Gary’s Q&A

Listener question & Gary’s response · Transcript passage

Let’s get started. Alan Massaro on Facebook asks Gary, You have to pronounce many foreign names and places. What do you do to make sure you’re getting them right? Love the show!

Alan, you get a special sticker on your homework because this is the one question I have been waiting for someone to ask.

This is actually one of the most difficult things I do, and it is something that I have to go through at least once per episode, if not multiple times.

So, for starters, I’m not sure I always get it right. That being said, I do try very hard to get it right, at least as well as I can, given that I speak English. If the word comes from a very common language, such as Arabic, Spanish, or Chinese, the simplest and easiest thing to do is to put the word in Google Translate and let it pronounce it. I’ll also usually see what it sounds like in English. Google Translate is not always correct. The next option, if available, is to check the IPA pronunciation. IPA stands for International Phonetic Alphabet, and you might have seen this at the beginning of some Wikipedia entries. If the article has the IPA pronunciation, I can cut and paste it and put it into a site called IPA-reader.com. If Google Translate and the IPA pronunciation agree, then I’ll usually go with that.

However, sometimes, there is no IPA pronunciation available. In those cases, I’ll try to find another source. This will often mean finding a YouTube video where someone uses the word.

Some online dictionaries provide pronunciations as well.

Where it really gets confusing is that sometimes there are different pronunciations floating around.I think I’ve gotten better at it over time, but even if I can get the correct pronunciation, I still have to actually say it, which is often the sticking point because some sounds are just hard to say in some languages. In such cases, I just sort of do the best I can.

The point is, there is a lot more that goes into getting a correct pronunciation than most people realize. There have been rare cases where I have spent the better part of an hour trying to find someone saying a word