Sound of a Name

[gothwalk]

There's a (fairly minor) character in my Age of Legends game, whose name I apparently can't spell in English. His name is somewhere between: Auan, Avan and Awan. The Irish-style Abhan comes close, but doesn;t hit it either. I suspect only I can hear the difference, but can anyone suggest a language with another variant on the v/w/u sound?

Comments

[salith.livejournal.com]

My guess would be German, but I don't really know any other languages :(

[salith.livejournal.com]

As a side-note, if you can get a copy of and of the Lord of the Rings books, he delves a lot into the various sounds of accented characters knicked from languages like that in the appendices :)

[two-star.livejournal.com]

In some dialects of Spanish the v sound is distinguished from the b sound by not quite closing the lips. (In others, the b and v are both pronounced something like an English b.) That's not 'w'-like, but you could get that by using the 'ua' diphthong.

¿Avuan?

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

Good luck finding one; languages that distinguish even [w] and [v] to the extent that word differences are based on them are rare enough, and that English does can be blamed firmly on the Normans :-)

Actually, quite often with French speakers, /v/ will end up pronounced [w] where it's easier to do that, because it's rarely ambiguous in a language with few /w/ sounds. (I'm sure you've heard "Voilà" said as "wollaah" at least once.) And that [w] is very close to a [v]; pronounce /v/ a few times, having your teeth touch your lower lip a little less every time. Their [w] sound is this [v], but with the teeth almost touching the lower lip rather than barely doing so. I suspect other languages with /v/ and minimal use of /w/ will have similar sounds.

[slovobooks.livejournal.com]

I feel I should be able to help here, but sadly nothing comes to mind...

[rockpaperaxe.livejournal.com]

There isn't always a direct correlation between spelling and pronunciation. Quite often, you can't get the exact pronunciation of a word without hearing it said first.

So, basically you can spell it whatever way you like, and decide yourself how it's pronounced. My advice - throw a 'h' in there somewhere, like "Auvhan" or something. That way people don't automatically assume they know how the name is pronounced and then ask.

Failing that - use the phonetic alphabet?

[saint-magenta.livejournal.com]

sounds celtic... maybe welsh?

(reading the mabinogen, else i wouldn't have dared respond)