Russian names

[ti-amie]

She's one of the best, male or female.

[mick1303]

It shall be Kal-I-nina rather than Kalin-I-na.

[Suliso]

That's a tough one for English speakers... Obvious for me, though.

[Deuce]

What about Rybakina?
Does it follow the same 'rule' as Kalinina?
Is it Ryb-A-kina, not Rybak-I-na?

[ti-amie]

Dokic said "Ri-bahk-ina"

[mick1303]

What about Rybakina?
Does it follow the same 'rule' as Kalinina?
Is it Ryb-A-kina, not Rybak-I-na?

Yes, I've already listed it here - on the 1st page of this thread. BTW, big props to Steve from SliceTennis. He is a Canadian Youtuber, who covers tennis. I've posted in his video about his incorrect pronunciation of Rybakina. And in the next video he went out of his way to say it the right way. I wish TV announcers were like that.

[Suliso]

I wonder which other names we're completely butchering. Nobody knows pronunciation rules for every language...

[mick1303]

I wonder which other names we're completely butchering. Nobody knows pronunciation rules for every language...

I'm sure we are very bad in getting Chinese and other East-Asian names correct. Chinese is even phonetically quite distant from European languages.
But Slavic languages are not that distant. In most cases it is just getting a correct syllable stressed. Not a big effort.

[Suliso]

French is very difficult if you don't know the rules. Arabic too.

[ponchi101]

Ask a spanish speaking native to say "Worcestershire". Or "Euler" (the mathematician). Good luck with that.

[mick1303]

Ask a spanish speaking native to say "Worcestershire". Or "Euler" (the mathematician). Good luck with that.

I'm sure there is a lot of such cases as well, if we compare one randomly selected language with another randomly selected language. But I started this specific thread on Russian names because I happen to know both Russian and English and can say with a certainty how the Russian and Ukrainian names shall be pronounced. As you may see I started this thread a good while before this war begun. Maybe I wouldn't bother with it now, seeing how Putin's propaganda uses language issues. But it is not only Russians who are the subject of abuse. Ukrainians and Kazakhs as well. I do not venture into difficulties for Spanish speakers to pronounce names from other languages simply because I'm not qualified to judge.

[ponchi101]

I meant it the other way around. Pronunciation in Spanish is easy: we have 5 vowels and 5 vowel sounds; there are no differences as in, for example, English, were the A in CAT is pronounced differently than the A in SAW.
Therefore, spanish speaking people have a very hard time pronouncing words and names properly in almost all other languages.