Ossetia: Os-sĕ-ti-a or Os-see-sha?
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Because I seldom listen to the news on the radio or watch it on TV, most of what I know about happenings in the world is gleaned from print media: books, magazines, papers, and so forth. Consequently, I occasionally adopt a "reading pronunciation" for the name of a person or place that is at variance with the actual spoken pronunciation of the name. Such is the case with a place name that is currently prominent in the news: Ossetia. In my mind, and even when speaking to others, I have been blithely and happily saying Os-sĕ-ti-a. After all, I thought to myself, the people who live there are Os-set(e)s, and their language is Os-sĕt-ic or, so I thought, Os-sĕ-ti-an.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I was reading a Chinese newspaper and saw the name transcribed as OU1XI1XIA4 歐希夏. Experiencing a linguistic epiphany, I instantly realized that I had been mispronouncing Ossetia for years and immediately tried to switch from Os-sĕ-ti-a to Os-see-sha. Unfortunately, deeply ingrained habits die hard, so I still usually say Os-sĕ-ti-a even when I intend to say Os-see-sha. Of course, I should have known better, since I do pronounce Alsatia and Dalmatia "correctly."
But that's not the end of the story. A few days later, I was reading a different Chinese newspaper and was startled to see this transcription of the name: AO4SE4TI2YA4 奧塞提亞 (the 塞 could also be pronounced either SAI1 or SAI4, and in fact most Chinese speakers I know pronounce it as SAI4, but Guoyu Ribao [Mandarin Daily] and other sources recommend SE4), which approximates my original pronunciation. This indicates that there is no agreement among Chinese speakers about how to transcribe and pronounce the name. The matter is further complicated by the fact that, in Russian the name Осетия is pronounced əsyĕ'tēə , which also closely matches my original pronunciation.
Not being a phonologist (in which case I would probably know the operative rule), I hypothesize that in English (inherited from French) a "t" followed by "i" alone (e.g., -tic) retains its original "t" sound, but when followed by "i" plus one or more additional vowels (e.g., -tia, -tio-, -tiou-), it changes to a "sh" sound — except when one is quoting Latin terms or names (e.g., ultima ratio, contrasted with "ratio" in its Franco-English pronunciation).
As a sort of anticlimax, I thought I would check out the frequencies of the various Chinese transcriptions of Ossetia (I suspect that there are many others, but I haven't made a systematic search) on Google:
| AO4SE4TI2YA4 | 奧塞提亞 | 36,000 |
| AO4SE4TI1 | 奧塞梯 | 2,090,000 |
| AO4XI1XIA4 | 奧希夏 | 64 |
| OU1XI1XIA4 | 歐希夏 | 418 |
If only I had know this when I first encountered OU1XI1XIA4 歐希夏!
Rick S said,
September 12, 2008 @ 4:24 pm
I can tell essentially the opposite story. My "reading pronunciation" had been Os-see-sha, until the news of hostilities broke and I heard it pronounced Os-sĕ-ti-a on NPR. So I tried to adopt the "correct" pronunciation, only to find both variants were attested. Now, the venerable NPR is not lightly to be disregarded, but Os-sĕ-ti-a really sounds so affected to me that I abandoned the attempt.
Unfortunately for me, your investigation suggests that my "reading pronunciation" is far less common, at least among Chinese journalists. What to do, what to do? I suppose I'd go with the mainstream American pronunciation—except I'm still not sure which it is.
Steve Harris said,
September 12, 2008 @ 4:27 pm
An uninformed American data-point: I assumed it was pronounced along the lines of Dalmatia, i.e., as Os-see-sha, and I was surprised when I heard newscasters in the US pronounce it as Os-sĕ-ti-a. But I've not heard more than a few newscasters, so I don't know how representative that is.
Brendan said,
September 12, 2008 @ 4:58 pm
Not sure how generalizable the rule is — consider the flower 'pointsettia,' which I've always heard pronounced as, more or less, 剖因塞提亚.
Randy said,
September 12, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
I agree that Os-sĕ-ti-a sounds affected. It's what I use, though. Os-see-sha doesn't sound affected enough. What about Oh-setcha? That pronunciation has the perfect amount of affectedness to my ears. Has anyone heard it? I don't watch tv or listen to the news, I so don't know.
How many English words end in -etia? I can think of no others at the moment.
I have a similar issue with how to pronounce Galicia. Ga-lis-si-a? Ga-li-sha? With the first I feel like pretentious buffoon. With the second I feel like an ordinary buffoon.
Also, could someone tell me how to pronounce Ignatieff (Michael Ignatieff is a Canadian politician/Everywhere academic)?
Randy said,
September 12, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
Brendan, you answered my question while I was writing it.
In poinsettia, the -t- gets vocalized, or voiced, whatever the term is, when I say it.
John Cowan said,
September 12, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
The OED3 doesn't have Ossetia per se, as it doesn't cover geographical names unless they have secondary meaning, like Siberia 'a cold, inhospitable place, or a place of exile, banishment, or imprisonment'. But it does have Ossetan, -ete, -etian, -etic, -etin.
None of these except Ossetian show the variation between short vowel and palatalized /t/ = /S/, but all of them show the DRESS vs. FLEECE variation in the second vowel, and Ossetin shows the same variation in the third vowel as well.
As for palatalization, it is said to be less common in the U.K. and more common in the U.S., but I am always wary of trusting such claims in dictionaries.
Banyon said,
September 12, 2008 @ 5:20 pm
I've been following a discussion on this issue on Ossetia's Wikipedia article for a few weeks. Apparently both the American Heritage Dictionary and older editions of the OED list the pronunciation as Os-see-sha, but the latest OED has changed to Os-se-ti-a. There are other examples of those and other pronunciations cited from other sources, but no overall consensus.
Jim McCusker said,
September 12, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
A minor point, but isn't Alsatia pronounced Alsace? Or is that a Franco-centric thing? I've never seen Alsatia before.
mgh said,
September 12, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
The printed version of the NYT gave pronunciation hints (something like "[oh-SEE-sha]") when the story was on their front page in early August, as I recall. I don't see it in the electronic version of the story, though.
marie-lucie said,
September 12, 2008 @ 6:44 pm
@Randy: Michael Ignatieff's last name, as pronounced on Canadian radio, always sounds like Ig-nat-yeff.
@Jim McCusker: How is Alsace pronounced in English? Alsatia would make sense, since the word Alsatian (with -ti- as sh) exists in England (among other things, to refer to a German Shepherd dog). But I suppose that Alsace is the word that appears on bottles of wine from the region.
Karen said,
September 12, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
The problem is that the Russians call it O-set-i-a, but the Osetians call it O-see-sha (with a vowel between American long O and short A). But everyone in the media is, I expect, getting their tips from the Russians, so…
Karen said,
September 12, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
I forgot to say, hat blogged on this a month ago.
Lazar said,
September 12, 2008 @ 7:02 pm
I used to use the reading pronunciation Os-set-i-a [@"sE4i@] – probably because I considered it more of a direct borrowing from Russian than a regular Latinate name like Dalmatia.
Nick Z said,
September 12, 2008 @ 7:20 pm
@John Cowan. A propos "American" palatalisation (I'm a StandardBritishE speaker), it had never occurred to me that it could be pronounced O-see-sha rather than O-se-ti-ja, and palatalisation in e.g. nausea to give nau-zha rather than nau-zi-ja strikes me as American. And a Canadian friend says Tu-nee-zha rather than Tu-ni-zi-ja for Tunisia, which I think of as an Americanism (if you see what I mean; of course it could just be a Canadianism. Either way, I had not heard anyone say it that way before).
But I suspect that here in Britain there is a concomitant to the recency illusion – the Americanism illusion.
Ralph Hickok said,
September 12, 2008 @ 7:31 pm
Since poinsettia has a double T, I would expect it to be pronounced as it is. But Ossetia has only one T, so I would expect it to be pronounced "Os-see-sha." A quick search on onelook.com shows me that all the dictionaries there that contain the name of the country agree.
Skullturf Q. Beavispants said,
September 12, 2008 @ 7:33 pm
I am also Canadian and I have to disagree with Marie-Lucie; the English-speaking journalists I've heard always seem to say "ig-NAY-tee-eff". With, of course, the usual non-articulation of the T, turning it into a flap.
Ling Student said,
September 12, 2008 @ 7:55 pm
@Randy
I have heard it pronounced as O-se-tcha. Myself I haven't settled on any particular pronunciation, but I lean toward o-se-ti-ya.
Jean-Sébastien Girard said,
September 12, 2008 @ 8:53 pm
For the record, it's also pronounced with a /t/ in French. I think that's because of "ossète", which is felt to be the original word from which "Ossétie" is derived, or it could be simply how the word was borrowed from Russian, or even the fact that the sequence /ses/ is quite uncommon in French (at least compared to /səs/ or /sɛs/).
Jorg said,
September 12, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
Of course, the Russian pronunciation is Os-set-i-a (actually, in Russian there is only one "s"). Karen, I am not sure where you get the idea that Ossetes prononounce is "O-see-sha", but from what I know, it is highly unlikely.
marie-lucie said,
September 12, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
@SQB: I can't believe we have been listening to the same people! I stand by my transcription of Michael Ignatieff's name as I heard it many times on English Canadian radio. I would certainly have noticed an alternate pronunciation with a difference in the number of syllables, the nature of the stressed vowel and the flapping or not of the t.
NeantHumain said,
September 13, 2008 @ 1:23 am
Well, the Latinate -tia suffix is usually pronounced /ʃə/ in American English. Also, I would have guessed French Ossétie would be pronounced /osesi/ on the model of démocratie as /demɔkrasi/.
Cheryl Thornett said,
September 13, 2008 @ 2:06 am
The BBC uses the Os-set-i-a pronunciation.
VK said,
September 13, 2008 @ 3:06 am
I had always thought that a country's name should be pronounced the way it is defined by that country. However, that rarely happens in the real world.
Russians don't say "Ra-sha" or "Ra-shia", but the rest of the world does (with some more versions).
I should add here that the Russian language itself has names for other countries that are at variance with their native pronunciations. England is "Ang-lia". China is "Kitay". USA gets translated into Russian for "United States of America" (such translation of names is something that I find quite irritating).
As to Ossetia, I have been pronouncing it the way Russians do. I am living in Russia at the moment, so there is no escape. If someone has an authentic pointer to how Ossetians pronounce it, that should be interesting (doesn't their President pronounce it the way Russians do?).
Bertilo Wennergren said,
September 13, 2008 @ 4:36 am
The Ossetians themselves say "Iryston" (according to Wikipedia). Byt maybe the say "O-see-sha" when the speak English…
David Letterman said,
September 13, 2008 @ 5:43 am
You guys are wasting your time with this. As Karen said and linked, this whole discussion was already had at Language Hat weeks ago. It's Os-see-sha, Hat says so and Hat really knows about stuff like this.
And it's Ig-nat-yeff.
Sheesh.
marie-lucie said,
September 13, 2008 @ 8:42 am
I would have guessed French Ossétie would be pronounced /osesi/ on the model of démocratie as /demɔkrasi/.
démocratie, a learned borrowing from Greek via Latin, is not the only model for the pronunciation of the sequence -tie in French. In most cases -tie in final position in a word is pronounced with a t, for instance , sortie, partie, avertie, décatie and other past participles and adjectives in their feminine form, pronounced the same as their masculine counterparts in -ti. Ossétie does not fall into either category, and it comes from Ossète, so a pronunciation of t as s is less likely.
marie-lucie said,
September 13, 2008 @ 9:12 am
I had always thought that a country's name should be pronounced the way it is defined by that country.
This assumes that people of any language background should be familiar with the names of every country in its own language, and able to pronounce it as its citizens do, obviously an impossibility. There was a similar point discussed on this blog some months ago: transcriptions of the name according to English spelling conventions may result in q distorted pronunciation in other languages (my example was Cambodia becoming Kampuchea, a change of spelling rather than a new name, and French people using "kam-pü-shay-a" as a result, instead of Cambodge which was closer to the local pronunciation).
I should add here that the Russian language itself has names for other countries that are at variance with their native pronunciations. England is "Ang-lia". China is "Kitay".
Consider the names of the country known to itself as Deutschland, but as Germany in English (an adaptation of Latin Germania), Allemagne in French, Alemania in Spanish, and yet more words in other European languages. The language of the country is known as tedesco in Italian (a word adapted from an older form of deutsch). The Netherlands has a meaning in English, which would be hidden were the country to insist on being referred to as Niederlanden. Such variety in naming reflects the long history of relations between the various countries, as well as the evolution of their languages.
USA gets translated into Russian for "United States of America" (such translation of names is something that I find quite irritating).
In this case the name of the country is a description, not a name now meaningless in itself such as France or Canada. How is someone not knowing any English supposed to know how to pronounce such a long phrase as "The United States of America"? or even "The US"? any more than non-Russian speakers were expected to use the full Russian phrase abbreviated in English by the acronym USSR and in other languages by an acronym reflecting their own translation of the phrase. Would it be helpful to citizens of other countries to encounter "People's Republic of China" only in its Chinese form?
Ralph Hickok said,
September 13, 2008 @ 9:40 am
I had always thought that a country's name should be pronounced the way it is defined by that country.
Since I was a rather young stamp collector, I've been puzzled by the fact that we call a country Germany when the people who live there call it Deutschland. (And their neighbors, the French, call it Allemagne.) And, of course, there are many other examples. The Swedes call their country Sverige; to a Finn, Finland is Suomi. The issue goes far beyond pronunciation.
David Letterman said,
September 13, 2008 @ 9:46 am
In Norway, Germany is called Tyskland. Tysk, tysk.
language hat said,
September 13, 2008 @ 9:51 am
everyone in the media is, I expect, getting their tips from the Russians
Yes, this is the operative fact. The traditional pronunciation, following the normal spelling rules of English, was -see-sha, but of course it was confined to the tiny minority of people who had any occasion to talk about the place and its inhabitants. When it suddenly hit the news, reporters got their pronunciation from people whose native language was Russian and who naturally used the -set- pronunciation. It will be interesting to see if the standard pronunciation reverts once Ossetia has faded into the dust of ancient clippings like the Quemoy and Matsu of my youth, or whether the new Russified pronunciation proves to be permanent
I had always thought that a country's name should be pronounced the way it is defined by that country.
This is a very silly idea.
Mithridates said,
September 13, 2008 @ 12:43 pm
Saakashvili pronounces it Os-see-sha. Though he's Georgian, of course. . . .
SubtleKnife said,
September 13, 2008 @ 1:45 pm
Indeed he does say Os-see-sha and did so quite pointedly in an interview with the BBC in response to the interviewer's Os-sĕ-ti-a… I'm still not sure, because I haven't heard any Ossetians themselves. Their voices have been missing in the whole coverage – except as they wailed over their lost loved ones and the ruin their village.
PS. I don't think The Netherlands will ever insist on be called Die Niederlanden. Nederland would be more likely, since that is what we call it ourselves. Pays Bas and Paisos Bajos are examples of the translation of the meaning of a name. Another thing we are often confronted with is the pars-pro-toto Holland.
David Marjanović said,
September 13, 2008 @ 4:40 pm
In short, they don't. They pronounce it [irɨston]…
In English.
AN-glee-yah. (Yes, really with [ng] — there is no [ŋ] in the language.)
Niederlande is German (and has a meaning there, despite its irregular plural).
Robert said,
September 13, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
Anglia is just a late Latin name for England, after the Angles. Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire are said to comprise the region East Anglia.
Randy said,
September 14, 2008 @ 1:46 am
"PS. I don't think The Netherlands will ever insist on be called Die Niederlanden. Nederland would be more likely, since that is what we call it ourselves."
I don't think even the Netherlands is likely to be used. Almost everyone calls it Holland. Once someone even referred to the province of Friesland as "The Friesland part of Holland." Even though I am familiar with the metonymous usage Holland, it seemed wrong.
To add to the discussion of pronouncing names as the locals do, I don't expect any English speaker to call Friesland Fryslân as the Frisians do. I don't change my accent when saying the names of English speaking cities, towns, and countries when the accent of those cities, towns, or countries are different from my own, except perhaps to be silly. I'm not sure why I would do that for countries whose speech I am even less familiar with, especially when there is an established English pronunciation. I won't even pronounce Dutch or Frisian place names in a Dutch or Frisian way, despite those being the languages of my mother and my paternal grandparents. To me, Amsterdam, when pronounced the Dutch way, sounds a lot like Umsterdum. Fryslân, pronounced correctly, uses at least three sounds that don't exist in English (or at least not all varieties). To pronounce either of these as they are in their respective languages in an English language conversation would be pretentious buffoonery at its finest, and I will have no part of it.
Bill Muir said,
September 14, 2008 @ 3:10 am
I was reading about this a while back, and if I remember correctly Ossetians use Я primarily to transcribe Russian loan words. If this is the case, then it's unlikely that they would be pronouncing their name for their own nation (or what have you) this way. I did a bit of google scanning and came up with some interesting leads, viz:
Some Russian treatments of the subject suggest that everyone should be pronouncing it as Осиша, as Lavrov and Saakashvili apparently do, but these mostly seem to come from idealistic youngsters who like the idea of deferring to the home crowd on issues like this–as several have posted above me it's not feasible to expect this of everyone.
But in other cases there are accusations that Saakashvili is specifically pronouncing it that way to appeal to Americans (who supposedly have some predictable way of mangling the names of things) and to distance himself from the Russians. But if the Russian foreign minister says Осиша (which I am unable to confirm), that doesn't specifically make sense.
I think these are all the rants of people more interested in the political issues here, so who knows.
language hat said,
September 14, 2008 @ 9:54 am
Americans (who supposedly have some predictable way of mangling the names of things)
What the hell is that supposed to mean? How is using the standard English name for a place "mangling" it?
But if the Russian foreign minister says Осиша (which I am unable to confirm), that doesn't specifically make sense.
It makes perfect sense, because he will have taken the trouble to look the word up in an English dictionary, which will have told him that's how the name is pronounced in English. Which it was, until all this foofaraw.
Bill Muir said,
September 14, 2008 @ 11:41 am
What the hell is that supposed to mean? How is using the standard English name for a place "mangling" it?
Don't ask me, I'm just reporting what I found. While I'm not sure where you're getting the concept of a "standard English name." (Obviously there is some debate about the name. If you missed this read the log entry we're commenting on.)
It makes perfect sense, because he will have taken the trouble to look the word up in an English dictionary, which will have told him that's how the name is pronounced in English. Which it was, until all this foofaraw.
Why would the Russian foreign minister give a flying ferrari what the English dictionary says? If he's shrewd he'll be more interested in what the Ossetian dictionaries are saying.
Graham said,
September 14, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Marie-Lucie is right, of course – why should we be expected to know how to pronounce every place name in the language spoken there? For many country names it would be impossible anyway because more than one language is spoken in most countries (Switzerland would be a good example).
So why have we kowtowed to the Chinese be changing Peking to Beijing, and to Moldavia (still called that in UK newspapers as recently as 1990) by changing the name of their country to Moldova?
If Bill Muir doesn't understand the concept of a "standard English name, then try "established anglicization" – Moscow, not Moskva, Warsaw not Warszawa, for instance.
Leo Petr said,
September 14, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
Speaking of Warsaw, if we are to anglicize anew, should anglicization be based on spelling (Warszawa) or pronunication (Varshava)? Alphabets are funny creatures.
VK said,
September 14, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
First of all, my apologies for giving the impression of disapproving the fact that people of various linguistic backgrounds pronounce countries' names differently. I was merely noting what "I had always thought" and how my experience in the real world different my from notion.
Yes, translation of names does irritate me. It irritates me (perhaps) because of my Indian origin. In India, people's names have literal meanings. The name "Akash", for example, means "Sky". Does that mean that Russians should call him "Nebo"? I guess not.
Logically, if we have to evolve some kind of standard (at least for newer countries), there can only be one that is fair: that of pronouncing the name as the country pronounces its own name. Else, everything is fair game and three cheers for Os-sĕ-ti-a.
S Onosson said,
September 14, 2008 @ 11:10 pm
My given name is Sky, and I do like the fact that I can translate it! Ciel, Akash, Tiankong, Sora, Hanil, etc. etc.
VK said,
September 15, 2008 @ 12:32 am
@S Onosson: Different strokes for different folks, I guess. That's why I said it irritates "me"; I am not campaigning to make name-translation illegal.
S Onosson said,
September 15, 2008 @ 10:29 am
@ VK
I didn't mean to suggest that you were! I only wanted to point out that someone with a "meaningful" name could feel the opposite way about your point.
On the Ossetia question (I'm coming rather late to this post), perhaps I am unduly influenced by Canadian French, but I originally thought that "o-se-tsya" would be the way it was pronounced, or possibly "o-se-cha". Someone else commented that would be an affected pronunciation, but it seems pretty natural for me, much more than "o-see-sha".
I should also mention that around here (Winnipeg, Canada), poinsettia is pronounced as "poin(t)-set-a", just three syllables, and so can't really be compared to Ossetia in my dialect. Also, for me Ignatieff is "Ig-na-cheff", and Galicia is "ga-lee-see-ya" – so there are a range of possibilities even for similar forms.
S Onosson said,
September 15, 2008 @ 10:39 am
P.S. If you don't know Canadian French, both /t/ and /d/ are generally affricated before a vowel, as something like [ts] and [dz] respectively. The leader of the federal Liberal party, which is the second largest party in the current government, has the surname Dion. I have heard English-speaking broadcasters pronounce his name quite consistently as "dzee-o~" (that's supposed to represent a nasalized vowel at the end there) and in some cases even "zee-o~", where the [d] is lost entirely.
TGG said,
September 15, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
Depends which Galicia, in Spain it's Ga-lee-see-a (or Ga-lee-thee-a), in Poland it is Ga-lee-tsee-a. In these cases avoiding the "natural" English Ga-lee-sha adds clarity to speech.
I've always said The Netherlands (so it's clear I'm not talking about Holland, England) but Dutch of my acquaintance frequently use Holland when speaking English. I find the varying toponym phenomenon to be endlessly fascinating and one of the funnest features of having many languages. Unless you're the unlucky Italian who gets on the bus to Munich instead of Monaco.
How about Circassia? Cherkassia? Sirkassia? Kirkassia? Sirkasha? Cherkasha? Kirkasha?
MLM said,
January 8, 2009 @ 9:39 am
I remember hearing one of the actors in some radio 4 serialisation mention [səʼkeiʒən] bandits. It took me a few seconds to realise it was meant to be Circassian. He was misled by 'Caucasian', I guess.
I said,
June 29, 2010 @ 10:37 pm
My name ends in -etia, pronounced -ĕ-ti-a. It drives me insane when people mispronounce it -ee-sha, lol. I can tell y'all for sure that it's Os-sĕ-ti-a. ;) The the last four letters (-e-t-i-ya) are the same as my name (ditto Ingushetia, etc). Of course, it's "Iryston" in Ossetian!
kasimir patynyan said,
September 30, 2010 @ 10:07 am
Im half Ossetian on my Mommy's side ;) "Its 'Awwwe' like awwe poor baby!" then ——- seh like your'e saying 'said' without the D——-unless your from some funky place like: the South: "He done saye tat to mee" —- Anyways – So : Awwe – seh – shah (think the frmr Shah of Iran) ….. and please for the sake of not sounding so so stupid – even Big Time News Casters do it — IT IS : EE-RON –Not – I Ran, like you 'ran over to Tay-ran!'