Tsar or Czar???

[Mirc]

I've always had problems pronouncing Rs any other way than that. Last year I remember I was still slipping one or two in there in English conversation, though definitely not very often (maybe once ever 2-3 days of speaking in English-only), I'm not sure how I'm doing right now since it's been 3 months since I've been abroad. It's all a matter of what you're used to.

 

[TheLastOne36]

I'm neutral on the R's, being born a native english speaker i say my r's like in English, but my big influence on Polish and Spanish R's got me used to both ways.

 

[Souron]

"Czar" should be pronounced "tsar", but because the average news reported tends to "talk down to" what he/she perceives to be the average American, and because the average news reporter seems to be dumber than a box of rocks, they pronounce "czar" as "zar", so the average American thinks that is correct.

Yeah, but no American could pronounce the r correctly, so the fact that they mess up the first sound doesn't add much.

The r is not trilled like Spanish, as it is soft in this word. While some accents may features an r like the russian soft r, English itself does not use it. The closest I can think of is the r in reek, but that doesn't quite capture it, and there is no w sound to it.

 

[warpus]

No, but IMHO, the average news reporter thinks the average American is dumber than a box of rocks.

"Dumb this down so that 'Joe and Sally Sixpack' can understand it." (Why do they think Joe and Sally Sixpack can't understand it the way it really is?)


Of course, the point is that the average news reporter is dumber than a box of rocks, so they pronounce "czar" as "zar".


(Of course, this is all going way off-topic. )

Something I've been wondering about for a while

since when do average Americans have six packs?

 

[Sharwood]

Something I've been wondering about for a while

since when do average Americans have six packs?

Since a six-pack is a pack of six beers.

 

[ursteve]

The first sound in the word doesn't exist in English as a single letter, therefore "ts" is used is to make the correct sound. As for Czech being a "totally" different language than Russian because Czechs are Western Slavs and Russians are Eastern Slavs is a an true statement - the foundation for each is "Old Church Slavonic," which is the root for all Slavic languages, in the same way that Latin is the base for the Romance languages - Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The root for the word "Tsar" is from the Latin "Caesar." Please remember that the Roman Empire's capitol moved in the 4th century to Constantinople - the Eastern Rome. The early Russian rulers were fascinated with the idea that they were the inheritors to the "Roman Empire," and wished to impress this on their subjects by taking the title, "Emperor" from the Romans, by way of Constantinople. The Tsars thought of Moscow as the "Third Rome" . . .
My apologies for the length of the post, but inaccuracies that are consistently repeated in the West, for whatever reason, have done enough damage . . .

 

[Squonk]

Old Church Slavonic is not a root of all slavic languages at all, and the comparison to latin is silly. Old Church Slavonic was a church language based on a specific (macedonian) slavic dialect, located at the very margin of a slavic world, already stretching crom Peloponnesus to the northern edges of Europe. It was used in the orthodox slavic areas, and, for some time, in the Great Moravia.
It didn't give birth to all slavic languages, it merely infleunced several of them.

 

[amadeus]

"Zar"

 

[Traitorfish]

"Zar"

Not really, given that it butches the pronunciation of the actual word. There's a reason that British English prefers the phonetic "Tsar" over the literally transliterated "Czar", after all.

 

[AmnGleNathir]

Czar and Tsar are the same word but with different spelling, I personally like Tsar be cause it looks more like it is pronounced.