I have never been able to understand why Seppos have to pronounce “Uyghur” as “weegur”. Just fucking say “ooy-goor”. Or even “oy-gur”. You can do it. It’s not difficult.
Inb4 I’m called a prescriptivist, yes I know I’m a hypocrite but this is just a pet peeve
That’s just the natural way an English speaker reads that combination of letters, we’d have to interact with someone who actually knows what a uyghur is in order to hear the correct pronunciation
Listen to this clip of a Uyghur person saying “Uyghur” (it’s the top link on that page, also the third) and tell me if it sounds more like “wee-gur” or “oy-gur”.
So your point is basically that /uj/ is to your ears closer to /wi/ than to /oj/? It’s not like I haven’t heard Uyghurs say the word “Uyghur” before, I just thought that it was a bit silly to swap a vowel for a glide and a glide for a vowel. To me neither /wi/ nor /oj/ sound particularly close to /uj/, but of those two options I still favor /oj/ because it’s the option that ends in a glide.
I have never been able to understand why Seppos have to pronounce “Uyghur” as “weegur”. Just fucking say “ooy-goor”. Or even “oy-gur”. You can do it. It’s not difficult.
Inb4 I’m called a prescriptivist, yes I know I’m a hypocrite but this is just a pet peeve
I think it’s okay to be prescriptivist about the names of minority groups.
Yeah it’s like being prescriptivist about your own name. You get to be picky about what you call yourself.
That’s just the natural way an English speaker reads that combination of letters, we’d have to interact with someone who actually knows what a uyghur is in order to hear the correct pronunciation
In what world?!
Well, in this one for a start.
Alright, checking a word list, there is “soliloquy”. But there is also words like “buy”.
I think the “wee” sound comes from combining the “u” and the “y” sounds to be “oo-ee”, and that sounds like a “w” when you say it quickly.
I can’t think of an English word that has an initial “uy”, so there’s not really anything to follow there.
Listen to this clip of a Uyghur person saying “Uyghur” (it’s the top link on that page, also the third) and tell me if it sounds more like “wee-gur” or “oy-gur”.
The link isn’t working for me.
Does this work: https://forvo.com/languages/ug/
Nope.
OK I downloaded it and uploaded it to soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/casskaydee/uyghur-as-pronounced-by-uyghur-person
So your point is basically that /uj/ is to your ears closer to /wi/ than to /oj/? It’s not like I haven’t heard Uyghurs say the word “Uyghur” before, I just thought that it was a bit silly to swap a vowel for a glide and a glide for a vowel. To me neither /wi/ nor /oj/ sound particularly close to /uj/, but of those two options I still favor /oj/ because it’s the option that ends in a glide.
Pretty much yeah. For the same reason the French “oui” sounds like “wee” to Anglophones and is usually reproduced that way to them.
French ‘oui’ literally is pronounced /wi/, though. That’s what any French dictionary will tell you.
Do you say ‘muy bueno’ as ‘mwee bwennow’ too?