That's not a dumb question. Danish pronounciation is quite tricky! (Even from a Swede's point of view) [geid] is wrong. It's closer to [ga:de]... I'm not really into phonetic writing (especially not in English), but the "a" (where the emphasis lies) is like in "gas" or "gangster", and the d is very soft. The "e" is audible but without emphasis, and should sound like the "e" in "ten". Hops this made sense...
Mag, I have been Laughing at the couple of ur posts! I did not understand much abt ur explanation of Gader's name and the most hilarious part was "We elders creating a profile"! Thanks for making my day start in a good note!
You're welcome, Yogi! Wasn't it Stephen Hawkings who said that "if the reader fails to understand, there is little I can do"! The "user profile" discussion has been up before! I am sure Kwun (to whom it was directed) understands perfectly well! Keep up the loud voice!
Is this getting out of hand? Mmm... but the "e" is not like in "the" though... *lol* More like the "e" in "them"! So the equation would be: "gas" - s + "them" - m = gade Are we ready to move on to "Helene Kikegaard" now?
Re: Is this getting out of hand? Hilarious posts. In that case someon should tell Gillian Clarkes and co commentators that it is not Gayda as she pronounces it. hmm.. maybe we should get all the international players to say their names and post them up here in some wav. format or something. Btw does anyone fancy explaining how to pronounce Xia Xiaunze (i've heard za zinua) and zay shuazee). Anyway i rest my case.
Re: Is this getting out of hand? That's a difficult one. Haha. Let's see. I can't write well in IPA, but it's roughly [sia ¡òju©¡n(shuen) ze(the 'e' as in ¡®the¡¯)]. Hope I didn't just make it worse!! =P
Re: Is this getting out of hand? Oops, my apologies. The irregular letters did not turn out properly. Rewriting, it's SIA SHUEN (the 'e' sounding between 'cat' and 'bet') ZE (the 'e' as in 'the'.
Try Zhou Mi Going back to last year's AE finals, when the umpire said Zhou Mi's name (in the introduction), she was highly amused and repeated the pronounciation to somebody on the opposite side of the court (Gong ZC)
Or try this: I must admit I'm 100% sure how to pronouce the family names of Sujitra Ekmongkolpaisarn, Patapol Ngernsrisuk or Kulchala Worawichitchaikul either... But I guess I'll just have to live with that.
Re: Is this getting out of hand? because 's' is used to represent another sound. There is a fixed sytem of anglocising Chinese words in Mandarin in China and Singapore. It's called the Han Yu Pin Yin.