94 replies to this topic

[bira]

It's called phonetic adoptation. "Biranit" is not a translation of my name, it's a phonetic adoptation of how my name sounds (or closest to it) in English. Likewise, "Hakkinen" is a phonetic adoptation of Häkkinen - that's how his name sounds (or closest to it) in English.

[babbel]

The FIA use(d)s Raikkonen and Hakkinen and I never heard the drivers complain about it.

[BRG]

I just think that people can get a bit anal and holier-than-thou over this sort of thing, As long as everyone can understand who or what is meant, what is the problem?

I can't seem to get umlauts very easily on my PC, but if I refer to Häkkinen as Hakkinen in a post, I rather doubt if there are lots of puzzled Finns wondering why I am claiming that their next-door neighbour Timo Hakkinen is a former WDC. Just like (well until this year anyway) it really didn't matter if you wrote Ralf or Ralph - we all knew you meant Schumacher Minor. Nor does the regular confusion over McLaren, MacLaren, Mclaren and Maclaren bother me. Or Stewart versus Stuart.

As a native English speaker, I think it would be rude and unfair to pick up non-Anglophones on mistakes in their English spelling or grammar - I am just glad (well, usually ;) ) to be able to read what they have to say.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by bira
It's called phonetic adoptation. "Biranit" is not a translation of my name, it's a phonetic adoptation of how my name sounds (or closest to it) in English. Likewise, "Hakkinen" is a phonetic adoptation of Häkkinen - that's how his name sounds (or closest to it) in English.

What you say works only when transferring a name from one script to another, not from one language to another.
There's no such thing as English script, there's Latin script for both English and Finnish. When you write a Russian name in Latin, you'll use phonetic adaptation. But if the native script of both languages are the same, you have to keep the original writing.
I agree, all that is maybe not very important but somehow I feel details do matter.

Hrvoje

[Liquid]

Vrba,

I'm curious as to why you think you need to complain. According to this post you don't subscribe to Atlas anyway.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Liquid
Vrba,

I'm curious as to why you think you need to complain. According to this post you don't subscribe to Atlas anyway.

What does it have to do with Atlas?!?
I was speaking in general, about what could be found in magazines and on the net.

BTW, what I wrote in the above referenced post still stands :-)
Every pay-per-view site has its free counterpart.

Hrvoje

[condor]

Originally posted by BRG
I just think that people can get a bit anal and holier-than-thou over this sort of thing, As long as everyone can understand who or what is meant, what is the problem?

I can't seem to get umlauts very easily on my PC, but if I refer to Häkkinen as Hakkinen in a post, I rather doubt if there are lots of puzzled Finns wondering why I am claiming that their next-door neighbour Timo Hakkinen is a former WDC. Just like (well until this year anyway) it really didn't matter if you wrote Ralf or Ralph - we all knew you meant Schumacher Minor. Nor does the regular confusion over McLaren, MacLaren, Mclaren and Maclaren bother me. Or Stewart versus Stuart.

As a native English speaker, I think it would be rude and unfair to pick up non-Anglophones on mistakes in their English spelling or grammar - I am just glad (well, usually ;) ) to be able to read what they have to say.

My feelings as well

[Liquid]

Originally posted by Vrba


What does it have to do with Atlas?!?

The whole original point of the thread was regarding the spelling of finnish names in the magazine. What did you think? It was about spelling standards on the bulletin board?! That would be a pointless thread don't you think?

I'd love to know what you think is Atlas's 'free counterpart'? ITV-F1 is it?

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Liquid


The whole original point of the thread was regarding the spelling of finnish names in the magazine. What did you think? It was about spelling standards on the bulletin board?! That would be a pointless thread don't you think?

I'd love to know what you think is Atlas's 'free counterpart'? ITV-F1 is it?

Spelling standard cannot be expected from members but must be expected from professional journalists.

Maybe there's no one exact counterpart to AtlasF1 but most of the informations are available for free. I still oppose to any avoidable paying for anything.

Hrvoje

[Liquid]

Originally posted by Vrba


Spelling standard cannot be expected from members but must be expected from professional journalists.

Once again...you can't actually read what the professional journalists have to say on Atlas anyway so I'm puzzled as to why you are complaining. Seeing as you don't pay to read the site then I don' t think you can 'expect' anything at all.

[Pilla]

I resent the fact that people are condescending about English speaking countries, so what if we dont need to learn several. Anyway the simple fact is a is easier to write than ä, this is a english language site, deal with it.

And stop being so pedantic.

[Jackman]

Originally posted by Vrba
As I mentioned before, one reason why I've chosen to subscribe to F1 Magazine (2 or so years ago) instread to F1 Racing ...

Originally posted by Vrba
Maybe there's no one exact counterpart to AtlasF1 but most of the informations are available for free. I still oppose to any avoidable paying for anything.

Hypocracy, thy name is Vrba. It's not so much that you're cheap and disguise it behind some pseudo-communist front that annoys me - no one has to buy something if they don't want to - it's more that you come and use Atlas' Boards seemingly only to trash Atlas. You're the ultimate rude house guest.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Jackman
Hypocracy, thy name is Vrba. It's not so much that you're cheap and disguise it behind some pseudo-communist front that annoys me - no one has to buy something if they don't want to - it's more that you come and use Atlas' Boards seemingly only to trash Atlas. You're the ultimate rude house guest.

Me trashing Atlas?!?
I don't remember that. Please find quotes.
I never trashed Atlas. I don't agree with the pay-per-view policy but that is my right. I hold Atlas in high esteem since the early days.
And, also, I don't see why I shouldn't express my thoughts about spelling foreign names.

Hrvoje

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Pilla
I resent the fact that people are condescending about English speaking countries, so what if we dont need to learn several. Anyway the simple fact is a is easier to write than ä, this is a english language site, deal with it.

And stop being so pedantic.

As I wrote many times earlier, English language has nothing to do with writing ä. The rules of English grammar state that ä, ö, etc. must be written that way.
Now, I know I'm being pedantic and that it's not of crucial importance, but this thread is about writing the Finnish names, why shouldn't I write how it should be? I don't post in another threads in which I see wrongly spelled names. But this thread is about that.

Hrvoje

[Bjorn]

Grammar has nothing to do with spelling, and spelling is dodgy in any language at best. 'e' is pronounced 'eh'... although in English it's pronounced 'ee', except in words like women where it's pronounced 'i'... Spelling isn't a golden standard, it's a fairly recent invention, and to be honest they really buggered it up when they invented it.

Chelsea striker Eidur Smari Gudjohnssen is know by that name pretty much everywhere in the world, except in Iceland, his home country, where it's Eiður Smári. People just apply their spelling system to the problem at hand. Sometimes it's easy to do: when your language has letters with accents and/or umlauts, adding them to other letter's that aren't strictly speaking in your language is no problem. No one learns the entire latin alphabet, just the parts of it that are in use in their region. Did you even know that Þ, þ, Ð and ð are parts of the latin alphabet? The parts we learn are purely the consequence of historical accidents, nothing more, nothing less. Any exceptions thereof (say, café) are further historical accidents. If you want to write the names like the locals do, fine! I do that myself, but then I have umlauts and accents in my language. Where you got the idea that you HAVE to I don't know...

[Wolf]

You guys can't discuss even spelling without mud-slinging... Although I strongly disagree with Vrba's political views, I do not see a reason to drag his subscription principles into this; he was just expressing his general view of spelling, and has AFAIK not mentioned AtlasF1 in a single post here.

On topic, you don't see me complaining that I cannot post my real name, properly spelled, for example on this BB, nor that most people, in all likelyhood, pronunce my nickname wrong (it's conspiracy, I tell you)... I would advocate writing personal names accurately, but it is unfortunately nigh on impossible. Even for Croatian, there seem to be two standards used for Internet documents; one displays OK on my computer, other one doesn't...

I wouldn't say I mind when people use simplified alphabets, as long as it's clear who is being referred to. Johhny Newhouse, might be a different matter...

[kober]

Originally posted by Wolf
I would advocate writing personal names accurately, but it is unfortunately nigh on impossible. Even for Croatian, there seem to be two standards used for Internet documents; one displays OK on my computer, other one doesn't...

For Czech languages there are like six major standards - Windows 1250 (Microsoft), ISO 8859-2 (ISO), PC Latin 2 (IBM), two local ones and one for Mac (plus some others, like Unicode, Gizmo ...).
Our most famous heretic Jan (John) Hus (no accents there) was burned to death for his activities in the church reformation process. He also brought the accents to Czech spelling. Some people from IT say, that he deserved to be burned .
Kobìr

[Bjorn]

Jan Hus actually has an accent in some Icelandic textbooks, Jón Hús

Which goes to show how futile this discussion really is.;)

[Wolf]

But incorrect spelling can lead to incorrect pronunciation... This is the case with my name, although someone familiar with knowledge of Croatian names will guess it easily from 'versin stripped of weird stuff'... I have trouble enough explaining to foreigners how my surname should be pronounced (my explanation requires a bit of knowledge of German/English and Norwegian).

Bjorn, they showed Icelandic film last night and Your post prepared me for sight of 'runelike D' (Þ)- I was familiar with the rest (admittedly, we have Ð)...

[Ross Stonefeld]

I think we should follow Vrba's communist doctrine and purge the BB and follow up with execution of dissidents

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld
I think we should follow Vrba's communist doctrine and purge the BB and follow up with execution of dissidents

Hm, what do you really know about my doctrine?
:-)

Hrvoje

[Henrik B]

Originally posted by bira
It's called phonetic adoptation. "Biranit" is not a translation of my name, it's a phonetic adoptation of how my name sounds (or closest to it) in English. Likewise, "Hakkinen" is a phonetic adoptation of Häkkinen - that's how his name sounds (or closest to it) in English.

Well, to get back closer to the original topic: Hakkinen is a poor phonetic adaption of Häkkinen. "Hekkinen" is still far from perfect, but it's closer. As for Räikkönen, o and ö are VERY far from eachother.

I would still say it's okay to use Raikkonen instead of Räikkönen, but I would more call it a visual adaption than a phonetic adaption. As long as people realise å ( exclusively swedish!), ä and ö are separate vowels and not just accents (é and e) I'm happy.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Henrik Brodin


Well, to get back closer to the original topic: Hakkinen is a poor phonetic adaption of Häkkinen. "Hekkinen" is still far from perfect, but it's closer. As for Räikkönen, o and ö are VERY far from eachother.

I would still say it's okay to use Raikkonen instead of Räikkönen, but I would more call it a visual adaption than a phonetic adaption. As long as people realise å ( exclusively swedish!), ä and ö are separate vowels and not just accents (é and e) I'm happy.

Exactly.One of my points was that despite looking similar, "ä" and "a" ("ö" and "o", etc.) are different sounds and that it's purely by accident that the letters that represent them in Latin script are alike.
As I said once, there's no basic difference between replacing "ä" with "a" and replacing "x" with e.g. "f".

I hope English native speakers wouldn't misunderstand me: most common attitude amongst English speakers is that English alphabet and language should be enough for everyone, everywhere. The consequence of this attitude is that they write and pronounce every foreign name as it's an English one. That's in fact a bit arrogant and in any case not cultured.
Now I don't say that this attitude is confined to English native speakers only, but it's them that show the most serious signs of this kind of behaviour.

Whenever I meet someone from a country whose language I don't speak, I ask for some details about basic pronouncing rules. That way I show the respect for their culture and language.

Hrvoje

[Bjorn]

Check here to see if your computer correctly displays unicode: http://www.phon.ucl....unicodetest.htm

Henrik: å is in Danish too, innit?;)

Btw, in Icelandic é (yeh), á (ow), ó (oh), í (ee), ý (ee), ú (oo) aren't accents, per se. (e, a, o, i, have a pronounciation similar to that in German, y is pronounced as i, and u as german y )

I don't mind if people write and pronounce my name Bjorn. Even if I wrote it Björn and even if people knew how to pronounce that ö, they'd still be far off. The 'b' sounds more like a p, j is like english y, ö is like scandinavian/german ö, and the rn is pronounced tn, with the n unvoiced.. Like a short puff of air coming out of your nose. So again, spelling says little or nothing about pronounciation, but using recognizable letters people will at least be able to adapt foreign words to their language.


Wolf: Cool, what movie? I had no idea you had Ð/ð in your language!

[Ross Stonefeld]

Originally posted by Vrba


Hm, what do you really know about my doctrine?
:-)

Hrvoje

That it makes as much sense as my suggestion

[Henrik B]

Originally posted by Bjorn

Henrik: å is in Danish too, innit?;)

Darn! Yes, you are ofcourse right. And Norwegian. Pure brain fade from me! But they are silly enough to use æ instead of ä and ø instead of ö.

[Wolf]

Björn, we have similar letter, the difference is in lowercase letters (and I guess entirely different pronounciation)- we have ...

Re. spelling and pronounciation- in my case, if I wrote my surname Petricevic, not many would know that it's , and that it's pronounced Petri{tsch}evi{kj} with German {tsch} (or English {tch}) and {kj} as in Lasse Kjuss... Basically, anyone familiar with Croatian pronounciation could pronounce it correctly if it was spelled properly.

The movie was 'Viking/Icelandic Sagas' (1995)- not too great a movie, but at least thery didn't wear horned helmets... And a few historic inaccuracies as well (everybody had weapons at assembly- which wasn't the case, why else have vapnatak ), and not so great acting on part of most of the cast (exception being Sven-Ole Thorsen)...

[Bjorn]

Interesting. We pronounce Ð/ð 'th' as in 'father' or 'this' (not as in 'bath', that's Þ/þ).

If I saw your surname, Petricevic, I'd probably pronounce it Petritschevitsch... Not quite correct, but I'd probably pronounce it the same if I saw ;)

Never seen that movie, has lots of Icelandic actors in it though I see from IMDB. Sven-Ole is not one of them though

Laws banning weapons at the assembly were passed in 1154 so it might be accurate, depending on when it's supposed to take place...

[Wolf]

And You'd be quite right pronouncing it that way- many people in Croatia do not differentiate much beteen the two. As for difference with pronounciation of Ð in Croatian, closest would be dj in 'djin' (d and y, as in yes, pronounced very closely together).

This is full Croatian alphabet:

[Bjorn]

The Icelandic one, for completion's sake.. (we've sure hijacked this thread.. )

Aa Áá Bb Dd Ðð Ee Éé Ff Gg Hh Ii Íí Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Óó Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Úú Vv Xx Yy Ýý Þþ Ææ Öö

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Ross Stonefeld


That it makes as much sense as my suggestion

So you know nothing, as could have been expected :-)

Hrvoje

[BRG]

Originally posted by Vrba
I hope English native speakers wouldn't misunderstand me.

Don't worry, we didn't misunderstand you at all. Your attack on us Anglophones was very clear. But you might do better to think a little more before posting wildly generalistic (not to mention totally inaccurate) comments of this sort. Humanity is supposed to be rising above such stereotyping by linguistic, racial or ethnic categories, although all the evidence suggests we are making little progress.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by BRG
Don't worry, we didn't misunderstand you at all. Your attack on us Anglophones was very clear. But you might do better to think a little more before posting wildly generalistic (not to mention totally inaccurate) comments of this sort. Humanity is supposed to be rising above such stereotyping by linguistic, racial or ethnic categories, although all the evidence suggests we are making little progress.

I was speaking about an average English speaker. And, yes, I do know a lot of them. Why shouldn't I speak the truth?

About the prejudices, you're right. Humanity have made very little progress (except in the field of technology), if any at all. But I don't see my role in that - I simply stated that the Anglophonic practice is to write and pronounce every foreign name as if it were English. Isn't it true?

Believe me that I'm way above dividing people by any criteria except are they good or bad (although most people probably belong to either stupid or evil ones). I don't belong to any nation or religion, I don't care for any differences.

Hrvoje

[Bjorn]

Vrba has a point there actually. But it doesn't apply to Anglophones only, not at all. I've often heard people pronounce names using an English approximation when it's an unknown foreign language. Which is OK I guess, but it got rather silly when Björn Dæhlie's (Norwegian cross-country skier) name was pronounced with the same English-like approximation.. I mean, his name is Björn! Like mine! Proper Icelandic name ffs!

But anyway, that's probably what comes with being the lingua franca.

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Bjorn
Vrba has a point there actually. But it doesn't apply to Anglophones only, not at all. I've often heard people pronounce names using an English approximation when it's an unknown foreign language. Which is OK I guess, but it got rather silly when Björn Dæhlie's (Norwegian cross-country skier) name was pronounced with the same English-like approximation.. I mean, his name is Björn! Like mine! Proper Icelandic name ffs!

But anyway, that's probably what comes with being the lingua franca.

You're right. "Anglization" of languages is one of the consequences of American quasicultural imperialism.

Hrvoje

[BRG]

Originally posted by Vrba
I was speaking about an average English speaker. And, yes, I do know a lot of them. Why shouldn't I speak the truth?

Let’s see, there are, maybe 400 million native English speakers in the world. And you know about how many? Ten? Twenty? Hardly a valid statistical sample on which to place your sweeping generalisations about the “average English speaker”.

Originally posted by Vrba
I simply stated that the Anglophonic practice is to write and pronounce every foreign name as if it were English. Isn't it true?

No, it isn’t. For instance, most English speakers pronounce Jean Alesi’s first name correctly, as the French do, rather than like the English girl’s name Jean (I won’t get into trying to phoneticise them, but they are very different). Of course English speakers stumble and make mistakes when they are presented with unfamiliar names that perhaps use (as this thread has amply demonstrated) different phonetic values to those of English. I dare say that even Croatians have the same problem. Can YOU pronounce the British surnames Cholmondley, Farquhar or Menzies correctly?

I do not dispute that English speakers make mistakes or are sometimes lazy with non-English names. But the same applies to every other linguistic group in the world. For example, one of my former colleagues is named Diane. Our Latin Americans colleagues, without exception, always called her Diana , no matter how often we tried to explain to them. Why? Because the name Diane is not just used by Spanish speakers. So why not have a swipe at the Lusophones as well? Or better yet, please refrain from singling anyone out when it is a failing of the whole of humanity.

[D-Type]

I have been reading this thread with interest. The problem is that in different countries, the alphabet is different. And computer keyboards follow the language. when I worked in Portugal, I had a Portuguese keyboard and all the @, # > etc. were on different keys which was confusing, but on the other hand it was easy to add the appropriate accents. Unfortunately, with my British keyboard, I can't type é or ö without finding ASCI characters or something, so to type this I have had to find an alphabet from another thread and cut and paste.

Where a language uses accents, the accented letters are effectively different ones and using e for é, or o for ö is a spelling mistake.

The Chinese have even more of a problem. They have three different systems for transcribing Chinese characters into Latin script. In Taiwan where they helpfully transcribe the street names, you find that the same street changes its spelling from sign to sign. You never know whether Jingmai, Chang Hai , and Heng Chai are the same or different.

Being British I refer to Cologne rather than Köln, etc

On an international, English language, site like this, I think it is reasonable to expect the "professional" articles to use umlauts, circumflexes, cedillas, etc. For Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and other names originally written in a non-Latin script, there is usually an accepted transcription such as Beijing, Kawasaki, or Birabongse.

When it comes to contributions to a discussion, we should all show some tolerance. The important thing is that the meaning is clear. Possibly on The Nostalgia Forum, with its focus on accurate recording of history, more rigidity will be appropriate on occasions.

And that's my lunch break used up!

[Vrba]

D-Type, I agree with every word of your post.

Hrvoje

[BRG]

And so do I

[mic]

Originally posted by bira
This is how it looks on my screen:

It's possible to direct the browser to display Unicode characters, even on a web page that isn't Unicode-encoded. Note that typing Alt+[3 or 4 digits] in Windows does not achieve this, as demonstrated by Bira.

Users of all (including non-Latin) character sets should see the results below properly, unless they don't have the right font (would be good if someone can confirm).

To produce "Häkkinen", I typed: Häkkinen
To produce "Räikkönen", I typed: Räikkönen

[bira]

Let me complicate the discussion further, then.

mic, yes I see the end result correct. Guess what doesn't, though? Any script or robot I'd use for indexing and searching. As far as a search engine goes, if you searched for Häkkinen, it will not find it because the word it'd see is Häkkinen...

The short of it is, that as long as compromise needs to be made in this electronic environment, Hakkinen is what it's going to be.

[mic]

I don't see anything wrong with Atlas' editorial policy of only using the characters that are used in English. It's a perfectly acceptable and common policy (but of course not the only acceptable policy). The information I gave above is mainly for the benefit of people on the BB who want to write characters outside the English range, and have all of us see them properly.

Indeed, using the "&#" escape sequences creates problems for search engines, unless they're specifically designed to parse them. The need for these escape sequences can be averted by storing (and transmitting) web pages as Unicode.

[Paul Taylor]

This whole thing got a bit confused in the middle. I think it is OK to use things like é, á, etc because they are easy to type and to find. Just because someone doesn't press ALT and then a number to type a letter 100% correctly, native to the country of origin, it is unfair that the whole world of English native speaking people get attacked.

If we knew how to pronounce certain letters of say, Croatian, Russian, Icelandic alphabets etc, then we would say it properly. But when we have a name such as Michael Schumacher, we pronounce "Michael" the same as the English. It would sound very weird if we tried pronouncing it in the German way. As for "Schumacher", a lot of people know that the "ch" in the middle is the same or similar to the pronounciation of "k" so we say it like that.

But as it was said, for the sake of search engines etc, it is far easier to use the English equivalent otherwise many problems will arise.

Getting attacked by not pronouncing something correctly due to general lack of knowledge on the subject is 100% unfair and unjust

[Vrba]

Originally posted by Paul Taylor
....But when we have a name such as Michael Schumacher, we pronounce "Michael" the same as the English. It would sound very weird if we tried pronouncing it in the German way.

Why would it sound weird?!? Michael is not an English name, it's of a Jewish origin. German pronounciation is in fact much closer to the original than the English one.

As for "Schumacher", a lot of people know that the "ch" in the middle is the same or similar to the pronounciation of "k" so we say it like that.

In fact, the correct pronounciation will be with using "h" (well, not quite "h" but somewhere between "h" and "sh" in "Michael" and more-less "h" in "Schumacher") and not "k".

As the similarity goes, "Schumacher" is an equivalent of English surname "Shoemaker" :-)

Hrvoje

[bira]

OK, enough. As gripping as this conversation is, the place for it is not on this forum. You can start a thread about linguistics in the paddock club if you like.