Names I'm Not Sure How to Pronounce:

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:00 pm

With possibilities below:

Bussard:

Boo sar (as the French would?)
Boo sard
Bew sard
Buss ard
other?

I've only heard the good doctor's name pronounced once, and that was on a science fiction show.

Nebel:

Ne bell
Ne bl
other?

Haven't heard Dr. Nebel's name yet.

Ligon:

Lye gon
Lih gon
Lyeg on
Lihg on
Lye jon, etc.
other?

Same with Tom's.

Help anyone? I had a high school friend ask: "What's yewnihkew?" Someone looked at what she was reading and said, wait for it:

"Unique." Sometimes I hate the English language.

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 2:40 am

buh-SARD
NAY-bl
LIE-gon

Disclaimer: Your idiolect may differ, in which case it is obviously wrong.

Betruger · Post by **Betruger** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 4:14 am

The French would pronounce the U their own way, not as "oo"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-bhpa4NAIg
Bu-ssar, no audible D.

P.S. I think it's here that I saw someone call him (spell it) "Buzzard".

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:51 am

That would be the English spelling of the word. The American spelling of which is "hawk".

Bussard is a German word, by the way. In modern French the word is buse. However, the French also have busard, which means "harrier".

olivier · Post by **olivier** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:57 am

Ivy Matt and Betruger are perfectly correct. In French bussard was also an archaic unit of liquid measure (especially for wine

) equivalent to a barrel but my bet is it comes from German (pronounced boo-sard, so no tricky French U but try not to roll the R

). By the way the French busard is pronounced bü-Zar, confusing enough?

MSimon · Post by **MSimon** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 11:29 am

Simon is simple.

In Hebrew: Shimon.

AcesHigh · Post by **AcesHigh** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 4:16 pm

well, since I speak portuguese, I have a tendency to speak these names with portuguese vowel sounds (until I hear how they are correctly pronounced).

english words that I never heard before however, I will tend to think of them with english vowel sounds.

no idea why I have this different way of dealing with english words and english names. Maybe because while english has many foreign words, foreign last names are even more common?

thus...

Boo-sard ("u" always has "oo" sound in portuguese)

Nebel... errr... I have no idea how to write the way I pronounce it. E has two sounds in portuguese, open and closed. I pronounced the first E open and the second E closed. Hmmm... let me think... the open E sound I guess is like the E in Everest. The closed E sound is like the E in "Ent" (the talking trees of LOTR)

Lee gon or Lih gon...

rjaypeters · Post by **rjaypeters** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 4:40 pm

Thank you all.

Ivy Matt · Post by **Ivy Matt** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 10:27 pm

Of course, none of these pronunciations are "official", so far as I know, but you might as well pronounce them how you think they ought to be pronounced until you hear differently—from the horse's mouth.

Just to add to my etymologies, Nebel is also German, and means "mist" or "fog". I suppose it could be pronounced NEE-bl, if Anglicized.

I have little idea what Ligon means, but it seems to come from either Great Britain or France. In the video here, someone (not Tom) apparently pronounces it LIG-un.

My pronunciation of Bussard is likely to remain unchanged unless I discover that the stress is not on the second syllable.

krenshala · Post by **krenshala** » Thu Nov 18, 2010 5:01 am

Ivy Matt wrote:Just to add to my etymologies, Nebel is also German, and means "mist" or "fog". I suppose it could be pronounced NEE-bl, if Anglicized.

If its German, then its most likely pronounced ne-bel or neb-bel ... similar to the pronunciation of revel (in the power of he Polywell! muahahaha *cough* *cough* *choke* erm ... sorry 'bout that).