5 ms·
It is not too bad, but is not 'Maelan' but 'Meelan'.
by int0x80 8y ago
It is not too bad, but is not 'Maelan' but 'Meelan'.
- smcl 8y agoWell the English word "Milan" is already mangled compared to the Italian "Milano" - taking the italian pronunciation for the English word would be ... odd. I'm pretty confident that in the anglosphere "Mee-lan" would be the minority pronunciation compared to "Mih-lan".
- DrNuke 8y agoMilan Kundera pronunciation comes neat though https://www.pronounceitright.com/pronunciation/milan-kundera-1527 https://www.pronounceitright.com/pronunciation/milan-kundera... , that’s how we are used over here.
- smcl 8y agoMaybe it's because the name is Czech and we never anglicised his name? I honestly don't know with that one though. English is wildly unpredictable, if we drilled down deep enough we'd find plenty of counter examples that contradicted my reason for how we pronounce pan Kundera's first name :-) However for the city, think of it this way (sorry I'm gonna use some awful phonetic spelling here!) you and all the other Italians use the 100% correct pronunciation of Meelano. Somewhere back in History it became normal to call it "Milan" in English. Calling it Meelan is not only still wrong in Italian, it's also wrong (or nearly unused) in English. It's the same way you have your own word for our city with its own pronunciation - Edimboorgo. If I say "well, that 'u' in the original 'Edinburgh' is pronounced uh so you should call it Edimbuhrgo" then you're now pronouncing it wrong in both Italian and English. For what it's worth I'd prefer it if English kept the original names - Milano, Torino, Roma, Napoli, Firenze, etc :D Edit I realised after typing this that I've heard wealthier Americans pronouncing some of these names even stranger still. Milan becoming Milawwn and Prague becoming Prawwwg which is like nails on a chalkboard to me, so maybe I can identify with you a little bit :-)
- simonebrunozzi 8y agoIn defense of the software, Italian is quite difficult to pronounce. I wouldn't be too hard on it for now. Disclaimers: I am Italian, and I used to work at AWS.
- scotu 8y agoI'm surprised, how is Italian difficult to pronounce? I'm Italian too. I understand if you mean difficult for somebody who has 0 knowledge (this is true for any language). But besides very few exceptions Italian pretty wysiwyPronounce, no? I feel like I'm blinded by being too close to it :)
- toyg 8y agoAs an Italian expat: accent positions are very, very different; and English people associate different "default" sounds to vowels in isolation (e.g. "a"). Even educated persons will struggle if their only source is paper, because a lot of the Latin words that Italian is rooted on, actually have very different pronounciations in English. Also: GL, GH, GN, CH, CE/CI vs CA/CO/CU, double-consonants reinforcing the sound, etc etc...
- bfred_it 8y agoMost Italian words pretty much match their IPA representation, minus the pretty regular exceptions like Q, C, G, Z and H and the rare irregularity. It may be difficult to an anglophone, but I'd argue that the phonetic irregularities of English are much more of a problem to a learner. "though/tough/through" never happens in Italian.
- puzzle 8y agoThe biggest problem with reading Italian is knowing where the accent goes if it's not mandatory to write, in which case you need to know from context, as in the words at the end of http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-accent-marks.asp http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-acc...
- hanoz 8y agoIt pronounces Milan perfectly to my British ear. It would be pronounced much the same here minus the accent. Certainly not Meelan.
- int0x80 8y agoI was talking about the italian pronuntiation.