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Interviews

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I removed two interviews from external links:

If there's some notable info there, please feel free to add it to the article with proper citation.

Primaler (talk) 15:21, 5 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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Pronunciation of Iwan

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My rudimentary Cymraeg skills inform me that an "i" at the front of a word is iotated. So would his name not be "Yoo-an" or roughly how we'd say Ewan? Peter Greenwell (talk) 04:21, 17 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have a sophisticated means of answering that, but the simple answer is no; Iwan is not pronounced the same of Ewan. I wouldn't even say roughly so. (In fact, even the "an" gets pronounced differently). Nuclare (talk) 00:57, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

English pronunciation

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On English Wikipedia, wouldn't it also benefit us to have an English pronunciation of an English speaker's name? I assume there must be a fairly standard one. My impression from a couple video interviews is this: /ˈiːwɑːn ˈreɪ.ɒn/. Others' thoughts? Wolfdog (talk) 20:04, 23 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

For the sake of this talk page (I'm not advocating this type of spelling be put on the page itself), could you post a layman's English translated approximation of your suggestion (/ˈiːwɑːn ˈreɪ.ɒn/)? I just want to be sure I understand how you are hearing that. For example, in an interview with Rheon, the New York Times spelled their translation of his name for pronunciation-sake as "OO-wan re-OHN" (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/arts/television/ramsay-bolton-of-game-of-thrones-is-the-most-hated-man-on-tv.html). Technically, I'd dispute starting the second syllable with an English "w" sound (an "oo" is the "w" of the name!), but I get where they're coming from with that spelling and it's fine. I also think they put the emphasis on the wrong syllable in Rheon, so their version has issues; I'm just putting it out there as a starting point. I'm bad at IPA interpretation, but my sense is you are suggesting the opening sound is a long vowel (basically "ee") alone as a syllable. Am I wrong there? If that is what you are suggesting, than I would disagree with that version. Much like the NYT spelling, many of Rheon's non-Welsh co-stars (Alfie Allen, Sophie Turner, Douglas Booth, for example) seem to simplify his first name by treating the "iw" as basically just an "oo" (the Welsh vowel "w" of Iwan is an "oo" sound, although as part of a trickier to pronounce diphthong). I'm not exactly sure what I'm suggesting here, but I do think it needs to be thought through carefully because I don't think there is a fully agreed, standard form of the name in English. And I do think there are incorrect ways of doing it. At the very least, my view is that anything that treats the opening syllable as a single, long vowel is incorrect, so no "EE-wan", no "EYE-wan", for example. Those aren't good interpretations of it into English. There's part of me that thinks just having the link as is presently to Welsh IPA might be best, but that's just one piece of my feeling on this. I agree--at least in theory--that having an English pronunciation could be helpful Nuclare (talk) 00:11, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
My own crack at it using the English IPA help (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/English) would be more like this: /ˈɪuːɑːn ˈrɛɔːn/. I don't present this as a done deal. I'm just taking a stab at it to perhaps better illustrate where our differences are. Nuclare (talk) 01:53, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I did hear it pronounced with the first name as you said here: /ˈuːɑːn ˈriːɒn/. I'm not quickly finding other YouTube clips with his name pronounced, so not sure if we can do anything unless we find more and hear a consistent pattern (or better yet, of course, some credible-source pronunciation). Wolfdog (talk) 02:06, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The transcription I wrote above is more in line with the New York Times example you gave (though I'm confused what to make of their spelling "OHN") as well as the YouTube example I found. I appreciate that your crack at transcribing it is clearly trying to approximate the Welsh-language pronunciation, though I'm not sure if that's that best strategy for handling it. For example /ɛɔː/ is not a naturally-occurring English sequence; however, /eɪɔː/ and /iːɔː/ are actual possibilities (appearing, e.g., in say all /seɪɔːl/ and see all /siːɔːl/). Also, based on spelling (that is, the short O, which corresponds to /ɒ/ in lot, on, pond, gods, etc.), I'm guessing what you transcribe as /ɔː/ is more likely to be processed by English speakers as /ɒ/. (The NYT spelling "OHN" seems to imply /oʊn/, a homophone with own, but then why wouldn't the NYT just write that? Is it to avoid confusion with the sound "ow" /aʊ/?) I, on the other hand, am also biased by what sounds like an American pronunciation on YouTube, since for nearly all Americans, the sounds [ɔ] and [ɒ] are very commonly processed as a single phoneme (sometimes the two merging even further with [ɑ]). So plenty of problems to tackle here.... Wolfdog (talk) 02:18, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
It's not so much that I want to copy the Welsh pronunciation as that I'm not fully comfortable that a standard English pronunciation exists, so I'm not sure there's a better alternative. Anything we come up with could be dismissed as random or maybe even a personal preference version. Without a standard English version, mirroring the Welsh pronunciation (which is how Iwan Rheon himself usually says his own name) but using the English IPA notation is maybe the best we can do???
The Comic Con clip you posted does the "oo" as the start of the first name, but parts of the rest of his pronunciation are just way off so it's only so helpful. Here's Sophie Turner saying basically "oo" as the opening sound of Iwan at 0:26: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBsaRL91dNM&t=23s). Alfie Allen does something similar here at 02:48 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHAkP21levA&t=112s). So maybe there's a pattern at least amongst some people who know this particular Iwan, but than again it's still a small number of examples. For example, I'm not sure precisely what these guys (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSLMZEkF5W8) are saying nor how to represent it. I'm not trying to be a rejecter here: I wish there was a good, agreed way of doing this! But I am trying to weigh the value of any given version we'd come up with?? Nuclare (talk) 12:38, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Just to add. I found the Douglas Booth "oo" version. The name discussion starts at about 01:17:06 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx4zKoiHk7c&t=4732s). This is one of the more interesting clips on this issue! The Americans struggle endlessly, Iwan is effortlessly Welsh about it, and Douglas Booth says it basically OO-ahn. LOL. I'm not sure if that helps or hurts the quest here, but there we go... Nuclare (talk) 13:20, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nuclare: We can't transcribe it /ˈɪuːɑːn ˈrɛɔːn/. Both /ɪuː/ and /ɛɔː/ are sequences that violate English phonotactics. The closest sequences to the Welsh diphthong /ɪu/ and the sequence /ɛɔ/ are /iːw/ and /eɪɒ/ or /eɪoʊ/.
The closest approximation of the Welsh pronunciation I can think of is /ˈiːwæn ˈreɪɒn/ (for UK English) and perhaps /ˈiːwɑːn ˈreɪoʊn/ for US English. The use of /æ/ vs. /ɑː/ in loanwords is a regular difference between UK and US English. The length mark shouldn't be read literally (as in German), it's just there out of tradition and because all transcriptions linking to Help:IPA/English should adhere to that guide, which does use the length marks. The so-called "long vowels" have variable length in English and so they're more accurately called "tense" or "free" (as opposed to "lax" and "checked"). Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:32, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Most of these YouTube pronunciations are British, and the closest middle-ground I can come to between them all is actually fairly consistent: /ˈɪwæn ˈreɪɒn/ or perhaps /ˈuː(w)æn ˈreɪɒn/. (The uncertainty for me with that first phoneme comes from the fact that young-ish London-ish Brits tend to have a fronted /uː/ vowel, which according to the Estuary English page can have allophones as diverse as [ʏː], [ɪ̝ː], [ʉː], [ɨː], [ʉ̠ː], [u̟ː], [ɘɵ], [ɘʏ], [ʏɨ] and [ʊu]). I agree with Kbb2 that an American would most definitely say that first name with /ɑː/ rather than /æ/, but I'm not sure if we need to get into those dialectal details here. Wolfdog (talk) 15:12, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: If you link to them here I'll tell you how I'd transcribe the way they approximate Welsh /ɪu/.
If we have to choose between dialects then we should transcribe the most common UK version. Rheon is a Brit. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:17, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly my point -- he's a Brit; let's do it the British way. When I was talking about the YouTube clips, I just meant the ones Nuclare provided above. Some of them just give his first name. Wolfdog (talk) 15:22, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: OK. Here's how I hear it: [1] /ˈɪu̯æn/, [2] /ˈuːæn/, [3] /ˈɪu̯æn/ or /ˈiːwæn/, possibly both and [4]: here the host (?) says /ˈeɪwɑːn reɪˈɑːn/. Rheon says it the Welsh way, and I think he's being a bit of a show-off by doing that.
I think that the most reasonable transcription would be UK: /ˈjuːæn ˈreɪɒn/, with the UK label before it. We assume the merger of /juː/ and /ɪu/ (this distinction is retained in e.g. Wales) on Help:IPA/English, so whoever says this name with /ɪu/ is also likely to say /dɪu/ for dew. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 15:44, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This works for me, even though you and I have never quite heard the /j/ and it makes me slightly cringe. But I understand the phonotactic reasons for using /j/ instead of /ɪ/. Any reason you'd be against a /w/ to separate the vowels? Wolfdog (talk) 15:58, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: It's either that or /ˈiːwæn/. Our transcriptions are diaphonemic, /juː/ also stands for /ɪu/ in dialects without the merger. In /ˈjuːæn/, a /w/ makes no sense from either historical (English) or etymological (Welsh) viewpoint.
I guess we can only blame Rheon for not coming up with an English approximation that would work for him and sticking to it. /ˈjuːæn/ is probably the most reasonable approximation he can hope for. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 16:19, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Or we can just not put any English approximation. Can someone explain in plain speak why the "j" at the start? Is there a simple way of explaining what you mean in practical terms? As a total layman, I would interpret that to mean pronouncing it with a "y" at the beginning which just seems wrong. Nuclare (talk) 18:59, 9 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nuclare, I think your assumption about /j/ is correct. It's the first sound in the words Jarlsberg (cheese), yes, and yard. I really love the idea of an English approximation/pronunciation for reader-friendliness but agree there's something odd about /j/. I also get Kbb2's explanation of our Wikipedia IPA system assuming that /juː/ also stands for /ɪu/ in dialects without the merger, but I'm just not sure if that's mostly what we've heard from the clips. By the way, Kbb2, in the same order of YouTube videos as you listed, here's what I hear (phonemically): /uːæn/, /uːæn/, /ˈiːwæn/, and I won't even bother with the host's uncertain pronunciation. Wolfdog (talk) 22:38, 10 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How do you hear Douglas Booth's pronunciation(s)? He was actually the point of my posting the clip rather than the uncertain host. Whatever the differences amongst all these clips, I don't hear any of them opening with a /j/. Which one do you hear as /ˈiːwæn/? Do you mean Robert Sheehan? I'm not sure I hear it that way. Rather than /i:/, to me it sounds more like something close to 'ew', as in "Ew! Yuck!" Nuclare (talk) 02:38, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Nuclare: yes, I was referring to /ˈiːwæn/ in Sheehan's pronunciation. I can barely hear Booth, but I think it's something like [ˈɪwan] (and Rheon's pronunciation a couple seconds before certainly uses the [ɪ] vowel, being in the full Welsh accent of course). But Nuclare brings up an interesting point that the word ew is perhaps the closest eye-spelling we've come to. Kbb2, is it really true that the WP's diaphonemic IPA system would represent the word ew as /juː/?? Wolfdog (talk) 10:36, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: Yes, it would. [ɪu] is differentiated from [juː] by a tiny minority of speakers (yod-dropping and yod-coalescence aside, let's pretend those phenomena don't exist for a moment). See Great Vowel Shift#Overall changes - the merger of these two happened more than 300 years ago. Welsh English preserves phonemic /ɪu/ for the same reason it has rather close onsets of /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ (in the vicinity of [ə~ʌ]) - all of these are archaic features of English that aren't present anymore in any major dialect of English. For hundreds of millions of speakers of English, /ɪu/ = /juː/ and /aɪ, aʊ/ = [aɪ, aʊ] or something similar (with an open starting point - Canadian Raising can be dismissed as an allophonic phenomenon with no obvious relation to Welsh English [əɪ, əʊ].)
Now, there are Welsh people who pronounce /ɪu/ the same as /juː/ when they speak English, just as there are Welsh people who pronounce the wide closing diphthongs as actual [aɪ, aʊ] or even [ɑɪ, aʊ] (the latter under obvious influence of Estuary English).
Just for a moment, let's drop the length marks, so that we write /ɑː/ etc. with ⟨ɑ⟩. Let's also pretend that the English diphthongs written /eɪ, oʊ, ɔɪ, aɪ, aʊ/ are actually /ɛj, ɔw, ɔj, ɑj, ɑw/, so that they're made up of /ɛ, ɔ, ɑ/ + /j/ or /w/. A separate diphthong in dew can be transcribed /ɪw/ for those speakers who actually use it. Can you see how close is that /ɪw/ to /ju/, as in use? There's only two things that separate the two, namely the fact that in /ɪw/ the first sound is a vowel, whereas in /ju/, /j/ is a consonant and /u/ is a vowel. But they sound very close to each other: [j] is a shortened [ɪ] (ok, it's not exactly like that as [j] is more close and front, more like /i/, but it's pretty damn close), whereas [w] is a shortened /u/. LPD transcribes Iwan as /ˈjuːən/, with a weak vowel in the second syllable. We can transcribe it /ˈjuːæn/, if he insist on the second syllable being strong (which is fine). But it takes ignorance (wilful or otherwise) of the differences between Welsh and English and Welsh English vs. other varieties of English to expect people to say /ˈɪuæn/ for his first name. /ˈjuːæn/ or /ˈiːwæn/ is the best he can hope for.
Just for a clarification: Rheon doesn't pronounce his name in Welsh English but in Welsh. He pronounces the surname [ˈr̥ɛɔn], not [ˈɹeɪɒn], [ˈɹeːɒn], etc. The fact that his first name can sound the same in Welsh English as it does in Welsh is a coincidence.
And again, you're mishearing what I transcribed as [ɪu]. I don't think any Brit pronounces /uː/ like that, it's too extreme a diphthong. There are backing variants of /uː/ but they're [ʉu] or [ɨu] (or just a closing [ʊu], as in traditional RP), not [ɪu]. If she really said /ˈuːæn/, she'd say something like [ˈɨuæn ~ ˈʉuæn ~ ˈʊuæn]. The variants with front onset are all monophthongal or closing diphthongs, rather than backing. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:38, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know what 90% of the above means. In practical terms, does this mean you are saying Iwan in English needs to be/should be pronounced the same way the name Ewan is generally pronounced? (At least the Iw and Ew parts of it? Basically YOU for Ew.). If so, I find that hugely dubious. Whatever the technical issues involved, put a /j/ at the start and interpreting Iwan as Ewan is likely what the practical effect will be. Can you give ANY more practical sense of what the spelling you say is best actually means in a straightforward way? And none of this is about what one EXPECTS people to say. I find that an odd comment. I've kept looking for clips and can't find a single person associated with this particular Iwan who says his name with a /j/ at the start. The most do some form of "oo". The most common variant seems to be whether they fully say the "an" of Iwan or clip it into something closer to "in". And, to repeat, we don't actually have to put anything up as an English pronunciation. Non-English names don't have to have English pronunciations, if there aren't sourced and agreed ones. Nuclare (talk) 12:27, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nuclare: I've already explained the difference between the Welsh/Welsh English [ɪu] and general English [juː] which explains the presence of the initial [j]. What's unclear about it? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:38, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
How one says it is what is unclear. In other words, the only thing that matters is what is unclear. I assure you about 99% of Wiki readers would have no idea what you've said above. Nuclare (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Nuclare: If you really didn't understand anything (or close to nothing) then I think that you didn't try hard enough. See Help:IPA/English, Great vowel shift and English phonology for help. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 12:56, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't ask you about the Great vowel shift or the broad scope of English phonology. I was asking you to be more practical and specific in explaining what the pronunciation you said is the only reasonable one will mean letter by letter to your average Wiki reader. The surname spelling you added on the page has a guide when hoovered over. There's nothing unreasonable asking you to lay out here what this would be in a practical way so that I'm sure there's no misunderstanding of what is being suggested. Details about historic vowel shifts don't in themselves tell us how one particular individual's name necessarily is or has to be pronounced. Nuclare (talk) 02:23, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
For ew or eww, Dictionary.com gives /ɪu/; Lexico gives /ˈɪəuː/ and /ˈiːuː/; Cambridge gives /ˈiːuː/ (both UK and US); and Longman gives /ˈiːuː/. Can we use one of these for Rheon's first name? Wolfdog (talk) 10:58, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Wolfdog: We'd already transcribe /ˈɪuæn/ by writing /ˈjuːæn/. /ˈiːuːæn/ is worse than either /ˈjuːæn/ or /ˈiːwæn/, and /ˈɪəuːæn/ (!!) is phonemically impossible. Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 11:38, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

How about writing Welsh English: /ˈɪwæn ˈreɪɒn/? Would other editors be happy with that? Kbb2 (ex. Mr KEBAB) (talk) 13:19, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose so. If you're talking about me being the one mishearing things, I'm still quite sure I hear Sophie Turner, for example, saying /ˈuːwæn/; I've already demonstrated how Brits can certainly have very front-starting diphthongal pronunciations of /uː/. Anyway, I'm fine with the latest transcription above. (Ha, also a diaphonemic pronunciation of ew as /juː/ is patently laughable! Certainly [juː] is distinguishable from [iː(ː)u] or [ɪ(ː)u] to both Americans and Brits, though I admit this is probably a one-word exception to the general do-dew merger pattern which I understand. Even so, ew and you certainly don't merge in any accents I know or study! But hey, I guess in not representing any one system, the diaphonemic system sometimes misses both!) Wolfdog (talk) 22:53, 11 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
All I know is the more I'm reading all this the more I wish we'd leave just the Welsh pronunciation. For what it's worth, Welsh people when speaking English say the name Iwan different ways, in my experience. It's hard not to get the feeling there's improvising going on here. People associated with this individual seem to always be trying to mirror the Welsh pronunciation, sure with varying levels of success, but that's what their efforts seem to be derived from, not from some English way of approaching the name. We all seem to agree the Welsh pronunciation is how he says his own name. Nuclare (talk) 02:23, 12 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
By all this logic, we might as well add an English IPA for Ioan Gruffudd's name as well. Unless there is a sourced and valid English IPA for Iwan Rheon's name present (or which is in common use among English speakers), I think its better to just leave it with the Welsh pronunciation (in any case the Welsh IPA link has English approximations for most of the sounds except for those which aren't present in English e.g. the Welsh Ll) because English pronunciations of Welsh names can vary a lot and are quite inconsistent. And my personal opinion is that its better to encourage the correct and original pronunciations (whether English speakers can pronounce it or not) rather than incorrect or inconsistent ones. Broman178 (talk) 13:31, 13 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Jeez. From a North Walian perspective it pronounced as thus: Take the 'i' from 'fit' and you've got the I in Iwan. With Rheon, the Rh is a breathy short rolled 'r', kind of like hhrrreon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.145.93 (talk) 21:38, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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