English speakers use a modern version of the Latin alphabet, but most people who don’t speak another language call it the “English” alphabet. Just about every letter in English exists in other languages.
Serb uses a different alphabet, so does Bulgarian. Does the Polish alphabet count as Latin? It has so many new letters, it’s almost like Vietnamese alphabet. Or perhaps how Japanese was adopted from Chinese.
Anyway, one of the most phonetic alphabets ever devised, perhaps the most scientific alphabet used in natural communication, is the Korean alphabet Hangeul. It’s not currently used in a lot of languages, but Hangeul originally had more sounds. (English also originally had more sounds, when it used elements of the Scandinavian adaptation of the Latin alphabet.)
The subtitles in the Interferences festival will be in English, Romanian and Hungarian, for the most part. So, unfortunately, we probably won’t see a lot of Hangeul. But as the players perform an adaptation of a European text, we might hear some of the ways names and words change when they cross cultures.
Most languages do not have exact sounds. The “s” in Portuguese, German and other languages sounds differently depending on what letters are around it and what part of the word it’s in. In Vasco da Gama, the s is like ș in Romanian, approximately a “sh” sound. In between Portuguese vowels, s can sound like z, and in Brazilian surnames sometimes the s is changed into a z. (Brazil is spelled “Brasil” in Portuguese, but the middle consonant is still pronounced somewhat like a z.) At the beginning of a word, the S is Portuguese is closer to the S in English or Romanian.
I hear that Japanese and Spanish versions of ‘s’ lie in a different place on the s-ș-th spectrum. Or is it the ș-th-s spectrume? Or ș-s-th?
What does this have to do with Hangeul? Well, when you learn the letters in the Korean alphabet, you sometimes learn the English equivalent. But, if you listen to the letter’s name, you hear how that letter is pronounced at the beginning and end of the word. That is why they have two syllable names for the letters in Hangeul.
There are spectrums for different sounds. g-k-kk. d-t. p-b. The Dutch heb sounds a bit like hep. Depeneding on where the b is in a word, it sounds different.
And, when you translate a name to a new language, you are going to lose some information. Like take Arabic names. The Libyan dynasty Karamali was once spelled Caramali, and has also been spelled Qaramali. These are all attempts to try and accurately represent the Arabic sounds that do not quite match up in the English (or French or Italian) alphabet. The same goes for the more recent leader of Libya, Gadafi. Or, is it Qadafi? Or are there two d’s? I have seen different spellings for the same man over my lifetime from different sources.
Now, since I am not an expert in Arabic, or in Libyan Arabic, (and perhaps Caramali name came from Turkish and Gadafi from some other ethnic group), I am not going to go into more detail there.
Even closer languages, like French, are spelled differently. And when Romanian names are written in English, sometimes we try to preserve the pronunication even when the language doesn’t have the sounds. Like Brâncuși. Brancuzi? And Racoviță. Racovitza? I’ve seen and heard many interpretations that tell me that people didn’t know or just can’t pronounce the original.
Chuck Norris, I hear, is called Suki Nori in Indonesia.
So, when sounds do not exist in modern Korean, they might not be pronounced by the actors. Just as English actors butcher the name of Julius Caesar, Ghenghis Khan, and almost every Frenchman who ever lived.
When we are trying to learn Korean, or Romanian, or English, we need to let go of the “what sound is this in my language” hat. The first step is just listening, and knowing that some sounds your language doesn’t have, and some sounds the other language doesn’t have. Sometimes you have a sound that is in between two sounds, and sometimes you have a sound that changes depending upon where it is in the word.
Most of the best plays in the Interferences festival have been sold out, but the Hungarian theatre is a nice theatre, and I would recommend going if you have time.
There are also basketball games going on, if that’s more your thing. I won’t even attempt to pronounce the name of the players from all the different countries.