How to Pronounce Your Favorite Director's Name

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

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#426 Post by Tommaso » Tue Mar 22, 2016 6:15 am

MichaelB wrote: A good parallel example would be the actor John Le Mesurier. As a French speaker, the temptation to say "Mezhooreeay" is very great indeed, but in actual fact it sounds more like the English word "measurer".
Reminds me of how I once heard someone pronounce the name of a certain famous British actor as "Loronce Olivyé".

AK
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#427 Post by AK » Tue Mar 22, 2016 6:58 am

Tommaso wrote:
MichaelB wrote: A good parallel example would be the actor John Le Mesurier. As a French speaker, the temptation to say "Mezhooreeay" is very great indeed, but in actual fact it sounds more like the English word "measurer".
Reminds me of how I once heard someone pronounce the name of a certain famous British actor as "Loronce Olivyé".
I was in awe when I heard how Satyajit Ray is pronounced on the Wikipedia page. Now that would raise a few eyebrows if I adapted that pronunciation in speech with my friends. The problem is, however, that not many of my friends know of Ray anyway, so that joke would be lost on them, unfortunately.

I'm digressing a bit now, but regarding Michael's earlier point on sounding pretentious earlier... The word in question was "circuit training". Now, in our country we pronounce "circuit" as /sirkuit/ (IPA). Well, two of my friends asked me where I'd been, so I answered the way it's usually pronounced around here, and he was like "Huh?" Only when I repeated it in English did he realize what I was saying. Then, the other friend came around a bit later and again asked the same question, only this time I pronounced it as we do in English... and he thought I was insane! I don't think he's seen me the same way ever since, that is, after recovering from the laughing fit that overtook him.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#428 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Mar 22, 2016 9:59 am

Reminds me, too, of this bit about the British pronunciation of Ricky Gervais' name.

I remember once in undergrad trying to convince a skeptical friend of mine that Byron's Don Juan should be pronounced the English way, JOO - un, and not the Spanish, hwan, and that the rhyme scheme of the poem often depends on the English pronunciation. Never did manage to convince her that I wasn't just trying to cover up my own ignorance.

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colinr0380
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#429 Post by colinr0380 » Tue Mar 22, 2016 10:12 am

It could be worse, I remember getting my pronunciations of Gaelic and Gallic mixed up interchangably for a while before someone gently corrected me on it!

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matrixschmatrix
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#430 Post by matrixschmatrix » Tue Mar 22, 2016 10:13 am

I once got corrected by a roomful of English Lit students in an upper-level course in college on my pronunciation of 'quixotic', which they universally insisted should be pronounced 'kee houtic'

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domino harvey
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#431 Post by domino harvey » Tue Mar 22, 2016 10:16 am

I have nothing to contribute except to say that when I was a kid I thought the Jurassic Park author's name was pronounced Michael Crickton

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Feego
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#432 Post by Feego » Wed Mar 23, 2016 5:41 pm

On a similar note to some of the names above, Cate Blanchett's name is frequently (that is, pretty much always) mispronounced. Most people pronounce it blan-CHET or with a French twist, blon-SHET. The actress pronounces it BLAN-chit.

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knives
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#433 Post by knives » Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:50 pm

With Sidney Lumet is it pronounced Lew-May or Lew-Met? I thought it was the former but on TCM they pronounced it as the later.

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domino harvey
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#434 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jun 08, 2016 7:54 pm

It's Loo-met

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knives
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#435 Post by knives » Wed Jun 08, 2016 8:34 pm

Thanks, I wonder why I thought it was a silent t.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#436 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jun 08, 2016 9:19 pm

knives wrote:Thanks, I wonder why I thought it was a silent t.
Probably because it looks like it has a French origin (which I do believe is the case).

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Kirkinson
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#437 Post by Kirkinson » Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:18 am

I also thought it was Loo-MAY for many years. And then for several more I thought it was "LUMM-itt," thanks to a film studies instructor in college who pronounced it that way. I still mess up sometimes and use that one since I made such a conscious effort to pronounce it like that while I was in his class.

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MichaelB
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How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#438 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:37 am

Mr Sausage wrote:
knives wrote:Thanks, I wonder why I thought it was a silent t.
Probably because it looks like it has a French origin (which I do believe is the case).
Which is an excellent opportunity to bring up Jules Dassin, mentioned only briefly at the very start of the thread in a post made nearly a decade ago.

When I shot the recent Thieves' Highway video piece with Frank Krutnik, there were loads of outtakes in which he kept pronouncing Dassin as though he was French, and then cracking up - because he knew that it was "Joolz Dassin" (with every consonant from the "J" to the "S" to the final "in" clearly enunciated, the last bit pronounced exactly like the English word "in"), but he'd rarely had cause to say it out loud before, so kept reverting to what sounded more convincing to his ears.

It's all Rififi's fault, of course - not least because it features Dassin himself onscreen speaking French. So why would his name not be pronounced "Zhool Dassan"? And has any French critic ever pronounced it any differently?

In actual fact, the surname is of Eastern European origin, not French, and his given first name was Julius - "Jules" was an abbreviation that stuck. And he was American, not French.
Last edited by MichaelB on Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Big Ben
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#439 Post by Big Ben » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:55 am

It's ROWE-BEAR BRESS-ON? Correct. I've always had problems with French names and wanted to double check.

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MichaelB
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#440 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 09, 2016 8:57 am

First syllable is "rob", and the final "on" should sound authentically French.

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MichaelB
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#441 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 09, 2016 10:19 am

Unless my search technique is at fault, István Szabó doesn't seem to have come up yet - and he's another one that's hard to remember because Hungarian pronunciation rules differ from those of surrounding countries. In Polish, for instance, "sz" is "sh", but in Hungarian it's a hard "s", and it's the letter that's written "s" that becomes "sh".

In other words, Ishtvahn Saboo (the final "ó" being slightly extended).

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Trees
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#442 Post by Trees » Thu Jun 09, 2016 10:51 am

Boon-Well shows us how to make a dry martini. Shot on film!

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swo17
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#443 Post by swo17 » Thu Jun 09, 2016 10:53 am

Boon-ywell

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repeat
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#444 Post by repeat » Thu Jun 09, 2016 10:54 am

MichaelB wrote:In other words, Ishtvahn Saboo (the final "ó" being slightly extended).
That's funny, I was just wondering about this: how audible is the difference between the two different "a"-wovels? I've understood that the one without the accent should be slightly more "open"?

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MichaelB
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How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#445 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 09, 2016 11:21 am

It's audible, but not as audible as the double-accented "ő" would be.

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ccfixx
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#446 Post by ccfixx » Thu Jun 09, 2016 12:25 pm

MichaelB wrote:It's audible, but not as audible as the double-accented "ő" would be.
If no one is aware, Forvo.com is a great translation site, I've found, to help out with foreign names and titles. It allows users to upload their pronunciation of a particular word or phrase and it indicates the user's country of origin and their gender. Some words have many uploads so it's cool to hear a variety of dialects. Coincidentally, there's one upload for István Szabó from a Hungarian male. Click on the blue arrow next to the name to listen.

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

Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#447 Post by knives » Thu Jun 09, 2016 1:22 pm

MichaelB wrote:Unless my search technique is at fault, István Szabó doesn't seem to have come up yet - and he's another one that's hard to remember because Hungarian pronunciation rules differ from those of surrounding countries. In Polish, for instance, "sz" is "sh", but in Hungarian it's a hard "s", and it's the letter that's written "s" that becomes "sh".

In other words, Ishtvahn Saboo (the final "ó" being slightly extended).
So like a Samyech?

beamish13
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#448 Post by beamish13 » Thu Jun 09, 2016 2:19 pm

Anyone know the correct pronunciation of Jean-Jacques Beineix? I've seen him introduced as BY-NICE and BY-NESS.

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MichaelB
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#449 Post by MichaelB » Thu Jun 09, 2016 2:20 pm

"Bennex", I think, but that may not be reliable.

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Trees
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Re: How to pronounce your favorite director's name

#450 Post by Trees » Thu Jun 09, 2016 2:50 pm

swo17 wrote:Boon-ywell
All these damn perfectionists around here. :D

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