<p>Harvard plays basketball in "Lavietes Pavilion." Does anyone know how to pronounce "Lavietes?"</p>
<p>Lah-vee-etts?</p>
<p>I'd have guessed La-vee-ETT-ees, but I asked this on Yahoo! Answers and one guy said it rhymes with diabetes. Ly-a-VEE-tees? It can't possibly - the letters just don't work that way! I've yet to hear the same pronunciation suggested twice.</p>
<p>Maybe the guy was one of those REALLLY old people that says it Die Uh Beet Us.</p>
<p>So the pavilion is Lah Vee Tus.</p>
<p>Lah vee ay tees, perhaps</p>
<p>After suggestions of La-vee-ETT-ees, Lah-vee-ETTS, Lah-VEE-Tus, Lah-vee-AY-tees, La-VIAY-tays, and La-VYE-tes, I finally just e-mailed the Sports Communications Director at Harvard. The answer is that none of the above are right - it's "La-VEE-tees."</p>
<p>Oh, Latin script orthography, you and your irregular ways...</p>
<p>Incidentally, gadad.....Are you from Georgia?</p>
<p>my friend and i recently had an argument about pronunciation of 'Porsche'... What are your thoughts on this... (man, i sound dumb ^^)</p>
<p>Collegehopefull - Yes, when I set up my username on CC I typed in GAdad and it all came out lowercase. How did all these other posters get capital letters?</p>
<p>Dare7 - You know, I think I call it a "Porsha" if that's all I'm referring to, but then if I add numbers, I think it becomes a "Porsh 911." How weird is that?!</p>
<p>I want to say it might be a formatting issue: Your join date is '04 (Holy antique, Batman!), as opposed to say, Dare7to7Dream's - 2008.</p>
<p>The older posts on CC (if you search back for them) look like they were made in a different thread module all together.....maybe CC just updated? I dunno.</p>
<p>See, Porsche is German, and they have the little aspiration thing at the end of sche, whether it's a suffix or not, so I default to my rule on the pronunciation of foreign loan words:</p>
<p>If the context you're saying the word in requires appropriate original pronunciation, do it.</p>
<p>(ex. "...And so Lech Wałęsa's actions at Gdańsk can be seen as representative of the rebellion against the trade policies of the Soviet Union that ...blah blah blah"
- Here, you would want to get his name right (along with the shipyard))</p>
<p>If you're just with friends, you'll probably sound pretentious if you suddenly sound like you were born and raised in the target country...
(ex. "Oh, yes, I'll have the Capelliiinniih PohmODorrrrrroh" "Does anyone want to hear about my trip to the 中原 province?")</p>
<p>Not that weird on the Porsche stuff, gadad.</p>
<p>For me it's always Por-sha Carrera, but only a Porsh Boxster.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input guys. So Por-sha, isn't it? I was right!
(My dream car right now is Porsche Carrera... it rocks!)</p>
<p>My dream car is a Trabant.</p>
<p>On one hand, it would be the ultimate Eff You to the East German collective...Looky here, capitalist pigs are buying your car for the sake of nifty ness and not necessity.</p>
<p>On the other hand, just look at them : <a href="http://www.veteranautocsodak.hu/kepek/trabant60121.jpg%5B/url%5D">http://www.veteranautocsodak.hu/kepek/trabant60121.jpg</a></p>
<p>Collegehopefull - You are a strange, strange young man . . . but very funny and original :) .</p>
<p>I had a roommate in college who insisted on pronouncing "Van Gogh" as "van gokh." He insisted that this was correct.</p>
<p>Well . . . he's probably right. The Wikipedia entry for van Gogh gives three different pronunciations for Dutch, British, and American speakers, and has an audio file for the Dutch pronunciation that sounds like "van Hoxxx", where my xxx is the sound one makes while gargling.</p>
<p>Why, thank you!</p>
<p>wow i didn't know that</p>
<p>In England we pronounce it "Van Goff". I say "Porsch" as well but the real German way is with the a sound on the end.</p>
<p>But to the real question, I have no idea about the Pavilion name.</p>
<p>I lived to many years in Germany not to put the last syllable on Porsche. It's porsh-uh. But the uh is very short and unaccented.</p>
<p>Lavietes? So many names are mispronounced by the people who have them. It's hard to be sure. If it is of French origin it should be La- vee- ett, but who knows how he pronounced it!</p>
<p>The ogh in Van Gogh should sound kind of like the och in loch. Sort of a cough/throat clearing noise and a short o sound (aw, not oa)</p>