Since you don't want correct native pronunciations but correct anglicised pronunciations I've spared you the IPA and given you fun-eh-tick transcriptions despite how much it pains me.
2000AD wrote:
Not so much a translation but help with pronunciation of non-english names. Am I pronouncing the following names right or completely butchering them?
(Note I have no idea what the actual proper way to write down phonetics is)
Sime Vrsaljko (Croatian)
I'm currently pronouncing it as something like:
sim-ee
verse-al-j-ko
Nope, that's absolutely wrong in every possible way basically. Best would be english 'see-mey verse-aL-ko', where L is the gl in italian. It's pronounced as an l with a y after it, but
not as a vowel. It's
not alley-ko, it's just an l where your tongue is at the palatal ridge. Hard for english speakers. Pronouncing it as a normal l is probably what'll happen, even though lj and l are different phonemes in croatian so that's technically wrong.
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Si Abdennour Yahiaoui (French/Algerian)
I'm ok for the first two names, but that last one stumps me, right now I'm using:
yahoo-ee
Ya-hee-ah-wee
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Xaropinho (Brazilian)
I assume the X is pronounced as a Z?
Why in the world would you assume that? X in this position in brazilian is pronounced like english 'sh'. Further, 'nh' is pronounced 'ny', so it's Sharopinyo.
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Nabil Messaoudi (French/Moroccan)
Got the first name, just the second:
mess-ah-oo-di ?
Correct.
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Kouadio N'Guessan (Ivory Coast)
Koo-add-e-oh
un-guess-san ?
It's a french transcription of ivorian, so it'd probably be like that, although n'g could also indicate it starts with the final sound in 'ring' which is not permissible in english. Further 'un' has too much vowel to be a vocalic n. You want the n-vowel in 'done', minus the d.
Remember that for all africans whose names are mangled by the french, 'ou' = 'oo', like 'tout le monde' or whatnot. So there's this city in africa that looks like Ouagadougou, that's actually Wagadugu, but it was owned by the french so it looks dumb.