Everyone's favorite segment of our weekly podcast is "How to Say with Brian J," the part of the show where Brian teaches us how to say a player's name. The segment began when we three co-hosts got frustrated at how NBC Sports pronounced Kevin de Bruyne's name. Dave reached out to Lee Dixon, NBC Sports' color analyst, on Twitter to get answers.
To our surprise, Dixon replied to Dave. He claimed that the pronunciation they were using came straight from the NBC Sports Pronunciation Guide. We still thought it was wrong, and now we had a pronunciation guide that we could ridicule.
Of course, that is just what we did. Not only, though, did we ridicule the real guide, we decided to write our own alternative guide. The FSFC Pronunciation Guide comes straight from our hilarious segment on our podcast. For your reading pleasure, here are the names we have just added to our growing, pseudo-serious resource:
Aaron Mooy (aaron moy) - One of Brian's favorite How to Say segments ever because it took everyone to Australia, and his name just looks like could be complicated because it has two o's. It's just plain old Moy.
Anthony Knockaert (an-tuh-nee (k)nock-airt) - You'll probably hear people pronounce the "k" at the beginning of Knockaert, but if you're not French, we won't fault you for just saying "nock-art."
Florian Lejeune (FLOOR-ee-an le-JOON) - Florian's 2017-18 season has been marred by injury a good bit, but we're always happy to learn more about Newcastle, even when it's a player not named Jack Colback.
Steve Mounie (steve moo-nee-ay) - Huddersfield's one-time club-record signing lit up the Premier League score sheet in the first match of the season, which forced us to officially say his name. Thankfully, it's pretty straightforward.
Sead Kolasinac (say-ahd coal-ah-SHEE-nits) - Even though you'll probably hear people say "coal-ass-in-ack," the better Bosnian pronunciation is the way we have it. Don't believe the lies.
Zanka (zayn-kuh) - Mathias Jorgensen, the Huddersfield defender, is nicknamed Zanka, which originates from the Doug E. Doug character Sanka from the famous Disney movie Cool Runnings.
Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting (air-ick max-im SHOOP-oh moh-ting) - It seems like the German pronunciation makes it more like CHOOP-oh; French makes it SHOOP-oh. Our recommendation: pick one and stick with it (but probably defer to the French pronunciation).
Pascal Gross (pass-cal grohs) - There is no trick or challenge to Pascal's name pronunciation. The only issue is when the "ss" at the end of Gross is represented as a scharfes. Even then, is doesn't change the pronunciation.
Richarlison (ri-SHAR-li-son) - As much as we'd like his name to be Rich Arlison, like Men in Blazers has said, the truth is that it's just one name, and that "ch" is pronounced like an "sh" in there.
Niki Maenpaa (nick-kee MY-en-pah) - As much as we like talking about Finland, we never would have guessed we would get to by way of Brighton's backup goalkeeper. Thankfully, the number of vowels in his name is not reflective of the difficulty of its pronunciation.
Mame Biram Diouf (mahm bih-ram dyoof) - Whether you prefer saying "the Diouf is on fire!" or "Diouf, there it is," Mame is a podcast favorite because he doesn't have an accent on any of the letters in his name.
Rajiv van la Parra (rah-JEEV vahn luh pah-ruh) - Even if it's Dutch, Rajiv's name is pretty straightforward. Just think of Jeeves the famous butler and/or defunct search engine, and you'll be just fine.
Guochan Lai (gwo-chwan lie) - Possibly the only person's name we've featured on our podcast out of pure hatred -- that is, Scott's pure hatred of Tony Pulis. Guochan fired Tony, so naturally, we learned his name.
Marvin Zeegelaar (mar-vin ZAY-hel-arr) - The 'g' in Zeegelaar has got to come from the back of your throat.
Florent Hadergjonaj (floor-ent HAD-er-joe-nigh) - Until international courts hear our appeals to make it illegal to have a 'g' and a 'j' beside each other in a person's name, we'll have to be okay with Hadergjonaj.
Cenk Tosun (jenk-toe-SOON) - Whether he saves Everton's season or not, we are thankful that Cenk was able to teach us something about weak Turkish consonants.
