Me, an American, trying to pronounce Ljubljana and Ptuj before finding out that “J” in Slovenian is pronounced as “Y” in English:

20 comments

  1. I always find it hilarious when English speakers assume that letters in other languages work like in English, which has very very weird and non-standard pronunciations of the Latin alphabet.

  8. I really want to hear how americans pronounce “Ljubljana ” when they use hard J instead of Y for pronunciation.

  11. In personal experience foreigners had more problems saying Ptuj than Ljubljana. Had a lot success teaching them saying “Ptuj” right way while using word “fuj”
    •`_´•

  14. pffff amateur move. Ljubljana has several vowels.

    try this: ČMRLJ. 🤗

    Yes, it’s a real world. for a cute lill furry butt – a bumblebee.

  16. Yeah it’s always a trip trying to teach my American friends how to pronounce Slovenian names properly. Usually I just tell them to pronounce stuff like Ljubljana as “Lublana” or else they start calling it some shit like “Ludgubliyana”. Same goes for pronouncing my name, if I don’t tell people to just pretend the j isn’t there they call me “Andredge” or even “Anderedge”.

    On the one hand as a Slovenian-American who grew up learning both languages simultaneously, I understand why it’s hard to pronounce. However, on the other hand, Slovenia is not the only country to pronounce J as a Y (basically all of Scandinavia does this) so it shouldn’t be that much of surprise. When I see a J in a non-anglican word I am usually able to figure out how it’s pronounced based what dialect the word seems to be from.

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