The digraph is used to represent that sound in foreign names and words. Giannis Antetokounmpo's Nickname Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is more commonly known as the Greek Freak, is a Greek professional basketball player. 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. We explain why the change occurred. Rams defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh (en-DOM-uh-ken SOO) said in a radio interview last spring that hed started going by Suh rather than Ndamukong because he was tired of hearing his first name get botched. 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. synergy rv transport pay rate; stephen randolph todd. Congrats! At this point, theres no excuse not to know his name. NOW WATCH: How basketball players get turned into video game avatars for NBA 2K. So, we can relax. Basketball has long been a testament to the idea that there is strength and value in diverse teams. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Hardly a perfect solution, since typically represents and entirely different sound in English. "Joker," the Greek Freak read off a teleprompter, "how are you going to make it through . Crowdsourced audio pronunciation dictionary for 89 languages, with meanings, synonyms, sentence usages, translations and much more. Is that right, my brother?. Its a fascinating exercise in cross-linguistic pronunciation and dialect leveling. Sure, sometimes letters are silent, or certain consonant combinations are tricky. Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of the best basketball players in the world. The young man from Athens, Greece is one of the most exciting players in the NBA. Coming to America from Greece as a teenager was not always the smoothest transition for Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo. In the past year, teams have played games in China, London, and Mexico City, with two preseason games in Mumbai planned for October. At the same time, his name has been met with a frustrating flippancy, as if those many letters are an excuse for people not to have learned it at all. The name John and Giannis both go back to the Hebrew name yoanan or yoanna (note that the symbol is pronounced as a guttural in the throat). It is no surprise that a name like Giannis Antetokounmpo would be difficult to pronounce by many commentators in the sports world. But among the Frank Ntilikinas, Zydrunas Ilgauskases and Nemanja Bjelicas, one name stands apart. Your email address will not be published. He can handle the ball, shoot from anywhere on the court, and drive to the basket with ease. 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. In Ancient Greek, you just spelled it with an iota . At 611 he has the size of a traditional center, but the skills of a guard. For example, the Greek word for goodbye, adio, is spelled in Greek as (antio). Over time, two developments occurred. For now. Well, given the fact that his Yoruba name has two stop sounds "d" and "b", each of these had to be represented in Greek with a two-letter sequence. So how did yoanan eventually become Giannis? anukah? Giannis Antetokounmpo has already been on the radar of NBA fans for several years, thanks to his crazy highlights and catchy nickname, The Greek Freak. A champion, activist and one of the most dominant players of his . Bucks keep good vibe going, minus Lopez bros. We recommend you to try Safari. Fast forward to 2021 and Giannis has signed the most lucrative contract in NBA history - a five-year deal worth $228.2m (170.1m). Please All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. You have earned {{app.voicePoint}} points. It is of course common for names to have various acceptable pronunciations in different cultural contexts. Sometimes when you're the MVP, you're the leader of the team, you've got to do a photo shoot and all that, you lose yourself, and whenever I'm with my family, I'm myself.". We can see this illustrated in English with the words rag and rage. Register or post as a guest, GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO should be in sentence. To learn more about the Greek spelling system, click here. Historical Greek Phonology & the Greek Freak, Image by Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA - Giannis Antetokounmpo, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73758747, Although Giannis was born in Athens, Greece, he is of Nigerian descent. During the playoffs, Ruocco was a guest on ESPN's "The Dan Le Batard Show," where he explained why he knows his pronunciation is correct, how he learned the name and the keys to saying it right. A passion for languages has led to a career facilitating communication between languages and between cultures. The Quarterback Conundrum at the Very Top of the NFL Draft, Aaron Rodgers Darkness Retreat Took Place in a Room Equipped With, Uh, Lights, How the PGA Tour Is Beating Back Its Saudi Revolt, The Unprecedented Collapse of a College Basketball Powerhouse. Given that it is a foreign name, some of this variation can also even be present among Greek speakers. Many European languages feature multiple pronunciations for the letter <g>. Seems like your pronunciation of GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO is not correct. Register Manage Settings Giannis grew up in the Athens neighborhood of Sepolia. How do you pronounce Giannis Antetokounmpo's last name? Giannis Antetokounmpo is one of the best basketball players in the world. Subscribe to learn and pronounce a new word each day! 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). Its really that simple. Giannis Antetokounmpo joins Malika Andrews on NBA Today to discuss being called The Greek Freak, how he views himself and more. The result was the following transformation: yoanan/yoanna became (in English letters: ioannes). Keep up. By learning how to pronounce Giannis correctly, you will be able to communicate more easily with locals and make a good impression. Both his parents are from Nigeria; his mother is Igbo and his father Yoruba (see here). We immediately encounter an issue in pronouncing the very first letter in Giannis Antetokounmpo. At age 18, he came to the United States to play college basketball. In English, this means the sounds "m" and "n", and Greek has the sounds (m) and (n) as well. He is currently playing for the Milwaukee Bucks of the National Basketball Association (NBA). 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. Giannis Antetokounmpo: Should he win Defensive Player of the Year. Those of us with long ethnic names get it. In a 2013 interview, Giannis revealed that he hadn't started playing basketball until 2008, five years prior. This resulted in a pronunciation like yah-nees. But according to ESPN's Ryan Ruocco, in the. 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". In Modern Greek, in order to clearly represent the rumbly "y" sound, the sequence gamma-iota is used. As the NBAs reigning Most Valuable Player, Antetokounmpo is one of the sports most prominent players. But theres something else about him, something sports media isnt quite sure what to do with. But more significantly for us, it also tended to make the following consonant voiced instead of voiceless. This difference in pronunciation is no doubt a cause for confusion. 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). Stay up to date with what you want to know. On the portni SOS portal, we are touching on a completely new topic - spelling, which is closely . 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. 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. The name Giannis comes from the Greek word for "dew", which is "". He is the older brother of two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo as well as Kostas Antetokounmpo and Alex . Pronunciation of GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO with 20 audio pronunciations 14 ratings 13 ratings 13 ratings 11 ratings 6 ratings Show more Voices Record the pronunciation of this word in your own voice and play it to listen to how you have pronounced it. That's why ancient Greek has a word like iatros for doctor, but Modern Greek spells it as giatros. We recommend you to try Safari. 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. He is 6 feet 11 inches (2.11 m) tall and plays at the small forward and power forward positions.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'stuffsure_com-box-4','ezslot_3',180,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-stuffsure_com-box-4-0'); Giannis Antetokounmpo was born in Greece to Nigerian parents. Subscribe to learn and pronounce a new word each day! Giannis Antetokounmpo is pronounced YAH-nis ah-deh-toh-KOON-boh in Greek. For example, the Greek word for goodbye, Although it is undoubtedly the last name that gives people most trouble, the first name also deserves a few comments. Can you pronounce this word better or pronounce in different accent or variation ? First, the Greek letter , which originally sounded like "ey" in English hey (but without the "y"), came to be pronounced like "ee" as in English see. The nickname was given to him because of his unique set of skills for a player his size, and his African heritage. Learn GIANNIS ANTETOKOUNMPO pronunciation with video Popular collections Italian However, the Greek soft G (represented as [] in IPA) is not quite the same as the English soft G (represented as [d]). To this day, the word is pronounced in Greek as pe(n)de. He was born on December 6, 1994, in Athens, Greece making him 28 years old as of 2022. Bucks general manager Jon Horst was another guest on Connaughton's radiothon to raise funds for COVID-19 relief. Typically, this is because they were originally pronounced the same in all contexts, but the sound changed or softened due to certain surrounding sound. "Like, there's so many things that you're going to have in front of you that you've got to do, but you've just got to be able to balance your personal life with the Greek Freak life. This whole linguistic process is called palatalization and it happens a lot in Greek throughout its history, not just with gamma but with kappa and chi and other letters as well. You just say the letter G like you would in the English word go, then say YAH-nis. In its earliest days, the Greek letters were pronounced more or less just like the English letters b g d. However, in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, these sounds started to become "fricativized". 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.). 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. Is Giannis a boy or girl name? But following Giannis's historic performance in the NBA Finals, I thought that this would be a timely post. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. 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 an-tet-oh-KOON-poh). - 8:16 PM Dave Early . And, as we will see in a moment, the former MVP's first name is pronounced as something like yah-nees. The Alphabet Man himself: Giannis Antetokounmpo. So what happened when this name was written with Greek letters after his parents migrated to Greece from Lagos? The k is pronounced like the k in kick. Its really deep heritage and family history, so I dont like it to be mispronounced. Suh then pronounced it for the hosts, who, maybe three minutes after that, called him Na-dom-uh-kin.. Unfortunately, this device does not support voice recording, Click the record button again to finish recording. Please try again. Giannis Antetokounmpo, original name Giannis Adetokunbo, nickname Greek Freak, (born December 6, 1994, Athens, Greece), Greek professional basketball player who led the Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA to a championship in 2021. So it stuck by me, I love it and it's a cool nickname.". The last pitfall is the fact that in American English, when the letter appears between 2 vowels (in certain contexts), we pronounce it as a tap-consonant [], while most other languages, including Greek and Yoruba it always represents the sound [t]. 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how to pronounce giannis antetokounmpo in greek