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?

No-one's asking you to introduce a superfluous letter or to affect a Welsh accent.

In order: Ar is a way of phonetically transcribing the sound, that happens to only be effective for some particular parts of the English speaking world. I quite agree that it is actively misleading to anyone who
hails from a region where they do pronounce all R's, but this doesn't mean the original writer is mispronouncing it.

Secondly, having a go at unfamiliar sounds your own language doesn't have isn't affecting an accent. It's called pronouncing the letters that are actually there.

I'm struggling to understand how 'Lorna' would sound with the R being pronounced .

drfoxtrot
Do you mean without the R?

I'm struggling to understand how 'Lorna' would sound with the R being pronounced confused.

The name Lorna comes from the novel 'Lorna Doone' which is set in Exmoor (where they have a rhotic accent) and is thought to have been derived from the Scottish Lorne (also has a rhotic accent). So you should be pronouncing the 'r'.

The r in English words like barn isn’t silent - it’s a digraph which is two letters making a single sound. The r isn’t pronounced as such but the a and the r when together make an ‘ah’ sound. Some English accents (mainly those in the south east) pronounce words with a single ‘a’ as an ‘ah’ eg bath, castle, (it sounds posh😀) I suppose you could say they add an invisible r after the a, but most Of England pronounces these with a short a. This isn’t what English speakers are doing with Sian though- it’s just how it is said and not optional- Shan is just wrong!

I knew a Sian pronounced Shan, never heard it said sharn.

I also know a Lorna, pronounced Lorn-a (Lorn rhymes with born).

drfoxtrot I thought your comment was a typo
In my accent, how I was taught in school and how my children have been taught is that AR makes an arrrr sound not an AH sound

So when there is an OR in a word I pronounce it orrrr which gives me Lorrrna
How many pages have there been of people explaining that in their accent ar is pronounced ah
Now it's turned round ffs

Well, fair enough, Pedro. If there's one thing that should be taken away from this thread, it's how hard it is to 'hear' any pronunciation you're not accustomed to when you see a bunch of letters on the page you've learnt to read another way!

I'm struggling to understand how 'Lorna' would sound with the R being pronounced

I’m confused.

Hen Dahn sarf we say it law-na. I'm currently trying to say it with an R right now, and it's hard. I sound like the work experience kid on a pirate ship!

Lawna for me too.

I sound equally as ridiculous trying to say it without an R to be fair JamieVardysHavingAParty

I don’t think it’s right or wrong, just different accents make words sound different.

Be bloody boring if we all sounded the same

If I try to say Lorna without the R, I sound like I'm trying to do an impression of the Hitcher from the Mighty Boosh... Aaaahm a cock-naaaay.

I'm not a cockney.

It would be Lawna in received pronunciation.

Can we agree to disagree on how my name is said regarding the R but mostly agree that Si-yan/Seeyan is wrong!?
Siân

Secondly, having a go at unfamiliar sounds your own language doesn't have isn't affecting an accent. It's called pronouncing the letters that are actually there.

But we've been discussing people pronouncing letters that aren't there, and now we're onto how to say Lorna, not pronouncing letters that are there!

Phewrrrrrrrrr!

Specifically, with you, seeing we're discussing the short-a vs the ah-sound. Siân specifically has a little hat on (not the technical term) to denote that it has an ah sound. I think substituting a short-a sound in place of it, as if that diacritical mark wasn't there, is at least as grievous an offence as transcribing â with ar, tbh.

I've even taken a photograph of the pronunciation guide in one of my Welsh dictionaries, for Pete's sake!

tinytemper66 Probably! FWIW, I'll go to the mats with you against anyone who tries to say there's a voiced r in it!

ethel have a look on you tube and listen to how an Irish person might say Lorna. We don't sound like pirates

JamieVardy 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

I've been talking about the extra, but invisible and apparently silent, R that seems to make perfect sense to the English, but no sense at all to pretty much the rest of the English speaking world.

Oh behalf of 25 million Australians I’d like to remind you that we exist. Along with New Zealanders, Anglophone South Africans, speakers of Malaysians and Singaporean English, and a bunch of other English speakers (including millions in the US.)

Sharnn

Can we agree to disagree on how my name is said regarding the R

Nobody is disagreeing on how it's pronounced. They just write that pronunciation differently.

It IS pronounced Sharn
It IS pronounced Shahn
It IS pronounced Shaan
It IS pronounced Siân
It IS pronounced Shan

Vive la difference.