Comments on: I guess I could be offended..

By: zsofi

zsofi — Fri, 11 May 2007 19:14:08 +0000

Hi Eszter,
I’m here via Kispad:)Just want to say helloZsófi

By: eszter

eszter — Fri, 11 May 2007 15:05:15 +0000

KC, I don’t pronounce my name the way people pronounce Mariska Hargitay’s last name. Yes, she has certainly put the name on the map for some Americans, which is helpful. And I guess it doesn’t get pronounced often enough (yet?) for people to have learned the “wrong” version so it hasn’t really interfered in how people react to my name. The difference is in the ending. I pronounce the “ai” as in “tie”. I’ve heard the “ay” in her name pronounced like the vowels in “hey”. For the record, the ai and the ay would be pronounced exactly the same in Hungarian. “y” doesn’t exist as such except to indicate “i” from olden times. (Letters like gy and ly do have a y, but there, y is not a freestanding letter.)

I’ve never heard Mariska H. pronounce it though so I don’t know how she does it.

And yes, it’s the same Eszter as everywhere else. (I never got the th in English, it’s not as though it’s pronounced with a th.)

By: Stuart

Stuart — Fri, 11 May 2007 13:40:14 +0000

Well if we are to believe some random source on the internet, mickle and muckle (well okay its the OED, or claims to be at least) are the same word and both mean a large amount, and that the saying ‘many a mickle makes a muckle’ is a misquotation that has lead to the mistaken impression to some that a mickle is a small amount.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Fri, 11 May 2007 10:52:37 +0000

Just a quickie, but “mickle being an archaic version of great or large” is backwards I think. “Many a mickle makes a muckle”. Although if a “muckle” was something like a galaxy-size object it might be right.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Fri, 11 May 2007 03:09:36 +0000

I guess, except that there is a common American first name Esther to be a translation. It’s like a Russian named Aleksandr going by Alexander in the US, or a Frenchwoman named Stéphanie going by Stephanie, or even an Israeli named Binyamin going by Benjamin—unless your Eszter has nothing to do with the biblical name.

But maybe Mariska Hargitay has become well known enough that her last name can count as a translation. Then again, I don’t know how she pronounces her name, and I see from IMDB that she’s sometimes had to spell her first name “Marishka” to get a reasonable pronunciation.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:45:55 +0000

In that sense I’m also “translating” my last name. But it’s as close as I can get it to the original based on people’s limitations. That is, it’s what I heard spoken back to me over the years and eventually gave up saying it in Hungarian so we could move on after just one or two mentions.

My brother is Balázs, which is hard no matter what. I think it definitely rivals Keith, although I see that would be a tough one as well.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:48:38 +0000

Basically you’re translating your first name, which seems like a common option, especially when the two versions of the name aren’t that far apart in sound. Unfortunately, some of us have untranslatable names, which can even, like “Keith”, contain sounds that are completely foreign to lots of languages. Whether to use /t/, /f/, or /s/ as the closest approximation to the sound at the end is a quandary.

I had a Spanish teacher who persisted in reading “Keith” as if it were a Spanish word, so it came out something like “Kate”. But when I tried getting her to read “Quiz” as a Spanish word with a Castilian accent, she ended up reading that as if it were English. I guess I should have just been Carlos.

By: Eszter

Eszter — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:33:34 +0000

Agreed, KC. I don’t even pronounce my name in the completely original Hungarian when I’m speaking to people in English, because I figure it would get them confused. I figure I get a better approximation of the original if I at least go with the English r, second e, etc (and that’s just my first name). I completely understand.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:39:12 +0000

Oh, I agree with you, Eszter, but that wasn’t my understanding of what O’Hare was saying. He quotes someone else saying “Sarkozy’s real name is whatever he calls himself”, but he doesn’t seem to fully embrace that himself.

I was the person who e-mailed him about German names, saying that no one pronounced Einstein, Kissinger, or Schwarzegger as they would be in German (or even with a reasonable adaptation of the German pronunciation to the American tongue), but as far as I know those people weren’t bothered by it. And they, unlike Sarkozy, were immigrants.

But the basic point is that it’s irrelevant how the name is pronounced in Hungarian. What’s relevant is how Sarkozy himself pronounces it.

The question is a bit complicated, though, since presumably there needs to be some allowance for dialectal variation at least. If I know someone from England named Mark, I as an American am not going to pronounce his name in a nonrhotic way (something I might hear as more like “Mock”) even if that is the way he pronounces it. And it’s not completely based on the existence of names that apply to more than one person, since if he were named “Splark” I’d still pronounce the “r”.

By: eszter

eszter — Thu, 10 May 2007 16:19:42 +0000

Thanks, KC, that’s an interesting post. I think his point about a name being pronounced the way the person pronounces it is a reasonable approach. I wouldn’t want to impose the Hungarian pronounciation on Sarkozy’s name if he didn’t use it himself. However, if he does then it seems only fair for others to do so as well.

By: KCinDC

KCinDC — Thu, 10 May 2007 15:38:52 +0000

Michael O'Hare has a post about "Sarkozy" at the Reality-Based Community. I think he's taking standards that might reasonably apply to immigrants and unreasonably trying to apply them to descendants of immigrants.

By: Grand Moff Texan

Grand Moff Texan — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:01:56 +0000

What does it mean “big whoop” in American slang? Just an ecstatic cry, or something else?

It’s a sarcastic expression, conveying what a non-event something is.

In this context, it means “well, that’s great for Szolnok, but what good does that do me here?” where here= the US.
.

By: mollymooly

mollymooly — Thu, 10 May 2007 11:32:46 +0000

I had some difficulty working out how I would say “Big Whoop” in English.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:34:27 +0000

Stupid advert anyway. Cingular roaming in Szolnok on whoever’s network probably wouldn’t be 3G, but Sprint-Nextel customers won’t make it to Canada without packing another device.

By: Dr. Minorka

Dr. Minorka — Thu, 10 May 2007 10:00:55 +0000

What does it mean “big whoop” in American slang? Just an ecstatic cry, or something else?