Alexandra Ebel
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8191-1372 
Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg
Abteilung Sprechwissenschaft und Phonetik, Halle (Saale), Deutschland

Robert Skoczek
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1495-7116 
Akademia Ekonomiczno-Humanistyczna w Warszawie, Warschau, Polen

https://doi.org/10.4467/K7478.47/22.23.17726

On the Germanisation of the pronunciation of Polish names

Abstract
Broadcast speakers frequently have to pronounce names of foreign origin in their everyday work. Mostly these are anthroponyms of celebrities or toponyms in international news. Often, they have to pronounce names from many different languages of foreign origin within one newscast. This means they have to make a special cognitive and articulatory effort because of unfamiliar accent patterns and phonemes which do not exist in the German phonological system, as well as unknown connections and distributions of speech sounds. Pronunciation codes such as the “Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch” (Krech et al., 2009) or the “Duden Aussprachewörterbuch” (Kleiner et al., 2015) give information on codified standard pronunciation. In addition, they make suggestions for the phonetic Germanization of words of foreign origin. Especially non-German names are challenging in the codification process. This is because of the differences between nomina appellativa and nomina propria in meaning and designation as well as in phonetics. So, pronunciation codes should find a sensitive balance between a pronunciation close to the original on one hand and convergence with German pronunciation laws on the other hand. Polish nomina propria are difficult to pronounce for German speakers because of atypical consonant connections and some xenophones. There is a need for empirically based Germanization recommendations.

Keywords
standard pronunciation, Germanization of foreign names, pronunciation codification