# Hujar



## Rainbowlight

Hello,

I am truly sorry for not being able to speak Polish or being able to write it.
I'm looking for an approximate/accurate pronunciation of the surname Hujar.

Once again, excuse me for not being able to convey my message in the Polish language.

Thank you in advance,

Rainbowlight


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## zaffy

Whose surname is that? Doesn't sound Polish at all. The beginning of the word sounds like a very bad swear word. So if this is a foreign surname, it should be read the way it is pronounced in the native language. But if a Pole was to read it just like we would read it in Polish, you would start off saying the English "who", then the English "yard", with the 'r' in the Scottish way and the 'd' not pronounced. So "whoyard" with no 'd'.


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## rotan

See, the good(?) thing about Polish is that as long as you know how to pronounce our sounds (rz, dż, cz, sz, ą, ń, ś, etc.), virtually every word is pronounced in the same way it's written
Let's use "Mercedes" for example - in English, every single "e" is pronounced differently here; in Polish - all of them are the same (we pronounce the letter "e" like the first "e" in "Mercedes", there's no "eee", and no "ey" for "e" in Polish)

...and that's what zaffy has (indirectly) mentioned too - if "Hujar" was a Polish surname, you would, unfortunately, have to pronounce it like "who-yar"; such pronunciations as e.g. "who-jar" or "who-*h*ar" (like your letter "*j*") would obviously no longer "impersonate" a Polish surname, at least in speech; the spelling would remain "funny"
Stressing the syllable "jar" instead of "hu" could make it less cringy, but only by a tiny bit...


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## Rainbowlight

rotan said:


> See, the good(?) thing about Polish is that as long as you know how to pronounce our sounds (rz, dż, cz, sz, ą, ń, ś, etc.), virtually every word is pronounced in the same way it's written
> Let's use "Mercedes" for example - in English, every single "e" is pronounced differently here; in Polish - all of them are the same (we pronounce the letter "e" like the first "e" in "Mercedes", there's no "eee", and no "ey" for "e" in Polish)
> 
> ...and that's what zaffy has (indirectly) mentioned too - if "Hujar" was a Polish surname, you would, unfortunately, have to pronounce it like "who-yar"; such pronunciations as e.g. "who-jar" or "who-*h*ar" (like your letter "*j*") would obviously no longer "impersonate" a Polish surname, at least in speech; the spelling would remain "funny"
> Stressing the syllable "jar" instead of "hu" could make it less cringy, but only by a tiny bit...





zaffy said:


> Whose surname is that? Doesn't sound Polish at all. The beginning of the word sounds like a very bad swear word. So if this is a foreign surname, it should be read the way it is pronounced in the native language. But if a Pole was to read it just like we would read it in Polish, you would start off saying the English "who", then the English "yard", with the 'r' in the Scottish way and the 'd' not pronounced. So "whoyard" with no 'd'.


It is actually the surname of a photographer that spent his childhood years in Poland. It has to be said that all his biographies state that he was of Ukrainian ancestry. I apologise for any inconvenience I may I have caused. I guess I'm off to the Ukranian forum to see if I'm able to solve the riddle there.

Thank you very much for your help.


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## Rainbowlight

rotan said:


> See, the good(?) thing about Polish is that as long as you know how to pronounce our sounds (rz, dż, cz, sz, ą, ń, ś, etc.), virtually every word is pronounced in the same way it's written
> Let's use "Mercedes" for example - in English, every single "e" is pronounced differently here; in Polish - all of them are the same (we pronounce the letter "e" like the first "e" in "Mercedes", there's no "eee", and no "ey" for "e" in Polish)
> 
> ...and that's what zaffy has (indirectly) mentioned too - if "Hujar" was a Polish surname, you would, unfortunately, have to pronounce it like "who-yar"; such pronunciations as e.g. "who-jar" or "who-*h*ar" (like your letter "*j*") would obviously no longer "impersonate" a Polish surname, at least in speech; the spelling would remain "funny"
> Stressing the syllable "jar" instead of "hu" could make it less cringy, but only by a tiny bit...


It is actually the surname of a photographer that spent his childhood years in Poland. It has to be said that all his biographies state that he was of Ukrainian ancestry. I apologise for any inconvenience I may I have caused. I guess I'm off to the Ukrainian forum to see if I'm able to solve the riddle there.

Thank you very much for your help.


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## jasio

Rainbowlight said:


> It is actually the surname of a photographer that spent his childhood years in Poland. It has to be said that all his biographies state that he was of Ukrainian ancestry. I apologise for any inconvenience I may I have caused. I guess I'm off to the Ukrainian forum to see if I'm able to solve the riddle there.


Meaning Peter Hujar?

Peter Hujar - Wikipedia says that he was born in New Jersey and spent his childhood on his grandparents' farm. They did not state the location of the farm, but for many reasons the biography seems to be inconsistent with him spending his childhood in Poland. Or Ukraine, for that matter.


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## Rainbowlight

jasio said:


> Meaning Peter Hujar?
> 
> Peter Hujar - Wikipedia says that he was born in New Jersey and spent his childhood on his grandparents' farm. They did not state the location of the farm, but for many reasons the biography seems to be inconsistent with him spending his childhood in Poland. Or Ukraine, for that matter.


Exactly. I'm looking for the original, correct pronunciation of his surname.


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## elroy

rotan said:


> we pronounce the letter "e" like the first "e" in "Mercedes"


 None of the e’s in the English version are pronounced like the Polish “e.”


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## rotan

What? The first "e" in "Mercedes" sounds similar to the the letter "e" in "men", which is how we pronounce "e" in Polish; a short sound with no "ees" or "ayys"
Maybe the word "men" would actually be a better example


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## elroy

rotan said:


> The first "e" in "Mercedes" sounds similar to the the letter "e" in "men"


  


rotan said:


> Maybe the word "men" would actually be a better example


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## rotan

Yea you're right, I actually took a few more listens to Mercedes and it's not 1:1 the Polish "e" - my bad, but this was how I always remembered it having once heard it in some random dictionary
So, to any non-Polish speaker seeing this thread: consider the word "men" the guide to Polish "e" pronunciation


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## Ben Jamin

If this is a Ukrainian name, then it would be pronounced Gujar by Poles because of two reasons:
1. The Ukrainian Г is usually transliterated as G in Polish
2. The people will avoid pronouncing the 'huj' part of the name, as this is a vulgar name of penis.


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## Chrzaszcz Saproksyliczny

Probably it won't help you, but in Krakow-Plaszow they have Hujowa Górka, named after Albert Hujar, a nazi official who executed people there. Although namespedia is probably not the best source for research, they cite mostly US as the country with the most Hujars, followed by Poland and Finland.
Polish "J" is always pronounced like English "y" in "yard" (IPA: j)


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## jasio

Ben Jamin said:


> If this is a Ukrainian name, then it would be pronounced Gujar by Poles because of two reasons:
> 1. The Ukrainian Г is usually transliterated as G in Polish
> 2. The people will avoid pronouncing the 'huj' part of the name, as this is a vulgar name of penis.


Not necessarily. 
It very much depends, when the name would appear in Polish. Back then when the Poles quite clearly distinguished between Russian and Ukrainian and between 'h' and 'ch' ([ɦ] and [x] respectively)  - which roughly means before WWII - it would have a chance to be loaned phonetically and based on the transcription rather than based on the transliteration.

Secondly, the vulgar word is actually spelled with "ch" and pronounced accordingly (and is quite common at least in North Slavic languages). The "h" spelling must be quite new, as it is based on the assimilation of [ɦ] into [x]. 

Thirdly, and most importantly, this thread seems to be mislead by "j" and hence on a false similarity to  the nasty word. In the sister thread in the Panslavic forum Hujar it's already explained that 'j' is an English transliteration of Ukrainian "d͡zʲ" consonant, and the original name was _Гудзяр_ [ɦud͡zʲar]. So in Polish it would most probably be pronounced Hudziar. A fun fact: despite the origins of the Peter Hujar - Wikipedia name, in Russian sources (Худжар, Питер — Википедия) the name is transliterated as Питер Худжар.


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> Secondly, the vulgar word is actually spelled with "ch" and pronounced accordingly (and is quite common at least in North Slavic languages). The "h" spelling must be quite new, as it is based on the assimilation of [ɦ] into [x].


I beg to differ, at least a little. Spelling with an "h" is dominant, especially in informal context (writing on the walls). Only literate people use the "ch" spelling, but literate people seldom use the word in writing. 
Different pronunciation of "h" and "ch" is extremely rare nowadays in Polish, and has survived only in old people (refugees from the east), dialects from the Polish - Slovak border, and certain actors and lectors. According to some sources Greater Poland and Mazovian dialects never had the "h" sound, and the sound is a loan from other languages.


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## Rainbowlight

Chrzaszcz Saproksyliczny said:


> Probably it won't help you, but in Krakow-Plaszow they have Hujowa Górka, named after Albert Hujar, a nazi official who executed people there. Although namespedia is probably not the best source for research, they cite mostly US as the country with the most Hujars, followed by Poland and Finland.
> Polish "J" is always pronounced like English "y" in "yard" (IPA: j)


Thank you so much!


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## robin74

rotan said:


> See, the good(?) thing about Polish is that as long as you know how to pronounce our sounds (rz, dż, cz, sz, ą, ń, ś, etc.), virtually every word is pronounced in the same way it's written


It always baffled me why so many Poles believe this. It is just simply not true.
Polish has very complex orthographical rules, mostly concerning voicing and devoicing and producing nasal sounds or not when 'ogonek' is used. Words are very rarely pronounced "the way they are written", with one-to-one correspondence between sounds and letters. "Dąb" would be pronounced [dɔmp], not [dɔ̃b], but you need to know that 'b' gets devoiced and that 'ą' will lose nasality before 'b' and will be produced as [ɔm] instead.
Or to take the first example in your list of specific Polish digraphs - "rz" could be pronounced as [ʐ] (rzeka [ʐɛka]), or [ʂ] (kurz [kuʂ]), or [rz] (marznąć [marznɔɲt͡ɕ]).


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## jasio

rotan said:


> See, the good(?) thing about Polish is that as long as you know how to pronounce our sounds (rz, dż, cz, sz, ą, ń, ś, etc.), virtually every word is pronounced in the same way it's written





robin74 said:


> It always baffled me why so many Poles believe this. It is just simply not true.


Strictly looking at it, you're right.

Never the less, Polish spelling is still pretty consistent, even though it's not strictly phonetic. Much more phonetic than German or Spanish, not even mentioning English or French. For example, "b" can mean [ b ] or [ p ] in a devoicing context (which can be quite tricky in a general sense, but it's an issue of the Polish phonology rather than of the Polish orthography), their palatalised versions (consistently before 'i') and that's about it. 

On the other hand, inflected forms of a word are spelled consistently. So you could have decided on a more phonetic orthography and spell "chlep - chleba - chleby" or on a more consistent spelling "chleb - chleba - chleby" - which is easier to read.

So the Polish spelling can be a bit tricky for L2 learners (primarily - non Slavs, I suppose), but for the native speakers it's pretty straightforward, because we apply devoicing and other phonetic measures intuitively. Perhaps that's the source of the opinion in question.

And yes - I'm well aware of h-ch, u-ó, ż-rz issues. But still, it's a piece of cake compared to a number of ways any given English vowel can be spelled, and any given letter (or a combination of) can be pronounced.


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## Chrzaszcz Saproksyliczny

I guess most people would say that in their language "it's pronounced as it's written", but it's never like that for foreign learners.


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## jasio

Chrzaszcz Saproksyliczny said:


> I guess most people would say that in their language "it's pronounced as it's written", but it's never like that for foreign learners.


it's off-topic, but still, it very much depends what do you specifically mean by "most". And by "pronounced as written".  

For example, the world's most popular L1 language is Mandarin Chinese. As far as I am aware, the Chinese script does not convey sounds, but meanings of the words, so with this regards your opinion can be considered correct, incorrect or meaningless, depending on what do you specifically mean. Not mentioning that the same script can be read in many different ways in the multiple languages of China, which do share the script, but do not share the language. The same goes for Japanese, btw, which uses Chinese characters, but most (if not all) of them have at least two distinct readings. And they have so many problems with writing that the younger generations hardly write their own language - so definitely, it's not 'what you hear, is what you see' script at all.

#2 L1 language is Castilian / Spanish. Spanish spelling is a way simpler than the English one, but still there are many caveats, even if only regional. For example in Southern Spain they do not pronounce certain consonants in certain positions at all (like "Epania' instead of "Espania"), and they do not distinguish between the letters "s" and "z" (so do Latinoamericans), unlike the central Spain, where these letters are read like distinct sounds 's' and 'th' in English, respectively. To make a long story short, in the best case you can read what is written, but you do not write what you hear.

#3 is English;. In fact, I've never met an anglophone, who would claim that in English you write as you hear. The same - or even worse - is with French, btw (#15).

#5 is Arabic - in which you write consonants only, and you fill-in the vowels depending on the overall context. And again - your opinion is true, false, or void depending on what you specifically mean. It's similar with all Semitic and non-Semitic languages using abjads, like Persian, Turkish (before the reform), Hebrew and quite a bunch of other languages of the region.

In Korean the letters are shaped to mimic the voice tract during pronunciation - so by definition the same letter can mean a voiced and voiceless consonant.

We didn't even mention ten languages yet - and yet in all of them there are systemic issues with reading and writing.


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## Ben Jamin

jasio said:


> Strictly looking at it, you're right.
> 
> Never the less, Polish spelling is still pretty consistent, even though it's not strictly phonetic. Much more phonetic than German or Spanish, not even mentioning English or French. For example, "b" can mean [ b ] or [ p ] in a devoicing context (which can be quite tricky in a general sense, but it's an issue of the Polish phonology rather than of the Polish orthography), their palatalised versions (consistently before 'i') and that's about it.
> 
> On the other hand, inflected forms of a word are spelled consistently. So you could have decided on a more phonetic orthography and spell "chlep - chleba - chleby" or on a more consistent spelling "chleb - chleba - chleby" - which is easier to read.
> 
> So the Polish spelling can be a bit tricky for L2 learners (primarily - non Slavs, I suppose), but for the native speakers it's pretty straightforward, because we apply devoicing and other phonetic measures intuitively. Perhaps that's the source of the opinion in question.
> 
> And yes - I'm well aware of h-ch, u-ó, ż-rz issues. But still, it's a piece of cake compared to a number of ways any given English vowel can be spelled, and any given letter (or a combination of) can be pronounced.


You don't always know how to write a Polish word (unless you have been a dilligent student), but after a short study you always know how to pronounce the written word. The same applies to most of the Slavic languages, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish and many other.


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