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Mr. Selzinburg, are you available to play a 2-1/2 hour August-is-a-dead-as-hell-month-for-gigs engagement for $750, at a house three miles up the road from your house?

My name's not Selzinburg!

Oh!...OK...' sorry to have bothered you, sir...

Like I said, don't be a jerk.

"I'd love to. Please, call me Joe."

"Great! What's your email? I'll send you the contract."

"joseph.selzinburg@midsouthmusic.not"

Oh, wait...

And you knew this: We are talking about proper names, particularly those of unusual spelling or pronunciation, not words that anybody can look up in a dictionary if they want to know how it is pronounced or spelled. Correcting the latter is akin to grammar correction, which should be the domain of English teachers. Only the owner of the name can correct the former.

Rick "problem solved" Denney

Dents Be Gone! wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 4:58 pm Today, many parents of all cultures feel the need to be creative with names. It sometimes feels like a pronunciation minefield. Unfortunately, it also often comes with a “looking to be offended” mindset in that minefield. I do the best I can, as imperfect as that is.

Does the approved pronunciation come with a list of approved pronouns? It would be embarrasing to mis-gender a tuba, much less an entire brand.

arpthark wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 1:02 pm Oh, I gotta give those folks more credit, now!

It does sound like they may have learned by hearing, rather than reading. Neither way is foolproof, but if your idea of how things might sound based on their spelling is learned from the English language, hearing is certainly more reliable.

The reason I don't like "bisher" is because it isn't "right" either, in the sense of standard German pronunciation - büscher is not the same as bisscher. The way we usually pronounce it is, to me, about as close as anything we can do within English.

Of course the family's wishes in this carry a lot of weight, but in the end, did they win, or lose? As best as I can make out, they lost, and the name has entered the lexicon of American musical instruments as bush-er. If so, I have an about equal rationale for either, and I don't like bisher.

While I'm at it, "Boehm" kind of grates on me, too. The prescribed pronunciation rhyming with "lame", which is nowhere near the German. (Nor is "berm", don't hand me that.) It's in the musical instrument lexicon for flutes, after the developer of the key system, and for clarinets after the same person who didn't design the clarinet keys named after him.

donn wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 8:48 am

arpthark wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 1:02 pm Oh, I gotta give those folks more credit, now!

It does sound like they may have learned by hearing, rather than reading. Neither way is foolproof, but if your idea of how things might sound based on their spelling is learned from the English language, hearing is certainly more reliable.

The reason I don't like "bisher" is because it isn't "right" either, in the sense of standard German pronunciation - büscher is not the same as bisscher. The way we usually pronounce it is, to me, about as close as anything we can do within English.

Of course the family's wishes in this carry a lot of weight, but in the end, did they win, or lose? As best as I can make out, they lost, and the name has entered the lexicon of American musical instruments as bush-er. If so, I have an about equal rationale for either, and I don't like bisher.

While I'm at it, "Boehm" kind of grates on me, too. The prescribed pronunciation rhyming with "lame", which is nowhere near the German. (Nor is "berm", don't hand me that.) It's in the musical instrument lexicon for flutes, after the developer of the key system, and for clarinets after the same person who didn't design the clarinet keys named after him.

Usually, the wishes of the owners of the name are not recorded for posterity, and then it is what it is. But since Beuscher actually did offer a suggestion in their materials, we do at least have something authoritative, in the sense that the owner of a proper name should be the authority on how that name should be pronounced, no matter how "wrong" that seems to someone else. As to what I call it, that depends on whether I'm paying attention. Probably nobody listening would care.

On wristwatch forums, many of the names are French as spoken (incorrectly, if you ask the French) by the Swiss in Suisse Romande. There is a standing debate guaranteed to make threads with thousands of accusatory and inflammatory posts arguing, for example, that Jaeger-LeCoultre should be "zhay-zhere lehcooltr" as opposed to "yay-gur lehcooltr". Arguments abound. I've seen Youtubes where the CEO of the company pronounced it the French(ish) way, but the German-heritage manager of the brand boutique on the Rue du Rhone in Geneva said it the German way. I have concluded that they adopt Joe's strategy of basically not caring, as long as the customer's check clears. I avoid the fray by calling it "JLC". Of course, the average Swiss person speaks three or four languages, one of which is usually English. And in Europe, proper names usually derive from regular words that people know, unlike in the USA where the connection to the Old Country meaning and pronunciation has been lost or distorted. Thus, I've heard Germans say, "Jaeger means hunter and it is therefore obviously pronounced 'yaygur,' and Jean-Frederic Dufour was being a typical French-speaking jerk when he pronounced it 'zhay-zhere,' even though he was the CEO of JLC at the time." Nevermind that Edmonde Jaeger was himself French, and even Parisian, with a family name coming from Alsace, at the time that his company merged with LeCoultre (based in the Swiss town of Le Sentier), which at that time was led by the grandson of the founder, Jacques-David LeCoultre. That said, nobody has ever heard Edmonde Jaeger pronounce his own name, so we only have what the company's current representatives say, and that's clearly variable. The authority for proper names comes from their owners, and that includes the privilege of not caring how people pronounce or spell it.

(Mssr. Dufour is out of the argument now, even if he was ever in it, because he's now the CEO of Rolex, which is a made-up word selected primarily because it is pronounced the same way in all languages. That word was made up by Hans Wilsdorf, the German-heritage English-speaking London-residing Swiss founder of Wilsdorf and Davis, which became Rolex.)

But there's no end of entertainment to watching English speakers argue about French (or German) pronunciation, hence the blokish desire to keep this debate alive, and the Rickish willingness to play along.

Rick "who has always pronounced 'Boehm' as 'berm', but without the rhotic R, even though German speakers have to suppress laughter" Denney

Rick Denney wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 9:24 am Rick "who has always pronounced 'Boehm' as 'berm', but without the rhotic R, even though German speakers have to suppress laughter" Denney

That's pretty close to what I'd prefer, I think. The IPA representation for non-rhotic is supposed to be |bɜːm|. That vowel is somewhere in between "eh" and "uh". If we're limited to the sounds naturally provided by our own language, as we ought to, we're best off prescribing it as "bem" or "bum", probably the former preferred. Maybe "bhehm" or something to emphasize that it should be pronounced in an awkward manner.

"bame" comes out |beɪm| and is wholly wrong, and "berm" is not helpful if you pronounce Rs, as most English speakers do. If it were reasonable to adopt someone else's regional accent for this purpose (it isn't), I might suggest the O pronunciation in parts of England and the American Mid-Atlantic/Southeast, somewhat like |bəʊm|.

Two "generations" prior to me (ex: my own father, who was born in 1916) pronounced "Boehm" as "bayum", but this video is much closer to a closed-mouthed version of "boom"...

...ie. NOT "ay", NOT "er", but closer to (yet not exactly) "oo".



...but even THIS doesn't get one out of the pronunciation woods...
As the designer/inventer of this system was Belgian, it is - then - the "oul-bear" system:

MN_TimTuba wrote: ↑Mon Jul 31, 2023 7:44 pm I like to pronounce "Buescher" this way - .
Approved ?
Tim

Pretty sure you are in agreement with

arpthark wrote: ↑Sun Jul 30, 2023 3:48 pm

pjv wrote: ↑Sun Jul 30, 2023 3:38 pm Büscher.
On the other hand, who cares.
By the way, Google translate will help give you a pronunciation which at least will make you sound dashing and guarantee you a second date with your love interest.

Frau Büscher...?

And hence my curiosity about tuba horse calls. (seemed mire tasteful than asking "What knockers?"

I considered digging up this clip as well, just in case not everyone here had the benefit of being exposed to this classic in their education.

Call it Bitcher, and see if anyone says anything

bort2.0 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 05, 2023 10:26 am Call it Bitcher, and see if anyone says anything

I've grown weary of your pronouncements.