# Biden - pronunciation in different languages



## Encolpius

Good morning ladies & gentlemen, let's celebrate the results of the USA elections with a linguistic topic. There has been a similar fascinating thread about pronunciation of English names here, so I would like to open a similar thread. The names of some previous USA presidents were easy to pronounce in many different languages and sounded almost 100% the original English pronunciation, e.g:* Bush, Kennedy*. I think *Trump *is a rather simple name, too. Joe Biden's name is simple as well, the problem is the second part, where there is schwa in English. Some languages hate schwas. So how do you pronounce *Biden *in your language?  Similar names of USA presidents were:* Clinton, Nixon*. Thank you for your cooperation and have a productive weekend. Encolpius from the foggy Prague.
My guess is this:
*1st category: -den is pronounced with a schwa*, so actually the same pronunciation as in English: *German, Czech*
2nd category: -den is pronounced as den (small cavern): *Hungarian, Slovak, Russian, Italian, French*
My guess is the second category is prevailing, right?
[I do not mean the "posh" pronunciation in different languages, but the common one.]


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## TheCrociato91

Hello.

You're right about Italian. Standard Italian (as well as regional Italian from several different areas) doesn't have the schwa sound. Since we are used to phonetic spelling, we tend to pronounce every letter as it is spelled; so, "e" is either /e/ or /ɛ/. When I'm speaking Italian, I pronounce Biden as /'baidɛn/.

As a side note, I have noticed that a small percentage of Italians tend to Italianize the first syllable too, pronouncing it with an /i/ sound (as if it were spelled Beeden). I would say it's only a minority, possibly made up of those people that are not very familiar with English and haven't followed the elections on Italian TV (where the prevalent pronunciation is /'baidɛn/, /-den/).


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Some languages hate schwas.


Certainly not Russian (which is oversaturated with them). 
Байден "Báyden" (['bˠaɪ̯d̪ˠən̪ˠ] would be the most exact transcription).


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## Encolpius

Very interesting about the open or closed e in Italian.  
Somehow I completely forgot you have schwa in Russian.


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## symposium

In Italian it is considered quite silly and inelegant to try and imitate the original pronunciation of a foreign word: it would make people smile and roll their eyes if you said "Biden" with a schwa just as much as if you pronuonced "Macron" with a French R and nasal sound at the end instead of "Macr'on".


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## Dymn

*Spanish*: /ˈbai̯ð̞en/

In Catalan there's a schwa but I'd say most people say /e/ because we use the Spanish pronunciation for foreign names (at least for vowels).



Encolpius said:


> Similar names of USA presidents were:* Clinton, Nixon*


Spanish: /ˈklinton/, /ˈnikson/



Encolpius said:


> I think *Trump *is a rather simple name, too.


Why should it be simple? Not many languages have /ʌ/. In Spain this is rendered as /a/ but in Latin America I've mostly heard /o/.


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## Welsh_Sion

As the <e> is a 'full, pure, short' vowel in Cymraeg/Welsh, then we shouldn't pronounce it with a schwa. (This we leave to the short vowel written as <y>, which may or may not be stressed. Yes, schwa can be stressed and accented in Cymraeg.)

That being the case, I suggest we are in the '-den family': /'baidɛn/. However, there is no indication that the first syllable consists of a Welsh diphthong (which would be written in Cymraeg as <ai>), so theoretically, a proper Welsh pronunciation should be, /'bIdɛn/ ('BID-den). I don't see this happening in practice however, and under English influence (and in particular the American English that we hear in Mr B.'s home country), it's going to be said /'baidən/. (Another phonolgical battle against English lost.)

_________

@Dymn Why should it [Trump] be simple? Not many languages have /ʌ/. 

Cymraeg doesn't, and I personally can't distinguish the two vowels in Standard Br. E, of 'butter', although I 'know' that these are two different vowels in that language. And maybe I pronounce them differently, too, but they still both sound as schwa to me. 'Trump' has a stressed schwa in my (incorrect) transcription.


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## TheCrociato91

Dymn said:


> Spanish: /ˈklinton/, /ˈnikson/





Dymn said:


> Why should it be simple? Not many languages have /ʌ/. In Spain this is rendered as /a/


Same in Italian (although I think I say /ɔ/ instead of /o/ in Clinton and Nixon).


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## Welsh_Sion

Catalan, Italian, Spanish, Welsh - same family here with 'pure' vowels in  /ˈklIntɔn/, /ˈnIksɔn/ and not a schwa in the final (unstressed) syllable. (But liable to be rendered the 'English' way by most Welsh speakers.)


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## apmoy70

Greek:

*«Μπάιντεν»* [ˈbai̯.den], *«Κλίντον»* [ˈklin.tɔn], *«Νίξον»* [ˈni.k͡sɔn], *«Τραμπ»* [ˈtramp], *«Μπους»* [ˈbus] (Standard MoGreek has no /ʃ/ sound).


symposium said:


> In Italian it is considered quite silly and inelegant to try and imitate the original pronunciation of a foreign word: it would make people smile and roll their eyes if you said "Biden" with a schwa just as much as if you pronuonced "Macron" with a French R and nasal sound at the end instead of "Macr'on".


Likewise here, although I've heard anchormen and anchorwomen on Greek tv news pronouncing English names with heavy BrEnglish or USEnglish accent (which is indeed quite silly)

Edit: Added Trump


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## nimak

Macedonian:

*Бајден* ['baj.dɛn]

*Кенеди* ['kɛ.nɛ.di], *Никсон *['nik.sɔn], *Клинтон *['klin.tɔn], *Буш *['buʃ], *Трамп *['tramp]


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## Sobakus

It's pronounced in Russian with the same second syllable as Баден. I'm wondering if our non-Russian foreros would identify that sound as a schwa in all the recordings.

This would be the unacclimatised pronunciation with a hard /n/. I doubt it's going to become standard any time soon (some words have been resisting it for a couple of centuries now), but those who wish to (or can't help but) make it sound more like a native word will pronounce it with a soft /nʲ/ like this.


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## Olaszinhok

TheCrociato91 said:


> (as well as regional Italian from several different areas) doesn't have the schwa sound


As a side note, I would like to say that most southern Italian dialects do have the schwa sound, Neapolitan and most Apulia's dialects for instance. The dialects spoken in the area of Bologna even have [ɐ] and [ʌ̟] vowel sounds.


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## Penyafort

Dymn said:


> *Spanish*: /ˈbai̯ð̞en/
> In Catalan there's a schwa but I'd say most people say /e/ because we use the Spanish pronunciation for foreign names (at least for vowels).



I see what you mean but I wouldn't say that's so generalized. I say /ˈbai̯ð̞en/ in Spanish but definitely /ˈbai̯ð̞ən/ in Catalan, and that's what I've mostly heard in TV news so far. But being honest, if you listen to Americans saying it, you don't even hear a schwa. Or not a full one as we do.

Anyway to me, both in Spanish and Catalan, the most prominent feature, rather than the vowel, would be the difference in the pronunciation of the _d_.

Edit: By Spanish I mean from Spain. In Latin America, they try to sound more "English". In Spain, trying to be accurate when pronouncing English words is regarded as silly and snobbish, just as Symposium mentioned for Italian above.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> It's pronounced in Russian with the same second syllable as Баден.


The only pronunciation of Баден on Forvo sounds pretty artificial to me, frankly (as it often happens on Forvo ). Баден-Баден by ae5s and баден-баденский by BorisK are natural enough.


Sobakus said:


> This would be the unacclimatised pronunciation with a hard /n/. I doubt it's going to become standard any time soon (some words have been resisting it for a couple of centuries now), but those who wish to (or can't help but) make it sound more like a native word will pronounce it with a soft /nʲ/ like this.


You likely meant /d/ and /dʲ/?..


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## Pedro y La Torre

Irish speakers pronounce non-Irish names as in English.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Penyafort said:


> Edit: By Spanish I mean from Spain. In Latin America, they try to sound more "English". In Spain, trying to be accurate when pronouncing English words is regarded as silly and snobbish, just as Symposium mentioned for Italian above.



The same is true as regards Quebec French and European French, although I doubt most European French speakers could pronounce names in the "English" way even if they wanted to.


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## Sobakus

Awwal12 said:


> You likely meant /d/ and /dʲ/?..


Haha, of course :D I blame the dentality of both


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## merquiades

Pedro y La Torre said:


> Irish speakers pronounce non-Irish names as in English.


I had assumed Biden was an Irish name as he takes such pride in his Irish heritage. If this is a known name is it pronounced differently?


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## Welsh_Sion

I suspect the French extreme right have already started calling him _Bidon_.


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## Pedro y La Torre

merquiades said:


> I had assumed Biden was an Irish name as he takes such pride in his Irish heritage. If this is a known name is it pronounced differently?



Biden is a proud Irish American but I don't think that his surname is Irish (I've certainly never come across any Irish _Bidens_). A quick Google Search seems to indicate that it's Anglo-Norman (which could still be "Irish" after all, like Fitzgerald or Fitzmaurice, but it seems unlikely) or Anglo-Saxon in origin.


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## Awwal12

Sobakus said:


> Haha, of course :D I blame the dentality of both


Well, at any rate, the "orthographical softening" of /t/ and /d/ is exceedingly rare in proper names.


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## Terio

In French (Québec) : /baj'dœn/, more or less. All French words are stressed on the last syllable. French does have a schwa / ə /, but it rarely appears in a stressed syllable. (Only in expressions like _dis-le_, I think. The sound /œ/ is close enough. I think it's about the same in France, though some people less familiar with English may prononce /baj'dɛn/.


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## Stoggler

merquiades said:


> I had assumed Biden was an Irish name as he takes such pride in his Irish heritage. If this is a known name is it pronounced differently?



From my local paper: he's of a Sussex background (south-east England)


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## Oddmania

Terio said:


> In French (Québec) : /baj'dœn/, more or less. All French words are stressed on the last syllable. French does have a schwa / ə /, but it rarely appears in a stressed syllable. (Only in expressions like _dis-le_, I think. The sound /œ/ is close enough. I think it's about the same in France, though some people less familiar with English may prononce /baj'dɛn/.


Yes, definitely  I'm sure I've heard people say */baj'dɛn/* with a pure <e>, but */baj'dœn/* is equally (if not more) common.
[œ] is pretty much a stressed schwa. It's close to the English vowel you hear in _nurse, word, girl_.

Incidentally, we use the same vowel for "Trump" : */tʁœmp/* (or */trɔmp/* if you're more 'clued-up').
By contrast, I suspect an Italian or a Spanish speaker would use an [a] here.


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## Encolpius

Thanks for the very interesting answers.



Awwal12 said:


> Байден "Báyden" (['bˠaɪ̯d̪ˠən̪ˠ] would be the most exact transcription).



I had not had enought time to listen carefully how you pronounce Biden, but is "de" soft just like in день?



Welsh_Sion said:


> ....  Welsh - same family here with 'pure' vowels in  /ˈklIntɔn/, /ˈnIksɔn/ and not a schwa in the final (unstressed) syllable. (But liable to be rendered the 'English' way by most Welsh speakers.)



Solely a brief comment: unbelievable.


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## Welsh_Sion

Solely a brief comment: unbelievable.   

_______________

!


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> I had not had enought time to listen carefully how you pronounce Biden, but is "de" soft just like in день?


To me it seems hardly imaginable (though Sobakus has pointed at that possibility). English /də/ will normally stay hard (velarized) in proper names.


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## merquiades

As no one has mentioned it, the way I pronounce Biden, and most people I know, there is no schwa and the ď is not hard. It's almost one syllable:  'Bai-dn".  If I were to pronounce the "e" I wouldn't pronounce a schwa, I'd pronounce _:_ "Bai-dIn"_._


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## Awwal12

merquiades said:


> and the ď is not hard


In Slavic languages "softness" refers to palatal or palatalized quality, while "hardness" to the absence of such (in Russian it's most typically goes together with velarization, much like in Irish, so the only two possibilities here are [d̪ˠə] and [d̪ʲə̟]~[d̪ʲɪ]; English [də] is interpreted and  transcribed as the former).


merquiades said:


> It's almost one syllable: 'Baidn


It cannot be really one syllable, but, obviously, a syllabic /n/ separated by a nazal release is a possibility.


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## merquiades

Stoggler said:


> From my local paper: he's of a Sussex background (south-east England)





Pedro y La Torre said:


> Biden is a proud Irish American but I don't think that his surname is Irish (I've certainly never come across any Irish _Bidens_). A quick Google Search seems to indicate that it's Anglo-Norman (which could still be "Irish" after all, like Fitzgerald or Fitzmaurice, but it seems unlikely) or Anglo-Saxon in origin.


Interesting.  Mr. Biden stresses his Irish roots more than his Sussex background.  So what is the local pronunciation of the name in south-east England?


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## Wordy McWordface

Greetings from Sussex!  I wasn't aware that the P.E. had Sussex roots. As you say, he makes much more of a deal of being Irish.

But for what it's worth, down here on the coast of SE England, 'Biden' would simply be  /'baɪd ən/ - a standard English pronunciation.  Compared with the American pronunciation,  the British version pronounces two fairly clear syllables: a proper /d/ in the middle and a schwa in the second syllable.

It's also worth pointing out that Biden is a very unusual name. I have never come across anyone else - in Britain, Ireland or the US - with that name.


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## Stoggler

Wordy McWordface said:


> It's also worth pointing out that Biden is a very unusual name. I have never come across anyone else - in Britain, Ireland or the US - with that name.



I was thinking the same.


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## Armas

Finnish: ['bɑiden]
There are many other ways to pronounce it as well but I'll leave them be unless you're interested.


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## Encolpius

Yes, so far only these languages in the 1st category: *English, German, Czech, Welsh, Russian.*
It would be interesting to guess, no other members participate here, which other languages belongs to that category. We just need to check our knowledge about languages, right? I think Scandinavian languages, Dutch belong to category 1.


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## Awwal12

Basically the first group will consist of languages inclined to qualitative reduction in general and/or possessing the schwa as a phoneme. In Germanic languages qualitative reduction has a very long history. In Slavic languages that tendency is generally much less expressed and its degree strongly depends on the particular language.

Note that some languages which do have a schwa-like phoneme still may be influenced by the English spelling (e.g. Kazakh and Tatar Байден - instead of *Байдын, which would be definitely closer; for Tatar, the Russian spelling may be also a factor).


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## Encolpius

Good morning Awwal, I am not a linguist so I am nore sure which languages would follow the original English pronunciation, can you guess? Then we actually do not need any comments from natives at all. And I am not as patient to wait 20 years for replies here.  
I think Chinese is in the 1st category, too: 拜登  Bài dēng


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## Awwal12

Encolpius said:


> Good morning Awwal, I am not a linguist so I am nore sure which languages would follow the original English pronunciation, can you guess?


Well, I'm not a professional linguist either, but Germanic languages definitely should. The rest is pretty random. I don't really know many languages which would be that inclined to qualitative reduction. The languages which do have positionally unrestricted phonemic schwa-like sounds (like many Turkic and Finnic ones - not Turkish and Finnish, though) may still prefer frontal vowels for the orthographic reasons, as we can see.

Bulgarian uses Байдън, which should be quite close.


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## Red Arrow

['ba(:)i.dən] in Dutch

Dropping the schwa like in Canadian English (etc.) is also done in West Flemish and some other accents.


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## clamor

Here in France:
Biden [bajd̪œn̪] or even [bid̪œn̪], Joe [d͡ʒo] but you can hear [ʒo] too
Trump [t̪ʁœmp], some educated speakers say [tɹʌmp] but it sounds a bit posh, Donald [do'nald]
Clinton and Nixon both have [ɔ]


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## Oddmania

clamor said:


> ... or even [bid̪œn̪]


Have you heard people say "beed-un"?


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## clamor

Yes, even in my family
It's generally the case of people who're not really into international politics and who know little of English - and who just read the name in newspapers.


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## merquiades

Oddmania said:


> Have you heard people say "beed-un"?


I have. A few. Among people who aren't linguistically, culturally or politically aware.
There are still people who say Lady Dee too and Allô Vaine.


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## clamor

Everyone says [ledidi] here, I've never heard someone pronounce it another way


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## Oddmania

Okay. I would have understood why you might want to pronounce it "Bee Den", but "Beed-un" sounds like a bit of a mismatch.


merquiades said:


> Allô Vaine


Is this Hallowe'en?? Well, I'll be damned!


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## Terio

Here en Québec, children prononce it as if it were_ la Louine_ /la luin/ or /la lwin/.  _La_ is the feminine definite article. _H_ is mute. So, _la Halloween_, becomes _la Alloween_ an then l_a Louine_. It has been celebrated for many decades here. It is not, like in France, I think, a novelty. When, as a child, I read for the first time _Halloween_, I could hardly understand the word !


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## merquiades

Terio said:


> Here en Québec, children prononce it as if it were_ la Louine_ /la luin/ or /la lwin/.  _La_ is the feminine definite article. _H_ is mute. So, _la Halloween_, becomes _la Alloween_ an then l_a Louine_. It has been celebrated for many decades here. It is not, like in France, I think, a novelty. When, as a child, I read for the first time _Halloween_, I could hardly understand the word !


Totally understandable. This is probably because the Québécois culturally adopted the custom, heard the pronunciation and reappropriated it, and then much later saw the form written out.  The French start out with the written form on tons of decorations and candies etc., they guess the pronunciation and culturally it still hasn't been really adopted. It's foreign.


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## Lorenc

TheCrociato91 said:


> [in Italian] I pronounce Biden as /'baidɛn/.



I'd rather transcribe it as /'bajdɛn/ (but the difference is absolutely minuscule to my ears)


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## Olaszinhok

Some Italians also pronounce it as ( Bajden) with a closed e.


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## Dymn

Isn't closed /e/ the standard for unstressed e in Italian? Does it depend on the region? Or the vacillation only occurs in foreign words?



merquiades said:


> There are still people who say Lady Dee too and Allô Vaine.





clamor said:


> Everyone says [ledidi] here, I've never heard someone pronounce it another way


Same in Spain, I didn't even know it's supposed to be pronounced differently


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## Olaszinhok

Dymn said:


> Isn't closed /e/ the standard for unstressed e in Italian?


I wouldn't say it is closed, nor open, to be honest.  Normally, unstressed e and o vowels are pronounced like in Spanish or Greek (true-mid) e̞ o̞. I'm obviously referring to Standard Italian, there may be regional variations, though.
Personally, I pronounce 'Bajde̞*n*, it's not a real claused e as I said in my previous post.


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## Dymn

Ok, so not really a phonemic difference in unstressed vowels...


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## Nanon

Count Portuguese in the schwa, or rather [ɐ], category.
Samples from TV channels:
European Portuguese: Joe Biden e a Presidência. O sonho do jovem senador do Delaware
Brazilian Portuguese: Republicanos já defendem que Biden tenha acesso às informações para transição


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## Nanon

Welsh_Sion said:


> I suspect the French extreme right have already started calling him _Bidon_.


Involuntary _Bidons _also occur elsewhere:


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## Włoskipolak 72

Biden in Polish .., it would be Bajden ..but it sounds better in English-language definitely. ! 😄


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