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Further to Michael’s post. The same applies to feminised surnames in Russian, like Kira Muratova. Her first husband’s name was MuRATov, so hers is MuRATova.

In general, with multiply syllabled Russian names, you’re generally correct if you put the emphasis on the penultimate syllable. (Doesn’t apply to all Russian names, like TolSTOY or ZVYAgintsev, unfortunately, or Russians with non-Russian names, like Eisenstein!). E.g PuDOVkin, KalaTOZov, ParaDZHANov. And it’s VlaDIMir NaBOKov, not whatever you heard from Sting or Nick Cave.

And of course Battleship PotYOMkin.

Kauno wrote:

Finch wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 8:21 pmI thought Chinese was more difficult to master than Japanese, no?

Apparently no. No idea of Japanese and I can't read kanji, but Finnish is suicidal.

Chinese is hard to pronounce because it's a tone language and has some sounds you don't see in the West (the sh, zh, ch, r group), but its grammar is pretty flexible and usually straight s-v-o with no tenses or conjugation. Japanese is far easier to pronounce but its grammar is s-o-v and you have various conjugations, some of them involving social register. Plus the kanji can have multiple pronunciations depending on the context. I found Chinese much easier.

I hadn't heard the theory about Finnish/Hungarian being related to Japanese/Korean, but there is a theory that the latter two are related to Turkish because of the grammar.

zedz wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 8:52 pm Further to Michael’s post. The same applies to feminised surnames in Russian, like Kira Muratova. Her first husband’s name was MuRATov, so hers is MuRATova.

In general, with multiply syllabled Russian names, you’re generally correct if you put the emphasis on the penultimate syllable. (Doesn’t apply to all Russian names, like TolSTOY or ZVYAgintsev, unfortunately, or Russians with non-Russian names, like Eisenstein!). E.g PuDOVkin, KalaTOZov, ParaDZHANov. And it’s VlaDIMir NaBOKov, not whatever you heard from Sting or Nick Cave.

Speaking of Russian names, I was surprised to learn that a name like Boris is pronounced more like bah - REESS.

MichaelB wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:09 pm

Florinaldo wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 4:05 pmGroupings of languages can sometimes be surprising. I remember when the now defunct international organisation called the Latin Union was still around some people were surprised to see Romania as a member, but it turns out that Romanian is indeed part of the family of Latin languages, now more commonly called Romance languages. When you listen to it being spoken, you can hear similiarities with Italian, French and others. Also, nearly all the Romanians I have know displayed a fiery character true to their sang latin (or latin blood).

Romanian is apparently closer to Latin than any other living language. And yes, it's surprisingly easy to make out the gist of written Romanian if you already know at least one of the Romance languages, especially if you swot up on a few local grammatical quirks (such as the definite article being expressed by the suffix "-ul", which is sometimes then followed by another suffix - for instance in the original title of The Child's Pose, which is Poziția copilului).

Though it underwent a few hundred years ago a drastic francophoniation as a way, or so says my Romanian aunt, to distant itself from the Russians and look more civilized to the west. This is immediate obvious with the written language which used to be in Cyrillic. My aunt's father only speaks Romanian which has given me many occasions to see this in action. With my poor spanish I'm able to actually hold something like a conversation with him so long as remember the differences (e.g. 'hai' instead of 'vai' for you go).

Gregory wrote: Sun Jul 21, 2013 8:37 pm Right, it's Winding Refn, a double last name. I still usually see him referred to by last name as "Refn." Many still don't understand or accept the notion of a double last name, which is understandable. It can be complicated and hard to verify.

Is it the same with Christian Braad Thomsen? He goes under b?

MichaelB wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 3:10 pmBut while I'm just as familiar with Hungarian cinema as I am with the Polish and Czech equivalent, I don't know the language at all - and just to be even more confusing, their pronunciation rules are occasionally the exact opposite of those for, say, Polish. For instance "s" is "s" in Polish but "sh" in Hungarian, while "sz" is the other way around - meaning, amongst other things, that the correct pronunciation of István Szabó is closer to "Ishtvaan Saboo" than what I suspect most people would instinctively assume. I haven't recorded a Hungarian-film commentary yet, but if I ever do (and the possibility is far from remote), I might have to do things like writing names out phonetically and having them in front of me, as I can easily see myself mispronouncing them if I just left them in their common spelling.

I have now, and that's precisely what I did. I'd be amazed if I got through my commentary for Kino Lorber's The Round-Up without making any mistakes over and above one that I already know about (I messed up the name "Béla Varju" by being so fixated on getting the surname right - "Voryoo" that for some reason I rendered "Bela" as "Byela"), but hopefully it'll be clear that I'm making some effort! It's when people don't have the first clue how to pronounce words in a certain language but try it anyway that it becomes painful.

One happy by-product is that I can now pronounce and indeed write the formerly daunting Szegénylegények without having to look it up - it's surprisingly straightforward if you think about it as a compound word with three discrete elements: "szegény", which means "destitute" or "wretched", "legény", which means "young man" and the suffix "-ek", which makes it plural, and the five Es are spaced out so that the first, third and fifth are short and the second and fourth are long (hence the accent). The English title was originally the closer-to-the-original The Hopeless Ones until someone came up with the inspired The Round-Up, which suited it brilliantly.

I'm half Hungarian by blood and my mom is trying to learn the language which has led her to this Hungarian Wordle site. It will surprise no one to learn that I've set up a spreadsheet to help her with it, and learned a little about the language myself in the process. For instance, did you know that both 'sz' and 'ny' in that title are considered a single letter? Even 'dzs' is a single, separate letter. And whenever the first letter in a "double letter" like that immediately precedes that letter (e.g. ssz, nny, ccs, ggy) that's actually a double double letter (so ssz = sz sz)

English has that as well (e.g. ph, th, sh). They’re called digraphs. Many languages represent such phonemes through acrylics such as č in Czech for ch in English. They’re usually there to represent connected mouth formations for separate phonemes. (i.e. sh is formed in a similar was as the soft s phoneme).

Yes, the common roots of Polish and Czech would be much more obvious if they hadn’t evolved their own spelling systems. For instance, had the Czech one dominated, we’d be talking about Andřej Vajda and Křistof Kiešlovski, whereas if Polish had won out we’d be discussing Jerzy Menzel, Milosz Forman and Frantiszek Wlaczil.

knives wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 7:06 pm English has that as well (e.g. ph, th, sh). They’re called digraphs. Many languages represent such phonemes through acrylics such as č in Czech for ch in English. They’re usually there to represent connected mouth formations for separate phonemes. (i.e. sh is formed in a similar was as the soft s phoneme).

Nowhere near an expert, but I don't know that that's exactly the same thing. For instance, 'sz', as previously noted, is the equivalent of just an 's' in English. And each of these two-character combinations is recognized as a separate letter, making their alphabet 44 letters in total!

“Sh” in English is “š” in Czech and Slovak, “sz” in Polish and “s” in Hungarian.

Conversely, “s” in English is also “s” in Czech, Slovak and Polish, but “sz” in Hungarian.

It can be quite a challenge to read out Polish and Hungarian names in the same list!

swo17 wrote: Fri Apr 01, 2022 8:52 pm Nowhere near an expert, but I don't know that that's exactly the same thing. For instance, 'sz', as previously noted, is the equivalent of just an 's' in English. And each of these two-character combinations is recognized as a separate letter, making their alphabet 44 letters in total!

It’s pretty weird that English doesn’t count it’s digraphs as separate letters colloquially, in linguistics that can be different, whereas the norm is a bit more in line with Hungarian. In Hebrew for example a דּ and a ד are separate letters with technically different pronunciations with ד being the digraph equivalent.

Heck, in English there’s debate on the apostrophe being a letter.

Bob Fosse?

I've always said FAW-see in my head, but I think Anna Karina just says FOSS in Une femme est une femme

swo17 wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 7:35 pm Bob Fosse?

I've always said FAW-see in my head, but I think Anna Karina just says FOSS in Une femme est une femme

FAW-see

She’s pronouncing it like it’s a French name. But as we all remember from the trailer to the Birdcage, it’s “Fawsee, Fawsee, Fawsee”

Makes sense, thanks, I just couldn't believe that Karina would ever make a mistake

It’s France making the mistake.

Watching Summer School and a character pronounces Tobe Hooper's first name like "toe-BAY." I've always pronounced it so it rhymes with G.O.B. Do I need to go back to summer school?

I always thought it was pronounced as "Toe-bee," but I'm notoriously bad with this type of thing

I’ve always heard people in interviews call him TOH - bee.

knives wrote: Tue May 03, 2022 10:04 pm It’s France making the mistake.

Has any French person ever pronounced Jules Dassin's name correctly?

Not about a director's name, but maybe this fits here.

I noticed in the latest Criterion Closet video with Minnie Driver that she pronounces Bette Davis' name "Bet" rather than the more common pronunciation "Betty." By sheer coincidence I recently rewatched The Aviator and was reminded that Cate Blanchett (as Katharine Hepburn) also says "Bet Davis." I thought maybe it could be a regional thing (do Americans say Betty and Brits and Australians say Bet?). Even if so that still doesn't explain why Hepburn would say "Bet," unless there's documented footage somewhere of her doing so. Surely Scorsese would have known, and if it was a gaffe I can't imagine how he and Thelma Schoonmaker wouldn't have caught it in the editing room.

It’s “Betty”. Cousin Bette is pronounced “bet,” but Ms Davis isn’t

It’s not uncommon to hear Bette Davis’ name pronounced as “bet.” I’ve heard it quite regularly in older British shows and in interviews with her contemporaries.