Thanks for signing up! Your Language Services Liaison, Haitian Creole Interpreter and Blog writer. Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks. So what does this mean for the Greek freak? Register Word of the day - in your inbox every day, 2023 HowToPronounce. Listen and learn how to say Giannis Antetokounmpo correctly (NBA basketball players, Milwaukee Bucks) with Julien, \"how do you pronounce\" free pronunciation audio/video tutorials.Learn how to say wine words in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, and many other languages with Julien Miquel and his pronunciation tutorials! Bucks general manager Jon Horst was another guest on Connaughton's radiothon to raise funds for COVID-19 relief. "Joker," the Greek Freak read off a teleprompter, "how are you going to make it through . pauline hanson dancing with the stars; just jerk dance members; what happens if a teacher gets a dui Giannis Antetokounmpo's Nickname Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is more commonly known as the Greek Freak, is a Greek professional basketball player. You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Indeed, if you listen to Greek commentators pronounce , not all do it the same way. The n is pronounced like the n in songstep. Hopefully Shaquille ONeal will figure out how to say Antetokounmpo very soon if he hasnt already. You can try again. A nasal consonant is basically one that you pronounce by letting some air flow through your nose. Chicago Bulls color commentator Stacey King tried and failed spectacularly with the five syllables, ending up with something to the effect of Anagarunbo. Marv Alberts no less than a dozen attempts at the 2017 All-Star Game ranged from Anchootekembo to Antetokooko. Kevin Hart, in charge of introductions at last years All-Star Game, didnt even bother to try. Giannis is a Greek name, and the correct way to pronounce it is "YAH-nis". Can you pronounce Antetokounmpo? So we end up shortening and mispronouncing our own names to accommodate other people, losing pieces of our heritage in the process (see the Dear Abby advice columnists recent recommendation that future parents eschew ethnic names altogether). Giannis may be an All-Star captain, but @SHAQ still can't pronounce his name The NBA All-Star Draft is coming up next at 7pm ET on @NBAonTNT pic.twitter.com/LE73n1KDp7. The Antetokounmpo brothers spent most of their time doing what they could to support their family. Giannis was born on December 6, 1994, in Athens, Greece.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[580,400],'stuffsure_com-medrectangle-3','ezslot_2',179,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-stuffsure_com-medrectangle-3-0'); Giannis Antetokounmpo (YAH-nis ah-deh-toh-KOON-boh; Greek: , IPA: [anis adetokumbo]), born December 6, 1994) is a Greek professional basketball player for the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Well, to answer this, we need to have a little lesson in historical Greek phonology and scribal practices. He is 6 feet 11 inches tall, and his nickname is the Greek Freak. Latest on Milwaukee Bucks power forward Giannis Antetokounmpo including news, stats, videos, highlights and more on ESPN You can try again. You can contribute this audio pronunciation of GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO to HowToPronounce dictionary. Note: Symbols in [brackets] represent IPA characters. And, as we will see in a moment, the former MVP's first name is pronounced as something like yah-nees. The nickname was given to him because of his unique set of skills for a player his size, and his African heritage. Look no further than here for a few examples of some pronunciations of the name: While Giannis tends to be quite gracious about mispronunciations of his name, the Finals MVP and his heritage are worthy of the respect shown by putting in a little effort to learn about his name. Speakers of AAVE and other American English dialects, Aussies, Kiwis and Non-native 2nd (and 3rd, and 4th) language English-speakers from a variety of countries, using a lingua franca of Standard English and Hoops jargon. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. Keep up. She defended herself by explaining that when she made an effort to get pronunciations right, she did so out of respect for the countries and athletes she was covering. Sign up for notifications from Insider! He began playing organized basketball when he was just 12 years old. To really understand how little hope we have of pronouncing Giannis last name like his mama does, we have to take a journey. Coming to America from Greece as a teenager was not always the smoothest transition for Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. We find a similar situation with the first syllable of Antetokounmpo. Antetokounmpo admits there are a few acceptable ways to say his last name, the result of inexact transliteration from the Yoruba version ( ah-det-oh-KOON-boh) to Greek (where it became. For example, if you say "t" "t" "t", you don't feel your vocal chords vibrate, but if you say "d" "d" "d", you do. In the case of Giannis extremely Greek first name, the letter is softened by the sound that comes after. Most settled on pronouncing the name the way it is spelled which, by the way, is a challenge in and of itself. The name Giannis is actually the Greek version of the name John. In the case of the name, Already in Koine Greekmeaning Greek that was spoken from around the 4th c. BCE to the 4th c. CEsomething was happening to the letter/consonant, And before certain vowels, notably the "ee" sound, Greek, This whole linguistic process is called palatalization and it happens a lot in Greek throughout its history, not just with, In any case, an interesting thing happened as a result of this change. So, there you have it. . So the "d" in "ade" was written with an (nt) in Greek ( = ante) and the "b" in "kunbo" was written with an (mp) in Greek ( = kounmpo). Now in ancient Greek, in certain contexts, the nasals (m) and (n) started to undergo weakening. The sad reality is that even fame doesnt guarantee respect. "I just went on the court one day and I had like a crazy dunk or a crazy block and after that everyone started calling me the Greek Freak. As for the first name, even that is a point of contention as most feel it is pronounced "Yonnis," and others say it "Yonnie." According to Ruocco, both are correct, with the former used when. Adetokunbo transliterated into Greek becomes Antetokounmpo. The digraph is used to represent that sound in foreign names and words. Check out these Famous cuisines around the World, Phonetic spelling of GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO, Examples of GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO in a sentence. Then, add the word apple with a soft a sound. His last name is a little more complicated. So whenAntetokounmpo was featured on the big stage during the 2016-17 NBA playoffs, some were perplexed when they heard the correct pronunciation for the first time. Unfortunately, this device does not support voice recording, Click the record button again to finish recording. A random rearrangement of the letters in the name (anagram) will give Iegnasnni. I'm trying to think when I'm with my family, I'm with my family. Manage Settings These conventions eventually became regularised so that in Greek today, a foreign "d" sound is normally spelled with (nt) and a foreign "b" sound is normally spelled with (mp). The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Emerging NBA superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo was finally formally introduced to much of the sporting world on Saturday when the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Toronto Raptors on the opening day of the . At age 18, he came to the United States to play college basketball. Giannis Antetokounmpos nickname is a play on his last name. Unfortunately, this browser does not support voice recording. In the middle of the stars breakout season a few years later, Fox Sports Wisconsin did a similar experiment with Bucks fans, who did only marginally better. So dominant that on an island with the unstoppable force that is the Bucks MVP, Royce O'Neale did what the Nets should have done all game long. His name is pronounced YAH-nis ah-deh-toh-KOON-poh. Growing up poor, his family struggled until NBA scouts discovered his talent. This basically means that instead of pronouncing them by stopping the airflow in your mouth as "b" "g" "d", they came to be pronounced by letting air flow through a gap in the mouth as "v" "" "": "v" like English "vote", "" as in the word "ugh", and "" as in the English word "the". Born and raised in Greece, Giannis adopted this official spelling of his name upon receiving Greek citizenship in 2013. Congrats! Now, linguistically, this just explains the history and the spelling. The same thing happened with the name Giannis. Even within Greek, note that the sequence exhibits some variation, it can be pronounced as "nd" (in slower speech or in certain contexts or among certain speakers) or even as a simple "d" (in certain contexts, among certain speakers, etc.). He welcomed Antetokounmpo to the court with His last name can make your breath stink and your mouth dry, proffered a few exaggerated, jokey attempts, and then simply introduced him as Giannis. "The most important thing is you cannot lose yourself in it. My first name means a ton to me, he said. Already in Koine Greekmeaning Greek that was spoken from around the 4th c. BCE to the 4th c. CEsomething was happening to the letter/consonant gamma , which often corresponds to English "g". Giannis Yoruba father Charles passed on the name Adetokunbo, which according to one reputable source, means the crown has returned from overseas. Well, thanks to the weakening of the nasal consonants, there were now two-letter sequences that could (at least theoretically) be used to represent the stop sounds. Can you pronounce Giannis last name? Kenny Smith dared his Inside the NBA co-host Shaquille ONeal last week, during TNTs coverage of the 2019 All-Star Game draft. Shaq took the bait: Giannis Ante-ka-noon-po. It is no surprise that a name like Giannis Antetokounmpo would be difficult to pronounce by many commentators in the sports world. Because Greek has no "y" sound, just the vowel iota , which is pronounced like English "ee", the sequence gamma-iota , which would be transliterated in English as "gi", eventually came to be used to transcribe a "y" sound in other languages. His parents are Nigerian immigrants who moved to Greece in the 1980s. Learn more here. "I have complete confidence that if there's a way for us to return to basketball, return to play, in a healthy and safe manner, for our players and for the public and people that would be involved, that our league will figure out how to do it," Horst said. Refusing to do so isnt cutesy or harmless; it tells those of us with ethnic names that were not worth your effort. As a matter of fact, both Gianni and Giannis are the equivalent of Johnny (being nicknames of Giovanni and Ioannes respectively, both of which are equivalent to John). What type of offensive play has Antetokounmpo failed to showcase at this stage of his remarkably young basketball career? There are two particular phenomena in the history of the Greek language that we need to understand to explain the spelling of adetokunbo in Greek: (i) the change of stop consonants to fricatives and (ii) nasal weakening. In the case of the name yoanan or yoanna, this meant getting rid of the guttural sound and adding a Greek ending -es. Giannis played for the Greek youth national team, and he was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 2013 NBA draft. We can see this illustrated in English with the words "rag" and "rage". Both his parents are from Nigeria; his mother is Igbo and his father Yoruba (see here). But now that he is an NBA superstar, more people are trying to say his real name, and many people are still getting it wrong. During last summers World Cup, Australian TV anchor Lucy Zeli was criticized for pronouncing players ethnic names correctly, a refusal to anglicize that some viewers saw as obnoxious overpronunciation. Giannis played for the Greek youth national team, and he was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks in the first round of the 2013 NBA draft. Your email address will not be published. Congrats! 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