# pronunciation of Sarkozy



## jazyk

l'd like to know what the original Hungarian pronunciation of France's president Nicolas Sarkozy is. You hear it almost everywhere pronounced the French way (or something at least close to it), but I'd like to know how Hungarians themselves pronounce it, especially regarding stress placement.

Thanks.


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## ronanpoirier

Hey, Jazyk. 

"Szarkozy" is pronounced like this: /'sàrkozi/.
Now, explaining it:

[à] = it sounds a bit like a mix of Portuguese open o (ó) and Portuguese open a (á). If I'm not mistaken, in IPA chart it is in the bottom right side of the chart and it's an unrounded vowel.

The other sounds are like in Portuguese: [s] like in "suco", [r] like in "couro", [o] like in "sopa", [z] like in "zinco", _ like in "imagem". [k] is like C in "cama".

The stress falls always in the first syllabe in Hungarian.

Just for curiosity, Hungarian has no "y" in its alphabet. It is only used in some digraphs that are treated as single letters: gy, ty, ny, ly. ~But I was told that some names were written with "y" instead of "i" because it had some relation to the royalty. Not sure if this is true. Maybe some native may clarify it to us. _


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## Forero

I would say the _s _sounds like our _sh_.  The phonetic symbol is an elongated _s_, like the symbol used in integral calculus.


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## Orreaga

The original surname in Hungarian is spelled Sárközy.

The initial "s" is pronounced as English "sh"
The "á" is a long IPA symbol /a: /
The "ö" is as in German (this "ö" and the final "y" are short)

The other sounds are as given by ronanpoirier


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## Forero

Orreaga said:


> The original surname in Hungarian is spelled Sárközy.
> 
> The initial "s" is pronounced as English "sh"
> The "á" is a long IPA symbol /a: /
> The "ö" is as in German
> 
> The other sounds are as given by ronanpoirier


So the nearest sounds in French would be "charqueusi", and there only the "r" sounds really different.


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## ronanpoirier

Oh, sorry, I thought it was "Szarkozy" and not "Sarkozy". Maybe I was influenced by the French pronunciation. And I didn't know the name in Hungarian was "Sárközy", otherwise I'd have exaplined it correctely. Thanks, you guys. 



			
				ronanpoirier said:
			
		

> "Sárközy" is pronounced like this: /'sha:rközi/.
> Now, explaining it:
> 
> [ö] is like French closed "eu" or German "ö".
> [sh] is like Portuguese CH in "chave".
> The other sounds are like in Portuguese: [a:] like in "sapo" (but it's longer), [r] like in "couro", [o] like in "sopa", [z] like in "zinco", _ like in "imagem". [k] is like C in "cama".
> 
> The stress falls always in the first syllabe in Hungarian._


_
Now it's better  By the way, does it mean anything? I guess it's a compound word made by "sár" (mud) + "köz" (land). Am I right?_


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## Orreaga

Uma pergunta interessante... the name could come from at least one place in Hungary named Sárköz, there is an article about one of these places here. The meaning of the word is unclear from the article.


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## OldAvatar

Has it got something to do with the Greek word *sarkos*?


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## Forero

OldAvatar said:


> Has it got something to do with the Greek word *sarkos*?


I wouldn't think so.   The article seems to be saying it's a geographic feature, probably a hill.  The parts of the word might be "mud" and "land".  It does look like a native Hungarian (non-Indoeuropean) word.  The similar Greek word means "of flesh", related to Avestan for _cut_ perhaps, and with no _ö_-like sound.


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## Zsanna

Sárköz is an area on the right side of the Danube (in Tolna county, south of the lake Balaton) "before" the Szekszárd hills (I suppose this "in between the river and the hills" position is referred to by "köz" in the name, which is a sort of a root of the word "between"=_között_). 
It is a flat area that water could not leave easily, earlier it was a straightforward marshy area - and this is probably where "sár" (= mud) comes from in its name. 
The final "y" (in the president's name) is originally the suffix "i" (indicating: originating/coming from the area the letter is attached) which became "y" (a letter otherwise not used alone in Hungarian) in the end of family names to show (real or false) noble origins.
Given how easy it is to find an explanation to the meaning, I don't think either it is connected to any foreign words.


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## sokol

Forero said:


> So the nearest sounds in French would be "charqueusi", and there only the "r" sounds really different.



Yes, that's about it, with the 'eu' being open like in 'fleur', or in IPA notation approximately as follows: [ˈʃaːrkœzi] (I am not sure wether the 'i' is open or closed, anyway it is short).

The name Sárközy, by the way, is rather common in Austrian's easternmost _Bundesland_, in the Burgenland (bordering on Hungary), once part of the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Both Hungarians and Gypsies (Hungarian Roma) have this name (of both minorities live in Burgenland).


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## avok

May Sarköz be a Turkic word? Hungarian has many Turkic words but I am not sure about the placenames though.


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## Zsanna

avok said:


> May Sarköz be a Turkic word? Hungarian has many Turkic words but I am not sure about the placenames though.


 
As I mentioned earlier I personally don't think so (certainly not as it is) unless any of its components (see my post above)... I'll try to investigate a bit about it.


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## Zsanna

Well, I am not really convinced by what I have found but I'll share it with you:

The name for the area is fairly old. (The oldest written memory dates from 1270 even if that is about another region having the same name - now belonging to Romania.) 
The area I mentioned in n° 10 was given to one of the ancient Hungarian tribes (Megyer) by Árpád (our leader when arriving to the Carpathian basin). (So had to be the first to be named like this even if it was mentioned only later - in 1459 - in a written form. That is fairly understandable from the point of view that it was rather isolated area because of the regular floods and the marshy fields. Apparently even during the ottoman rule that area was not invaded because of its natural "protection".)

Now this becomes fairly interesting if it is true that *sár* is really a word of Turkish origin. (As you all well know, we are not talking about "modern" Turkish here...) The sources I've seen mention slightly different meanings, such as _tribal family_ or leader of a _tribal family_. 

According to this and also to other analyses, the name of the place refers then rather to the _kind of_ _people_ who lived there. The old encyclopedia from 1911 calls them a "race" without hesitation and explains that these people differ in many ways from the others living outside the boundaries of that area, they are specially beautiful, red cheeked, eating some terribly hot stuff called "paprika", etc. (It is certainly true that they have their own folk costumes - traditionally considered to be the most beautiful of the country - embroidery, craftsmanship, etc.). 
So it could well be that the place was named really after the people who settled down there.

I found only one source for the etimology of *köz *(from 1911) which seems reasonable, though. 
As far as the origin is concerned, only the term "family languages" was mentioned (which should mean any of the Finno-Ugrian group, so seemingly no Turkish origin there). 
In those languages it meant a certain part of the body ("the middle": the waist, the hips) which, again, meant the "best bit of"* (as far as the "content" is concerned). 

This is how it could gave birth to the modern usage of _between (között, közt, közül, etc.)_ and _centre_ _(központ/i, etc.)_ (originally in the sense of "among", "surrounded by"). 

*Apparently this is how our word *derék* means both _waist_ and _good/well done/handsome/nice..._ (Difficult to find a simple equivalent for the 2nd meaning.)

So, all in all, it gives: "nation (tribe), nation leader" + "one of the best".

But that was a very long time ago...


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## OldAvatar

> Now this becomes fairly interesting if it is true that *sár* is really a word of Turkish origin.


I find it interesting too. I can only speculate on it, but there is a word in Romanian, an archaism, _şaraban _(sharaban). My dictionary says that it is of Ukrainian origin and it means *big cart. *However, the word _ban _meant *leader.*


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## Zsanna

The word is different (sár, ban), the origin is different (Turkish, Ukranian) but the meaning is the same... Hm. 
If you think it is the case of lots and lots of other words. In different languages, that is...
(Or have I misunderstood something?)


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## Nanon

This article from the English wikipedia provides sound files with the pronunciation of "Nicolas Sarkozy" in French and "Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál" (Nicolas Sarkozy's father) in Hungarian.


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## sokol

Nanon said:


> This article from the English wikipedia provides sound files with the pronunciation of "Nicolas Sarkozy" in French and "Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál" (Nicolas Sarkozy's father) in Hungarian.



Transliterated into IPA this (Pál nagybócsai Sárközy) is: [ˈpaːl ˈnɒɪ̯b̥oːtʃaɪ̯ ˈʃaːrkœz̥ɪ].
What surprises _me _here is that the two (supposedly) voiced /b/ & /z/ actually are pronounced voiceless by the speaker.


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## avok

Zsanna said:


> The word is different (sár, ban), the origin is different (Turkish, Ukranian) but the meaning is the same... Hm.
> If you think it is the case of lots and lots of other words. In different languages, that is...
> (Or have I misunderstood something?)


 
Are we sure that the word "sar" is Turkic?


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## Zsanna

I don't know about "Turkic" but this is what I found on the internet... However, as I have already mentioned, it is not something that one can take for granted.


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## avok

But I could not see what you found on the internet ... Is there any link ?


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## Zsanna

I found a linguistic explanation in Hungarian (would that help?) but the site was not anything "special" this is why I did not keep it, although typing in the given word plus "eredet" (= origins) or "jelentés" (= meaning) probably would give it to you, too. (In Google)
(It took me a lot of time to find it, though... this is why I haven't volunteered to find it again.)


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## avok

Hmmm. Ok.. no, I dont speak Hungarian


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