Message: "Re: How do you pronounce "Ottilie"?"

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Re: How do you pronounce "Ottilie"?

by ClaudiaS

5/29/2008, 8:06 PM

That is actually a rather difficult sound to represent in (American) English. In the general American dialect, the "e" of "very" is rhotacized, that is, colored by the following /r/. In other words, we don't say ve-ry, we say vair-y, and that's not the sound at the end of Ottilie. It's more open than the "e" of "get" but without the glide of "day." Perhaps the easiest way to express it is as the vowel of "day" cut short.

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- Doesra (guest) +3

5/29/2008, 11:42 PM

Yeah, maybe its the Slang.
I´m grown up with british English and to me its the very "e" if you have to describe the German sound.
I think its the individual feeling of sound.
But in Germany nobody would say Otili "ay", if we talk about an "ay" as in say.
Greets

- Doesra (guest) +2

5/29/2008, 11:58 PM

Meant it ´cos somebody said its o-till-ee-AY ;-)

- The Little Hyphen +1

5/30/2008, 2:40 PM

I'm sorry if that was how it was interpreted, as ClaudiaS said, it is difficult to represent the sound in English due to the different pronounciations of sounds. The way I wrote out the pronounciation as "oh-TILL-ee-ay" would be how I would say it as you mean it; the accent on the TILL softens the last syllable of ay. It's a bit of a strange sound to get across in English, I hadn't really thought of it before.

- Doesra (guest)

5/31/2008, 3:29 AM

So, we both meant the same ;-)

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