# Norwegian: Correct pronunciations of the names of Norwegian footballers



## Grefsen

Yesterday while watching Norway's great victory over Canada in the Women's World Cup, I had to cringe several times when I heard some terrible pronounciations of the Norwegian player's names by the ESPN commentators.   

Usually there isn't much a Norwegian or in my case a Norwegian-American can do when mistakes like this are made, but  I'm in a unique position where I can actually get information to the ESPN commentators through some my fotball/soccer connections.  

What I want to do is provide some clear and easy to understand pronounciations that are as close as possible to the correct Norwegian pronounciation, but not so difficult that someone with no knowledge of Norwegian won't be able to use them. 

Here are a few of the names followed by the ESPN commentators pronounciation and then an easy to understand pronounciation that I think would be much better for ESPN to use:

*Ragnhild* - "Raj-neeld"  - "wrong-heel"

*Mykjåland* - "Mee-hall-en" -  "Meesh-oh-lawn" 

*Wiik* - "Vilk" - "Veek"

*Huse* - "Whose" - "Who-sah"

*R**ønning* - "Ron-ning" - "Running" 

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions you might have.


----------



## Grefsen

Here's two more names that the U.S. commentators have had challenges with:

*Bente Nordby  *- "Ben-tay Nord-bee"  - "Ben-tah Noor-bee" 
*
Hege Riise  -  *"Hey gay Ree-say" - "Heg-ah Ree-sah"

(Hege is no longer playing, but her name occasionally comes up during discussions about Norway's 1995 World Championship team)


----------



## Grefsen

Grefsen said:


> *Mykjåland* - "Mee-hall-en" -  "Meesh-oh-lawn"



 One of my friends in Norway is suggesting "mitch-oh-laan" for* Mykjåland*.  I'd be curious to know what any of the other native Norwegian speakers who post in this forum think about this phonetic pronounciation. 

If your suggestions for pronouncing *Mykjåland *or any of the other Norwegian names I have mentioned are posted here before 04.00 GMT 15. September they may end up getting used on ESPN during tomorrow's broadcast of the Norway - Australia match.   

*HEIA NORGE!! *


----------



## kirsitn

Grefsen said:


> Here are a few of the names followed by the ESPN commentators pronounciation and then an easy to understand pronounciation that I think would be much better for ESPN to use:
> 
> *Ragnhild* - "Raj-neeld"  - "wrong-heel"
> 
> *Mykjåland* - "Mee-hall-en" -  "Meesh-oh-lawn"
> 
> *Wiik* - "Vilk" - "Veek"
> 
> *Huse* - "Whose" - "Who-sah"
> 
> *Rønning* - "Ron-ning" - "Running"
> 
> *Bente Nordby* - "Ben-tay Nord-bee" - "Ben-tah Noor-bee"
> 
> *Hege Riise* - "Hey gay Ree-say" - "Heg-ah Ree-sah"
> 
> One of my friends in Norway is suggesting "mitch-oh-laan" for Mykjåland.



Hard one! Somehow there seems to be lots of Norwegian sounds that are simply missing in English. I would say that the Norwegian pronunciation of "se" is similar to English "said" minus the final d, or "seven" minus ven. 

For Ragnhild I would say something like Raaahg-nil, with nil as in "nil, zero, zilch". But I don't know how write it in a way that would make the person reading it pronounce the a like in car or hard and not like in cat. 

As for Mykjåland, I don't think there's any chance of making someone pronounce it correctly without oral feedback. The "kj"-sound simply doesn't exist in English, but I agree with your friend in that mitch is closer to the right sound than meesh.


----------



## Pteppic

If I may be so bold...

I'd pronounce Ragnhild as rahng-nil (wrong-nil?) - -gn- is usually pronounced -ngn- (at least in the Oslo dialect). And as kirsitn notes, the h is silent. 

She (I assume that's the correct pronoun ) is also correct about the -se, so I'm just going to suggest that "Ben-teh", "Who-seh", a.s.o. might get the guys at ESPN closer to the correct pronunciation than -tah and -sah?

And finally I'm going to stir up some confusion and claim that the 'sh' sound is closer to 'kj' than 'tch', as both 'sh' and 'kj' are fricatives, while 'tch' is an affricate, if that makes any sense.


----------



## kirsitn

Pteppic said:


> And finally I'm going to stir up some confusion and claim that the 'sh' sound is closer to 'kj' than 'tch', as both 'sh' and 'kj' are fricatives, while 'tch' is an affricate, if that makes any sense.



Phonetically that's probably correct, but on the other hand there are many dialects in Western Norway where "kj" is pronounced with a "t" at the beginning of the sound, so that it sounds almost like English "tch", whereas substitution of "kj" with "sh" sounds more like the way children talk before they learn how to pronounce "kj" properly. ("Shøpe shøttkaker"...)


----------



## Pteppic

kirsitn said:


> Phonetically that's probably correct, but on the other hand there are many dialects in Western Norway where "kj" is pronounced with a "t" at the beginning of the sound, so that it sounds almost like English "tch", whereas substitution of "kj" with "sh" sounds more like the way children talk before they learn how to pronounce "kj" properly. ("Shøpe shøttkaker"...)


While I agree about the western dialects, and I deplore the apparent, ongoing death of our kj sound, the reason children (and some adults... *sigh* ) use the sh/sj instead is precisely because it's the closest sound. I hardly think a couple of ESPN commentators are going to have any sort of impact on the developments up here? And since they're not going to get the names right anyway, (all but the monosyllabic one use the second pitch accent, for instance), I'd find it much stranger if they were mangling some Sunnmøre dialect, rather than what is loosely considered to be standard Norwegian.


----------



## kirsitn

Pteppic said:


> I hardly think a couple of ESPN commentators are going to have any sort of impact on the developments up here?



True, but I'd find it much more fun to listen to them if they had a touch of Sunnmøre dialect.


----------



## Grefsen

Pteppic said:


> If I may be so bold...
> 
> I'd pronounce Ragnhild as rahng-nil (wrong-nil?) - -gn- is usually pronounced -ngn- (at least in the Oslo dialect). And as kirsitn notes, the h is silent.



Yes, you may be so bold *Pteppic*.....   

Yesterday there were two new ESPN commentators for Norway's match against Australia and as luck would have it, Ragnhild Gulbrandsen scored an early  goal.    Unfortunately they couldn't get away with simply referring to the goal that Gulbrandsen scored because Norway had another player in their lineup named Solveig Gulbrandsen, which of course forced them to take a stab at pronouncing Ragnhild's name.   

One of the commentators pronounced Ragnhild as "Raj-nild" as though she was from Calcutta instead of the Trondheim area of Norway  and the other called her "Rag-nild." 

In any event, I really like the suggestion of "wrong-nil" and think that this should hopefully be easy enough that even the ESPN commentators can manage to get it right.


----------



## Grefsen

Pteppic said:


> I
> 
> She (I assume that's the correct pronoun ) is also correct about the -se, so I'm just going to suggest that "Ben-teh", "Who-seh", a.s.o. might get the guys at ESPN closer to the correct pronunciation than -tah and -sah?



I have a feeling that after yesterday's performance, "Ben-teh"  might be too challenging for the ESPN commentators.  One of the commentators kept pronouncing the first name of Norway's star goalkeeper "Ben-tee" while  the other kept calling her "Ben-tay."    You would think that those too would get together before the match and at the very least decide on the same incorrect way that both of them were going to mispronounce the Norwegian player's names.   

How about instead suggesting "Ben-tuh" with the "uh" sounding close to the "uh" in "duh"  since this is hopefully something they will be able to understand?   They were also struggling a few times with Hege pronouncing it as "Hey-gay"   so I was thinking that I might also suggest that they instead use "Heg-uh" with that same "uh" as in "duh" sound.


----------



## Grefsen

Pteppic said:


> And finally I'm going to stir up some confusion and claim that the 'sh' sound is closer to 'kj' than 'tch', as both 'sh' and 'kj' are fricatives, while 'tch' is an affricate, if that makes any sense.



I'm wondering then if my orginal suggestion for  pronouncing  *Mykjåland* as  "Meesh-oh-lawn" might be easiest one for the ESPN commentators to understand.  The pronounciation that was used yesterday was "Mick-hall-end."   Apparently for some reason they just assumed that the "j" in Norwegian was pronounciated similar to the "j" in Spanish.


----------



## Grefsen

As a quick update to this thread, I sent an email to my main contact within the Norwegian Fotball Federation, but haven't yet received a reply from him.  I also have another non-Norwegian speaking contact who can forward information directly to one or more of the ESPN commentators for me.  

Thanks to Typhoon Wipha   Norway's match against Ghana has been pushed back to tomorrow so I still have time to send an email to my other contact later today.  Any additional feedback or suggested pronunciations posted here before 22.00 *norsk tid *would be greatly appreciated.   

*På forhånd takk!*


----------



## Grefsen

Grefsen said:


> Yes, you may be so bold *Pteppic*.....
> 
> Yesterday there were two new ESPN commentators for Norway's match against Australia and as luck would have it, Ragnhild Gulbrandsen scored an early  goal.
> 
> One of the commentators pronounced Ragnhild as "Raj-nild" as though she was from Calcutta instead of the Trondheim area of Norway  and the other called her "Rag-nild."
> 
> In any event, I really like the suggestion of "wrong-nil" and think that this should hopefully be easy enough that even the ESPN commentators can manage to get it right.



I've been on the road most of the past week and haven't had much internet access, but was able to watch Norway's previous two World Cup matches "live" in hotel rooms and can report that the ESPN commentators are at least being more consistent with their mispronunciations of the Norwegian names.  

I'm not sure if my email to the Norwegian Fotball Federation had much impact if any, but the ESPN commentators have apparently got together and decided that they would all pronounce the name Ragnhild as "Rog-nild." I would prefer to have them pronounce her name as "Wrong-nil," but consider "Rog-nild" to be a much better alternative than  "Rag-nild" or the very strange Indian sounding pronunciation of "Raj-nild"  that a several of the commentators were using during the earlier rounds of the tournament.


----------

