Didclaimer; I just want to make it clear; I'm not faulting anyone for getting it wrong. His name contains words that have a different meaning in English and his first name has an established English pronunciation. So this isn't meant to correct anyone, but as a Norwegian i figured I'd try to make a comprehensive explanation and resources on how to say his name for those who want to know.
Added some fun stuff at the bottom, look for "fun stuff" in all caps
First off, the easiest method; go to Google translate, paste this: Michael Brandsegg-Nygård, set it to Norwegian and click the little speaker icon to hear it.
My explanation and how to come "close enough" : Brand is an old way of saying Brann, and it means "Fire", so it's not the same as English, and it's pronounced more like Brawn. Egg is egg 🤷, put together my closest English version would be "Bronze-egg", just say it fast and together, like "Bronzegg".
Nygård separated into ny gård, means New farm/yard. And newguard is way off, I understand you're trying to say "gaard", but the double a is a substitute for Å, it's closest English word I can think of is "gourd", saying the D or making it silent is optional, both versions are correct, but if he said it himself as a east-norwegian I'd be pretty confident in saying it's a silent D. No real substitute for "ny", so closest would be "knee"
Finally, Michael, the easiest to explain how we say it, but probably the most different sounding. I'm gonna give context to how we say our vowels and order, so if thats uninteresting feel free to skip this paragraph. We have all the English vowel plus 3 (æøå) and one thing that's the same for all our vowels, and different from English is our vowels only have one sound. For instance A(ay) is just A(a), like mentioned before in the word "brawn" if you isolate the A sound, that's all we say. I'm not gonna explain all our vowels, but the ones used in his name are ponounced, in order: I(ee), A(we covered this) and E(isolate the first e in "celebrate"). And I'm gonna make a blanket statement that could be wrong, but I've been racking my brain and can't think of examples otherwise; we pronounce every vowel in the same order they appear.
So how to say his name, first part is easy, just say "mee", second half is just as easy, think of superman's real name and remove the first L, so "Ka(L)-El" : mee-ka-el
All together; mee-ka-el bronzegg knee-gourd
FUN STUFF and references:
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGebr7eKe/ interview with MBN, says he's had a lot of talks with Chicago, potential teams he'd like are Chicago, Detroit or Calgary, favorite team is Washington, favorite player is Ovi.
https://youtu.be/X9BfJSz1pus?si=OGcy9ip-GjBVHt3m this guy has a speech impediment and kinda slurs his speech(not judging, just saying), but he says brandsegg-nygård a couple seconds past 2:10
https://youtu.be/KkxyMIdJcco?si=ixBnTDxlECQ13eb- how to say the Y sound in Nygård if you wanna be really purist about it lol. It's the same in Norwegian as Swedish. Basically you know how your mouth forms a smile when you say "ee", hold that sound and form your mouth like you're about to suck on a big mcdonalds straw coming at your face in a 90 degree angle… Can't think of anything else that could be sucked like that (giggety), but purse your lips outwards, not inwards… Just watch the video, he explains it way better.
Hope this was enjoyable/educational/interesting and feel free to hit me with questions or clarifications if you spot mistakes. Have a great weekend coming up! Thanks for reading!
by Riztrain
5 Comments
This is fascinating. Just to help you out with explaining this in the future, the first ‘e’ in celebrate is a short vowel sound. So English speakers know vowels have a short and long sound. Like you mentioned ‘a’ as ‘ay’ that’s a long vowel sound. So next time you don’t even need example words. You can just say, ‘it’s pronounced short vowel e, or long vowel a”…like that 🙂 Thanks for the explanation. I’m an American living in Korea so languages have always fascinated me!
This the type of shit I hop on Reddit for
You’re wonderful for posting this I love it
Eh, I rewatched the interview, and I guess you can figure it out from what he says and the subtitles, but when asked which team he *wanted* to go to, he did also say “it’d be cool to get on an original 6 team”.
Probably obvious, just figured it add it anyway
*The pronunciation of his name will be determined by a drunk Don Cherry, and that’s all there is to it.*