To ask how you would pronounce this name?

[Notss]

Hi all,

Sorry if this is the wrong place:

My little sister is expecting her first child and if it is a girl wants to call her “Sian”.

She sent it to me in a text and I replied “What - like See-Ann?” And she told me I was being daft.

So how would you pronounce such a name?

SenecaFalls, I was only pointing out that most English people have a non-rhotic accent to illustrate why there are still so many responding to the thread with"Sharn" as an answer. There are thousands of English people on MN. I wasn't arguing that it is correct or the only way of rendering the sound or not confusing to other people. There are thousands of children who will tomorrow/today get up and go to school and be taught that "ar" is pronounced as a long a sound. And in 20 year's time on robotsaretakingover.net, they'll STILL be arguing it's Sharn.

I would have said si an and I'm Scottish

Sian = shahn/sharn/shaan
All these spellings would sound the same in my accent (East of England).

So in effect we are essentially all agreeing with each other. Hurrah.

(For Sharn to sound like Sharon, it would need the 'o' where I'm from.)

Just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons even more, the “ah” sound is an elongated phonetic “A”, more like the “Ah” Of shock and surprise, than the “Ah” of “ah, I see what you mean” (I realise I am now sounding like a scene from Monty python’s holy grail).

Sh-aan is probably closest.

It’s a really common, bogstandard Welsh name. Nothing new or fancy.

If only we all had phonetic keyboards. This thread would probably have been a lot shorter!

So much confusion about rhoticity (upthread someone noted they’d only hear of it here, but it is most definitely a thing in linguistics.

If you are Scottish, Irish, Northern Irish Welsh or American, you will most likely have a rhotic accent so you pronounce an r when it appears after vowel sounds. If you're able to think about the way you pronounce ‘barn’ vs the way it would be pronounced in Southern England, you will hear the difference.

When we non-rhotic folk are describing the way we say ‘Sian’, we are using the ‘r’ to help represent the long, flat ‘a’ sound (because we also have a short a sound, like in ‘ham’).

If only we all had phonetic keyboards

Or an understanding that different regions, countries and areas have different accents and therefore pronunciation.

I’m Scottish, I didn’t think people writing “Sharn” were really pronouncing the r, I realised it was a way of elongating the a sound.

That’s good Ye. There seem to be quite a lot of posters not understanding why people are writing an r to show pronunciation.

I think the problem is that when you have a rhotic accent and you read a description written by someone with a non rhotic accent, you are pronouncing it in your head using your own accent, so the description ends up being fairly useless to you (although obviously very useful to another poster who has a non rhotic accent).

I had read loads of mumsnet threads before someone explained that they don't actually pronounce the 'r' when they use it as a description and it was only then that the penny dropped.

Also, when you don't have a concept of long and short A sounds it makes it even trickier.

But why write "r" if you're not actually saying "r"? Why not just "ah" if that's what's actually being said?

Because ‘ah’ can mean different things in different areas. But so can ‘ar’, evidently. This is why we need phonetic keyboards!

So for me as a Southerner, there is a difference between the vowels in ‘cat’ and in ‘calm’. The first is short and the second is long, but there’s also a difference in mouth shape. The first one is said with a wide open mouth, the second has a more closed, rounded mouth.

The most logical way for us to represent it in spelling would be to write ‘cat’ and ‘carm’. This makes sense to us as a way to represent those two vowels.

All vowels have technical names so if we cagoule all just learn those, we’ll be fine. 😆

‘Could just learn’ not cagoule!

But why write "r" if you're not actually saying "r"? Why not just "ah" if that's what's actually being said?

This has been answered at least four times on this very thread. I'll copy my own answer again: "because hundreds of words have "ar" in them and we pronounce it as aah in those words so to a non-rhotic speaker ar = ah. It's even taught in schools. If you ask my 7 year old to write a digraph which makes the sound aah, he will write ar every time. Ah is much less common in English and can be pronounced a couple of ways."

We don't pronounce the h in ah any more than we pronounce the r in ar so there's little material difference between the two but we do use ar far more in English so when describing that sound, the default is "ar".

But why write "r" if you're not actually saying "r"?

I am saying r, as represented with the preceding vowel, in my accent. That is how I pronounce r before a consonant. It changes the vowel before it but is not a voiced r.

I would pronounce the r in camera and barn. And the r in giraffe and the r in platform. I'm Irish and say hiatch though

OkPedro, that’s because Irish accents are rhotic - you pronounce r before both consonants and vowels. I’m non-rhotic, so I pronounce the r in camera and giraffe, but not in barn or platform.

Seneca, I get that’s what’s being done (though I’d dispute the ‘slightly!). But it’s flipping tedious and ends up in identical pages of faux or non-faux confusion where are more direct and less passive aggressive ‘hey! Not all of us do the silent r thing you know!’ would be more effective and a hell of a lot less irritating.

But why write "r" if you're not actually saying "r"?

Because that's just how some words are?

How do you spell and pronounce the word "arse"?

"But it’s flipping tedious and ends up in identical pages of faux or non-faux confusion where are more direct and less passive aggressive ‘hey! Not all of us do the silent r thing you know!’ would be more effective and a hell of a lot less irritating."

Indeed, I think rather a lot of the 'confusion' is of the faux passive-aggressive kind. Either that or MN has an awful lot of people who live in a cave as a hermit and never watch telly....

Arse emphasis on the AR like a pirate
How do you say Arse?

I'm in the north of Scotland and sharn means farmyard manure. The stuff farmers get on their wellies. Stuff you shovel out of cowsheds.

Shaun like the sheep but Sharn is probably a better pronunciation

But why write "r" if you're not actually saying "r"? Why not just "ah" if that's what's actually being said?

Because the UK has multiple regional accents, some rhotic, some not, but (generally) only one accepted spelling of each word. Therefore people with non-rhotic accents will learn to read and write knowing that the words they pronounce caah and baahn are spelt car and barn.

How do you say Arse?

I don’t, I say erse

Haven’t read full thread.

Shan

Theres no R in the name.

HTH

Reading this thread again, I’m quite shocked how so many people don’t actually know how phonetics work. You don’t need to put an ‘r’ in Sian when spelling it out phonetically. It doesn’t have that sound (or the actual letter ‘r’ in it, so have no idea why people need to add it in regardless).

Sharn.
Welsh for Jane.