Talk:Quaoar (mythology)

confirmed pronunciation[edit]

I just called the Tongva nation to get the correct pronunciation of Quaoar. As best I can tell, it's IPA: [ˈqʷɑoɑr]. All three vowels are pronounced as true vowels (that is, the orthographic "o" isn't a [w]), but they "flow into each other". It's not really three syllables in the English sense, but more like three moras. This is what you hear in Japanese and Polynesian languages, in names like Aomori and Niue. Yes, it's hard to pronounce if you only know English, so what we really need are two pronunciations: a "correct" Tongva pronunciation which not many English speakers are going to be able to manage, and a "working" English pronunciation. (The Tongva woman I spoke to said that most people there get it wrong too, presumably because the Tongvas' first language is now English, and this is not a word people hear very often.)

"Tongva", by the way, is tong'-va in English. That is, it has the ng of song, not the ngg of Tonga. --kwami 20:52, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)