I don't know about that (m)
by ACL (guest)
3/30/2012, 7:05 AM
I know lots of Hannahs where it's pronounced HAHN-nah, though I grew up in a very Orthodox Jewish area. I remember teachers asking the first day of class whether it was HAHN-nah or HAN-nah, it's actually the pronunciation I think of first, especially on a Jewish family. Actually, a lot of the time the problem was the Ch pronunciation for Channah / Chana that people just can't say. It just depends where you are, in some stereotypical suburb out in the midwest, probably not going to work. But if you're from a place where pronunciation variants are common, not as much of a problem. That said, people are still going to do it, especially just reading it off a piece of paper. I don't know anything about the OP, but if they have a French last name or live in a very French-Canadian area, I feel like they can pull it off.
But I'm confused, what exactly is the correct pronunciation? Whenever I've seen Madeleine, it has been pronounced like ma-də-LEN or MAD-ə-len so I think the first is probably doable. Mad-LEN probably not.