>> >Charles, és magyar? Lehet, hogy Simonyi Károly volt.
>> >(Szerintem, ha lehet spanyolül itt írni, akkor magyarül is lehet).
>> >
>> I have no problem with anyone using any languages, but I would appreciate
>> maybe a phonetic pronuncation in there somewhere so I know what it's
>> supposed to sound like....yeah, I'm one of those weirdos that learns
>> languages by sound. Made going from Spanish to German a real blast!
>
>I just thought how _not_ knowing the pronunciation helps here, so no one's name
>sounds weird, and you can talk to anybody without having to learn how to say his
>name :). For real phonetics, English language is really horrible, because there
>are lots of vocals missing, lots of consonants too, and I could gather a pretty
>nice collection of things you can't get if they're written kind-of-phonetic in
>English. My language has a phonetic alphabet (for its own use - the serbian
>cyrillic), but we have only six vocals and would have tough time transcripting
>your last name (I speak English for 30 years, and ain't sure how to
>read it - is it like bee-ard, or bee-eared or what?). Besides, no
>language I've heard about has a proper equivalent of the russian shch.

Actually, people who have had to learn English as a second language have ALWAYS had my sympathy. Gods know that I have problems enough with it as a first language! As far as the last name goes, my branch of the family pronounces it 'beerd', and yes, that is historically the correct way to spell the name. As far as we can tell, 'Beard','Baird', and 'Beaird' are all offshoots of the same root family name 'Beaird'. How it got spelled when they got to America was directly dependant on how illiterate the Customs clerk was and how thick the Irish or Scot's accent of the newcomer was.


>
>In this case, shorthand rules for Hungarian:
>S=sh, sz=s, ny like in "new", ly like in "lewd", zs like french j, dzs=
>
>j, ch, cs,
>ts, cz all equal ch; j like y, gy like dy in "would you" spoken as one word, th,
>gh, sh, ph etc is always two consonants - t, g, sh, p plus h, c is like german tz.
>Vocals with umlaut are like in German, vocals with acutes are long, double
>consonants are long, too (difference is either audible, or you don't speak the
>language :).
>
>Finally, it'd be Shimmonyi Kahroly. When I try to transcript anything to English, I
>have to put the bloody aitch after any vocal I want to sound normal :),
>or else you'd read it as Kayroly. Do you ever read the H as is? I
>suppose you wouldn't read it in "Tihomirov", so he had to write
>Tikhomirov, right?

Actually, after years of German, Spanish, Latin(singing), and French (and boy does THAT hurt), I would pronounce 'Karoly' as kah-roly, probably with a slight roll to the 'r'. Anyway, thanks for the hints. They WILL help when I'm trying to pronounce (to myself) some of the names we run across here.