大象传媒

How to say: Montenegro

17:48 UK time, Monday, 11 September 2006

For some weeks the expert of the 大象传媒 Pronunciation Unit have been advising readers of The Editors blog on how to say some of the trickier words and names in the news.

We're glad to welcome them to the Monitor, their new home. Here Lena Olausson explains how to say Montenegro, where there were elections over the weekend.

"The usual pronunciation in English is mon-ti-NEEG-roh. This is the pronunciation listed first in our English pronouncing dictionaries, and the one recommended by the Embassy of Serbia and Montenegro when we consulted them earlier this year. An alternative, mon-ti-NEG-roh, is also quite common, but not the native pronunciation, as some think. The Montenegrin name is Crna Gora, pronounced TSUR-naa GORR-uh."

(For a guide to our phonetic pronunciations, click here. For more on the Pronunciation Unit, click here.)

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Comments

At 09:27 AM on 12 Sep 2006, Ed Loach wrote:
Is it not possible to add a link to a recording of the word whose pronunciation is being described? Or in this case the three different pronunciations in bold?
At 09:37 AM on 12 Sep 2006, John Airey wrote:
An interesting fact about Serbia and Montenegro is that the International Standards organisation had been unable to assign a two letter country code for their country. MS is taken by Montserrat, and SM is taken by San Marino. It was proposed to use CS, but that had previously been used by Czechoslovakia.

Now they've separated the problem has gone away.
At 10:25 AM on 12 Sep 2006, Chris wrote:
Apparently "monte negro" was Venetian for "crna gora" ("black mountain". (I had assumed it was Spanish, but was puzzled as to why we would have adopted the Spanish name.) So I guess the pronunciation would have been more like MON-teh-NEG-roh once.
At 02:51 PM on 12 Sep 2006, Liam wrote:
And how would one pronounce "Montenegrin"? Would it be mon-ti-NEG-rin, or mon-ti-NEEG-rin?
Also nice to see pronunciation of the week on the Magazine Monitor, a particularly apt home for it, I believe.
At 04:19 PM on 12 Sep 2006, Lucy Jones wrote:
Amusingly (but only just), the two-letter code for Serbia and Montenegro in intellectual property circles is YU. They count as a single country as their laws haven't diverged yet, and patent-y types aren't that fussed about political turmoil and putting Soviet past behind you.

More amusingly, an acquaintance is unamused by her new Serbian passport, which says she's Montenegran. Very Very Unamused.
At 07:57 PM on 12 Sep 2006, Alexandra wrote:
I am surprised the embassy of Serbia and Montenegro recommended pronouncing the latter country's name with a long "e", as all the native Serbo-Croatian (or rather now Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian -- Montenegrans have yet to get around to claiming their own language, but I have no doubt they will) speakers I know use it as Mont-ti-neh-gro prononciation. Actually, even as someone with only a passing knowledge of the language (whatever you choose to call it these days) I can assure you it is pleasantly phonetic (with j's being pronounced similar to English y's and vowels pronounced short as per usual (except in American English) I am puzzled why anyone should find this word difficult to pronounce at all.
At 09:00 PM on 12 Sep 2006, John Airey wrote:
Sorry to correct you Lucy Jones but YU is the old two letter code for Yugoslavia. See I recall receiving an email that the ISO 3166 maintenance agency retracted the proposal to use CS, but I can't find it right now. Oddly, CS is in the official list at
At 04:38 PM on 14 Sep 2006, Heidi Webster-Thomas wrote:
Please can you display how to say Camila Batmanghelidjh.

Thanks,

Heidi
At 12:29 PM on 18 Sep 2006, Richard S wrote:
So to sum up.. the usual way this word is pronounced is (shock horror)the correct way to pronounce it.. thanks for clearing that thorny one up for us.