PRONUNCIATION OF FOREIGN NAMES (Lat. pronunciatio, pronuntiatio, from pronunciare, pronuntiare, to pronounce, proclaim, from pro, before, for + cizintiare, to announce. from nuatius. messenger). The correct pronuncia tion of a proper name chiefly depends upon giving to the letters their correct value and to the syl lables their correct degree of stress. Most of the sounds in the modern foreign languages are fairly well represented by the ordinary of spoken English. but there are some that are so distinct that a reasonably correct pronunciation involves a sound or sounds quite distinct from any repre sented by any single letter in the English alpha bet. and in sonic cases sounds not heard at all in spoken English.
If the same alphabet with the same letter valms were used in all the modern languages and the spelling were phonetic, the correct pro nunciation of most foreign names would give little difficulty to a person speaking English; but the values of letters in those languages that use the Homan alphabet vary so greatly from the English values that in fact little can be told 01 the pronunciation of a foreign name from its spelling by any general rule, except that the vowels probably have the values given to them in Italian. In the case of those languages (as Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Greek, etc.) that use an alphabet differing front the Roman alphabet a new diffieulty is involved in understanding the foreign letters, or, if the name occurs spelled in Roman letters, in ascertaining what system of transliteration is used.
Another difficulty is involved in the fact that the names of many foreign countries, cities, and persons have come into English use through the niedimn of a third language, as through French or I lerman, in which ease the spelling is in fluenced accordingly. In ninny other eases the spelhng that has come into English represents an attempt. made by some explorer or traveler to represent some native pronunciation heard by him, as in the case of a number of Chinese names. Owing to these and other difficulties, no general rule can be given for the pronunciation of proper names in all or any number of foreign languages; and in any given language, however phonetic its system of spelling may be, there are many names that present variations from general rules.
The following rules or principles, therefore, are intended to furnish only a general rule to aid in understanding the values of the letters that occur in the names of foreign languages using the Roman alphabet, or essentially that One, and to some extent transliterations front other languages, as the Russian and Greek. For the purposes of this article the best practicable method will be to explain the sounds mentioned by reference to the same sound in the English language or its nearest equivalent, the more accurate and scientific method of describing by the conformation of the mouth organs when ut tering the sound being too technical for this place. See the explanation of Visible Speech in the article DE.tF AlipTE, and also consult the titles A, II, e, etc., in this Encyclopalia.
Loosely, it may be said that each vowel in the foreign languages has a pronounced value, except that in cases of doubled letters two vowels generally make a single syllable. The number of syllables in foreign words is, there fore. generally equal to the number of vowels. In the respelling for used in this work the syllables are separated front each other by accents ( for primary stress, and ' for secondary), and hyphens ( - 1, with the of the apostrophe ( ' ) to indicate a lesser degree of separation between consonants than is made by a full vowel constituting a. distinct syllable, as in the glides (obscured transitional sounds) and catches (certain spasmodic interruptions of the breath). Every letter in a respelled pronun ciation is to be given its value as indicated in the Key to Pronunciation. In many eases in English words and names no pronunciation is indicated, either because the pronunciation has already been shown in 0 preceding word, or be cause its proper pronunciation seems too evident to need to be indicated. In some cases where the pronunciation of a word is sufficiently in dicated by marking the accented syllable, the vocabulary title has been accented without re spelling. In such cases it is assumed that the values of the letters are known or evident. In some foreign words, also, only the accented syllable is shown in the same way, in which eases the letters are to be given the values that they would naturally have in an English word spelt in the same way.