Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 October 4

= October 4 =

Tutunick
Hello everybody. How do you pronounce Tutunick, as in Brian Tutunick? — ObZorD T 05:38, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Katia Tiutiunnik pronounces her name tyoo-tyoo-nik. The spelling is slightly different but I assume they're variations on the same theme.  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  21:39, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * A name's pronunciation is not necessarily connected to its etymology: e.g. the article about Travis Zajac says his name is pronounced even though his Polish ancestors pronounced theirs as . --92.27.207.68 (talk) 08:44, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I used to run into this all the time with phone clients. I had a Ms. Kadlaczek, (kad-la-check) who got very angry that I didn't know it was pronounced "Cadillac."  (Why not Mercedes Benz?)
 * I had a woman named (Albanian) Ms. Hoxhaj. She was very confused when I called her Ms. Hodge-eye,  said "Hocks-hodge", then said, "Oh, you must speak Albanian like my husband."
 * Then there was Mr. Lifschitz who was outraged I pronounced it as spelt. When I asked him how he would like it pronounced, he said, "Correctly!"  I suspect he had a big styrofoam nose. μηδείς (talk) 18:12, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
 * I would pronounce it /tuˈtu.nɪk/ without hesitation. —Stephen (talk) 12:45, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * That's not particularly helpful. Americans may pronounce tu as too, giving too-too-nik, but in Britain and Commonwealth countries, tu would be pronounced t'yoo as in "tunic", as Jack said above. So the question is still, how is Brian Tutunick pronounced? Akld guy (talk) 21:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The answer is: how the person called Tutunick wants it to be pronounced. As example, the pronunciation of the last name of the current Premier of Queensland, Annastacia Palaszczuk.--Shirt58 (talk) 02:25, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Chinese names for Malaysian cities
The majority of the cities of Peninsular Malaysia have a Chinese name that is unsurprisingly a simple phonetic rendition. For example: Alor Setar - 亞羅士打 Yàluóshìdǎ, Ipoh - 怡保 Yíbǎo, Kuala Terengganu - 瓜拉登嘉樓 Guālādēngjiālóu, Kuantan - 關丹 Guāndān and so on. But some of them have a Chinese name, sometimes more than one, that is completely different from the Malay one. For example: Alor Setar - 米都 Mǐdōu (another name), Johor Bahru - 新山 Xīnshān, Kuala Lumpur - 吉隆坡 Jílóngpō and 隆市 Lóngshì, Klang - 巴生 Bāshēng, Seremban - 芙蓉 Fúróng. Does anyone know the etymology of these names? Why do they differ from the local ones? Thanks! --79.46.134.24 (talk) 23:17, 4 October 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty sure that those are sound-alikes too. The Chinese /d/ pronunciation is often perceived as a t and even spoken as a hard t by non-native speakers. For example, taoism instead of daoism. Note on the Johor Bahru page that the Bahru means new in Malay. 新山 just means "new mountain". Maybe there is a mountain there? 吉隆坡 is likely another phonetic rendition. SSS (talk) 00:45, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * 79.46.134.24 -- I wouldn't know the details, but probably some of the discrepancies are due to using non-Mandarin forms of Chinese in the transcriptions. For example, if you look at https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%90%89, you can see that the character 吉 has a whole range of pronunciations with initial "k" in various dialects... AnonMoos (talk) 08:51, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Indeed, see Languages of Malaysia which has Mandarin in fifth place with Hokkien and Hakka in the lead. Alansplodge (talk) 10:10, 5 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Alor Setar is the capital of Kedah, and "Kedah is considered the "rice bowl" of Malaysia, accounting for about half of Malaysia's total production of rice", hence Midou "rice center".
 * Johor Bahru "was known as "Little Swatow (Shantou)", as most of the Chinese are from Shantou, China", and "bahru" means "new" in Malay, hence Xinshan, "new shan(tou)" (the difference in tones may be dialectal or from tone sandhi).
 * Jilongpo is certainly phonetic, as said before, and Longshi is a short form for Jilongpo.
 * Furong is phonetical from the older name of Seremban, Sungai Ujong. (note that rong is not pronounced as in English wrong in any Chinese dialect)
 * Basheng is given an etymology from Malay "pasang" (air pasang "high water" this is justified in other sources by the fact the town was accessible from sea during high tide only) in Wiktionary, but it might be connected to the old name of Klang, Pengkalan Batu, hence also at least partly phonetical).
 * See also Transcription into Chinese characters for general principles of transcription into Chinese.

Шурбур (talk) 10:17, 5 October 2017 (UTC)