pronunciation of Bolivar`
mm
How does one pronounce the last name of Simon Bolivar in English and
in Spanish?
It's been a long time and I'm confused now, but iirc and I usually do,
in history classes in JHS and HS they made a point of pronouncing the
name differently from how it would be pronounced in English.
But surpriyse, surpriyse, when I got to Central America, they didn't
pronounce it that way. They pronounced it according the rules of
Spanish, which meant the teachers or someone in the US had made up
some pseudo-Spanish pronunciation.
Now, sad to say, I've forgotten the rules of both Spanish and English,
and don't remember which pronunciation was used in any country, so I
thought you could help me out.
If you are inclined to email me
for some reason, remove NOPSAM :-)
Glenn Knickerbocker
>How does one pronounce the last name of Simon Bolivar in English and
>in Spanish?
In Spanish, it's clear. There's an accent mark on the second syllable,
so you pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable.
In English, most people pronounce it with the accent on the first
syllable. A few pronounce it as in Spanish, and some, not knowing
there's an accent mark anywhere, mistakenly pronounce it with the accent
on the last syllable.
ŹR / "We know the difference between good and bad corn early in life and
/ have the confidence that comes from such discernment." Chris Squire
http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/ (of Ontario's *London Free Press*)
Athel Cornish-Bowden
> On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:40:20 -0400, mm wrote:
>> How does one pronounce the last name of Simon Bolivar in English and
>> in Spanish?
>
> In Spanish, it's clear. There's an accent mark on the second syllable,
> so you pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable.
>
> In English, most people pronounce it with the accent on the first
> syllable.
and, in the UK at least, with a secondary accent on the last syllable.
> A few pronounce it as in Spanish,
If they do that they need to pronounce the Simón in a Spanish way as
well (with stress on the ó). Unless I'm talking with Spanish speakers I
would normally pronounce both names in English in the BrE way, because
otherwise there would be a danger that no one would know who I was
talking about.
> and some, not knowing
> there's an accent mark anywhere, mistakenly
I'm not so sure it's a mistake. People who become famous enough to be
world figures normally acquire standard pronunciations in the different
languages, just like large cities: it sounds incredibly pretentious to
pronounce "Paris" in the French way while speaking English. No French
person would pronounce "Churchill" in the English way while speaking
French. Hungarians are allowed to pronounce "Sarkozy" in the Hungarian
way, with a long stressed á and an umlauted ö, but everyone else
pronounces it in an approximation to the French way.
> pronounce it with the accent
> on the last syllable.
>
> ŹR / "We know the difference between good and bad corn early in life and
> / have the confidence that comes from such discernment." Chris Squire
> http://users.bestweb.net/~notr/ (of Ontario's *London Free Press*)
--
athel (BrE)
Pat Durkin
"mm" <NOPSAM...@bigfoot.com> wrote in message
news:vrkm44pljm9ppl5su...@4ax.com...
"sah MOAN BOW li ver". The first always was a good clue to the stress
in the name of the country, although with the second vowel sound
changed. (Of course my mnemonic for the country name was that
DeHavilland woman's first name. "bow LIV ee a")
Glenn Knickerbocker
> On 2008-06-08 06:44:23 +0200, Glenn Knickerbocker <No...@bestweb.net> said:
> > and some, not knowing
> > there's an accent mark anywhere, mistakenly
> I'm not so sure it's a mistake. People who become famous enough to be
> world figures normally acquire standard pronunciations in the different
> languages,
Right, but this isn't a conventional English pronunciation:
> > pronounce it with the accent
> > on the last syllable.
The mistake is in thinking it's the correct Spanish pronunciation.
ŹR
Kasey Chang 小張
> How does one pronounce the last name of Simon Bolivar in English and
> in Spanish?
As a Spanish-speaker who has actually lived in Colombia, I pronounce it as:
Si-MON
Si like "simple"
MON with falling emphasis (sounds like mon in "mon ami")
Bo-LI-var
Bo like "bowl"
LI like "livid"
var like "varnish"
In actual Spanish, there are accent marks to guide the pronunciation.
I pronounce it the same way in English. :)
--
小張寫於 7/6/2008 3:07:01 PM PST / 小張偶然記 http://kschang.blogspot.com
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