest-Boo-k -kar-
rest. .....5
Cittinje-Tzet-teen' -yeh'.
Czech-Check.
Czenstochowa-Chen -ha'-ya.
Dansic or Danzzig-Dansik.
Durazzo - Doo.rahd' or doo-
railt'-so
Dnieper-'Neepcr.
Epirus-Ee'- -per-rus.
Eydtkunen-Eyt-'ko
Gumbinnen-Goom-bin men.