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It's Fun to Play the Piano ... Please Pass It On!
If they’re alive or recently passed, definitely do your best to pronounce their name correctly. It’s respectful. Though, Chopin is so long dead, I don’t think it’s quite as big a deal as long as it’s close enough.
True. but don't ever call him "Choppin."
I always take my Chopin Liszt with me to the grocery store.
On the classical radio station also, I always get tickled when the announcer would pronounce Richard Wagner as in 'rick-hard', or some Italian composer's name in Italian accent. It's correct of course, but the quest to be authentic-sounding seems forced and instead becomes smile-inducing.
I mainly find it annoying when radio announcers (in the US anyway) go out of their way to accentuate a non-Anglicized pronunciation, only to get it wrong, or mixing the paradigms such as saying Ree-card Wagner instead of Ree-card Vahgner, or an Anglicized "Johann Sebastian" followed by Bach with an over-accentuated gutteral "ch".
.....Listening to German classical radio here, their big revenge for Bark and Handle is Relf Worn Villiams.
I guess although my mom was Polish but since German was sort of her first second language, in English it took her a while to get the hang of the W's and V's. Like, for a good while, Wisconsin was Visconsin and Vicki was Wicki....
It's all good fun! Listening to German classical radio here, their big revenge for Bark and Handle is Relf Worn Villiams.
And I always thought Arnie said:"I'll be Bach!"........
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
This reminds me of a friend from Italy - she said it's LAT-te, not lat-tay. And she rolled her eyes at 'frappuccino' 🙄
I feel weird ordering a latte, since that's just milk, but if I ask for a caffè latte, sometimes they get confused and respond with something like "a what sort of latte? an oat milk latte?" 🤷♂️
.....Listening to German classical radio here, their big revenge for Bark and Handle is Relf Worn Villiams.
I guess although my mom was Polish but since German was sort of her first second language, in English it took her a while to get the hang of the W's and V's. Like, for a good while, Wisconsin was Visconsin and Vicki was Wicki....
Wisconsin is actually a French transliteration of a local native phrase for "land of many lakes", which consisted of three single-syllable words that would be pronounced like wees-cone-san (despite the "n" being silent in a French pronunciation of Wisconsin). So today, we have an Anglicized pronunciation of a French transliteration of a Native American language name/phrase.
Wisconsin is actually a French transliteration of a local native phrase for "land of many lakes", which consisted of three single-syllable words that would be pronounced like wees-cone-san (despite the "n" being silent in a French pronunciation of Wisconsin). So today, we have an Anglicized pronunciation of a French transliteration of a Native American language name/phrase.
You're kidding!!
I lived in wees-cone-san for 4 years without knowing any of that.
Except I didn't have it quite right. The translation was the name of a river that we today call the Wisconsin River. Father Jacques Marquette had created a map in which he transliterated the Menominee name for the river as Mescousin on a map he made during an exploration with fur trapper Louis Joliet.
Someone misread Marquette's handwriting and thouggt it was Ouisconsin in French, after which it was changed to Wisconsin.
Speaking of French transliteration and pronunciation, Chopin was fluent in French, and I'm not aware that he ever tried to transliterate the Polish pronunciation of his family name in French. He signed his letters to Georges Sand as "Fred."
(I knew all that, including about it being initially about the river, because after seeing your post I went and read further about it. I didn't think that detail was any big deal. You had it what I'd call right.)
Speaking of misreadings: One of the several theories of how the city of Nome, Alaska got its name is that a cartographer didn't know its name and so he wrote "Name?" on his map -- and it got misread as Nome, and hence the name Nome.
As far as I know, there isn't any definite answer for where the name came from and this story is thought to be as good as any.
BTW, please nobody post any guesses on how Intercourse, Pa. got its name.
The name Illinois derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa 'he speaks the regular way'. This was taken into the Ojibwe language, perhaps in the Ottawa dialect, and modified into ilinwe· (pluralized as ilinwe·k). The French borrowed these forms, spelling the /we/ ending as -ois, a transliteration of that sound in the French of that time.
So the common pronunciation of Illinois is based on an English mispronunciation of a French transliteration of a native american language based on French pronunciation from the 17th century.
Another mispronounced (I think) composer is Jean Françaix. I've heard a DJ on our local classical station pronounce the last name as Frawn-Sakes. I'm pretty sure that's wrong.
It's "steen" just like those two famous piano brands: Steenway and Steengraeber.
Roland FP-30, Roland E-28 Galaxy II Grand piano collection, Synthogy Ivory II Studio Grands, Production Voices Estate Grand, Garritan CFX Lite, Pianoteq 7.5.2 (Blüthner, Bechstein DG, Grotrian, Steinway D, K2)
And one of life's great mysteries: does Bernstein rhyme with spine or spleen?
This subject has cropped up before in PW. And unfortunately, Bernstein is frequently mispronounced by people who should know better (or maybe they can't spell), and B himself once chastised someone who called him spleen, when in fact he is full of spine.
Quite simply, how do you spell his name: Bernstein - or Bernstien? (Like Spielberg, as in Jaws etc)
Last edited by bennevis; 10/19/2103:43 PM.
"I don't play accurately - anyone can play accurately - but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life."
