# pronunciation of the name "Lud"



## dudasd

I found it written in an English book, so I even don't know if it was its original writing. What I need to know is how exactly it is pronounced (my own language is strictly phonetical, so we dont write foreign names in their original forms). So, my question is - is it just Lud, or Lyud (pronunciation written with Russian letters would help too, to make it clear if it's u or yu).

Thank you very much in advance!


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## majlo

I'd pronounce it /lut/, to rhyme with the word _loot_.


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## dudasd

Thank you. So, "u" is similar to "oo", it's not "yu"?


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## majlo

In this case - yes. In others it might be pronounced in a different way, but mostly it's pronounced as "oo".


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## dudasd

Thank you very much.


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## majlo

Not at all.


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## roccodaone

majlo said:


> In this case - yes. In others it might be pronounced in a different way, but mostly it's pronounced as "oo".



Curiosity kicking up, when is it NOT pronounced /oo/?


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## majlo

roccodaone said:


> Curiosity kicking up, when is it NOT pronounced /oo/?



Curiosity killed the cat. 
Seriously, for example the _u_ in the word _auto_ isn't pronounced /oo/.


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## roccodaone

So true  Didn't think of all these kinds of words. Thanks!


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## robin74

Apart from diphtongs that majlo already mentioned, there are also some foreign-origin words, like "jury", in which u is pronounced in a different way.


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## Christoforo

majlo said:


> In this case - yes. In others it might be pronounced in a different way, but mostly it's pronounced as "oo".


 
Could you give me some examples for  another pronounciation of the Polish "U"?
 By the way, to render "U" with the English "OO" is qiute an approximation. It is much more like "U" in Serbian, or any other Slavic language.


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## roccodaone

Christoforo said:


> Could you give me some examples for  another pronounciation of the Polish "U"?
> By the way, to render "U" with the English "OO" is qiute an approximation. It is much more like "U" in Serbian, or any other Slavic language.



I think the answer to this question is few posts back.


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## Christoforo

roccodaone said:


> I think the answer to this question is few posts back.


 
I have read the answer, but the example with auto lies actually outside the scope of "normal" Polish phonetics, as it is an orthographic anomaly, it is a foreign diphtong, the U denotes here a non syllabic voiced labial-velar approximant, that should be written with slashed L in Polish. I think that everybody that asked for an example expected a vowel, and there is only one vowel written with U in Polish.


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## robin74

Christoforo said:


> there is only one vowel written with U in Polish.


As I already pointed out few posts back, it's not true.


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## Christoforo

robin74 said:


> As I already pointed out few posts back, it's not true.


 
Well, I have read the other posts, and I can only see one example where the letter U is not a part of a diphtong, namely "jury". This is a clearly foreign word, and one could claim on the same basis that its typical for Polish to pronounce "i" after "dz*" like in "gin" (sorry I have no Polish diacritics on my keyboard, and pasting is disabled on this forum).
Fench, and other foreign words don't count. Give me, please, an example of a vowel ispelled U in a word which is not foreign and not U lik in "but".

Besides, I can see many Polish native speakers write that Polish U is pronounced like English "OO". Well, it's not. Maybe the other way, yes, many Poles pronounce English "OO" like Polish "U", but this is not correct.


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## Greg from Poland

I think the Polish sound U is somewhere between the English "short" and "long" U.

It's not as long and clear as the one in the word "food", but it's not as short as in the word "good" either.


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## Christoforo

Greg from Poland said:


> I think the Polish sound U is somewhere between the English "short" and "long" U.
> 
> It's not as long and clear as the one in the word "food", but it's not as short as in the word "good" either.


 
Hi Greg, my point was that the sounds were clearly different, and one should not use the English "oo" sound as an equivalent, specially for non English native speakers. It is much better to use the sound that occurs in other languages as: German, Finnish, Spanish, Italian, Russian (and as far as I know in all other Slavic languages), Greek, Hungarian, and many others. The phonetic value of the letter U in those languages is very close to the Polish U, while that of the English OO is not. Also the Swedish and Norwegian long O is almost identical as U in Polish (the length not considered).


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## Greg from Poland

I'm perfectly aware of it. It's quite hard, though, to explain it to a English-speaking person on the basis of other Slavic or Scandinavian languages. English examples are much more comprehensible in this case.

Anyway, it should be pointed out that the Polish sound "U" differs from the English short and long U ('wood' and 'food' for instance).


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## slavic_one

dudasd, jednostavno Lut, jer se "d" zbog toga što se nalazi na zanjem mjestu u riječi zamijenjuje bezvučnim parom - "t". Što se riče "u", normalno je. "L" je možda za nijensu mekše od našega, ali sve u svemu je to Lut, čak mislim da ni Lud ne bi bilo toliko krivo. (al vas je Vuk zakomplicirao  )


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## BezierCurve

Here's an IPA chart with voice samples. Not the best one, but it might help to see (or rather hear) the difference (search for , which is the representation of the Polish "u" in "Lut").


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## Christoforo

Greg from Poland said:


> I'm perfectly aware of it. It's quite hard, though, to explain it to a English-speaking person on the basis of other Slavic or Scandinavian languages. English examples are much more comprehensible in this case.
> 
> Anyway, it should be pointed out that the Polish sound "U" differs from the English short and long U ('wood' and 'food' for instance).


 
Remember that the person that originally asked the question is a Serbian native speaker. English speakers have some contact with other languages, too. It is quite common to refer to the Italian language when one wants to refer to sounds that do not exist in English.


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