I thought Stupice was stoo-peech-ka. Who knows? No matter how you say it, it's hotter than blazes here and that thing is cranking out tomatoes anyway. Gotta love it.

Russ:
I decided to google it, and according to Garden Compass, it's a dialect thing.
"Depending on the dialect, the tomato, spelled Stupice is pronounced, Stoo-peach-ka, stoo-peach-eh, stoo-peach or stoo-picke."
Although I will say your pronunciation comes up most often on google, and mine hardly at all.
I'm glad you love it, though, because it's one of my favorite tomatoes because it really shines in the heat, and I get upset when it's "dissed" by those in cold climates who only grow it for its earliness and say it tastes bland. I guess Stupice's true flavor only comes out when it hits 100 degrees!

Carla in Sac

Ananas Noir (Ah NAH nahs NWAR) and Bisignano #2 that I got from Laurel this year and which I have no idea how to pronounce except for the #2 part. ;)

Course in my neck of the woods we could even be saying tomato wrong. Happy Ta-may-da to ya.

Dave

Dave -- Bisignano is probably "be seen YAH no" as far as Italians are concerned. The gn is pronounced like the Spanish ñ. [My mother studied Italian in college (as well as other Romance languages) and taught me some pronunciation; I will cheerfully bow to anyone's superior knowledge.]

But the "correct" pronunciation, as an American family name, might be something like "biss sig NAH no" (with either a broad a or a flat a in the third syllable). I had a friend in high school whose surname had a gn which was pronounced that way -- my mother did not approve!

How about Opalka? I pronounce it Oh PAL' ka but have no idea if I am correct.

TomNJ

I'm wondering how to pronounce Riesentraube...it's in my garden this year and I just refer to it as "German bunch of grapes."

I'm pretty sure that one is Ree zen trau ba.

TomNJ

Crnkovic Yugoslavian?

Schimmeig Stoo??

I'll weigh in on just a few of them.

I was the first to suggest that Stupice be pronounced as Stoo-peach-ka in my book and that information came from Kees Sahin, the former owner of Sahin Seeds in the Netherlands, now deceased, who knew Milan Sodomka who was the person who distributed several varieties, including Stupice, to the US.

There have been several threads here at GW about the pronunciation and no consensus was ever reached. In Czechkoslovakia the variety is known as Stupike and there are 4 strains, 2 for outdoor growing and 2 for what they call glasshouse growing.

Opalka is a variety I introduced and the pronunciation, from Carl Swidorski, my seed source, and the variety was passed down in his wife's family, is best represented as OH Poll-KA.

I also introduced Crnkovic Yugoslavian and Yasha Yugoslavian, seeds from Yasha Crnkovic a former colleague of mine, and he pronounces his name as KRINK-O- VICH

Hope that helps, so far.

Carolyn

I studied classical voice in college and so have had to learn to say most of the western European languages.

Italian:
Bisignano: bee-see-NYA-no (the NY is like the ni sound in "onion" or like the N~ sound in Spanish.)

German:
Riesentraube: REE-zehn-TROU-beh

Blondkopftchen? Coustralee? Jaune flammee? Constoluto Genovese? :-)

German:
Riesentraube: REE-zehn-TROU-beh

......as Tom in a post above yours also said, but had it been the variety Reisetomate, it would have been RYE ze toe mata. In German when there are two vowels together like that the pronunciation is dependent on the second of the two vowels. Danke. LOL

Blondkopftchen? Coustralee? Jaune flammee? Constoluto Genovese? :-)

BLOND kawpft chen

Coustralee; this one is a problem. I received the variety from a Frenchman in 1992 and that's the way he spelled it but I've been told that there is no "ou" in French, so what to do? I've been calling it KWAHS tra lee.

Jaune Flamme I also got from the same Frenchman in 1992 and it would be pronounced as JAWN flah may with a soft J. I'm having a hard time indiciating the pronunciation of the Jaune.

I do speak some French and German, but sometimes I find it hard to indicate how the variety names should be pronounced.

Constoluto Genovese? :-)

That should be Costoluto and is pronounced just as you see it, as maybe KAHS toe loo toe and the word means ribbed in Italian, that is a red ribbed tomato from Genoa, as in soft G....GEN oh veese.

Carolyn, as in CARE oh lin, LOL

Carolyn, there are words that have ou in French...like Coup! :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

I think you would say for Coustralee
Koo-strah-lee

Carolyn, there are words that have ou in French...like Coup! :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
I think you would say for Coustralee
Koo-strah-lee

****

You're right, but almost every time the variety name is brought up here the French language folks tell me otherwise.

So 'tis a coup d etat to know that Coustralee was NOT spelled incorrectly by the Frenchman, as others have implied, or that I couldn't read his writing. ( smile)

Carolyn

Blondkopfchen is misspelled. There should be an umlaut (two dots)over the "o". Since we don't commonly write with umlauts an "e" can be added after the "o", so "Blondkoepfchen". "Kopf" = "head", "Koepfchen" = diminutive of "head". "Blondkoepfchen" means literally " little blond headed one", which we don't say, so in colloquial English, "little blondie". It doesn't refer to either a girl or boy, could be either, but it might be more aptly appied to a girl. The "oe" or umlauted "o" is a sound we don't use in English. It's a rounded "a" sound.

Whoever told you that Coustralee was pronounced "KWAHS tra lee" and that there was no "ou" in French may not have your best interests at heart. And if no alarm bells went off in your head, you may be using the phrase "I do speak some French and German" a bit too liberally. Thought this was a funny-tomato-name contest, but if you want to turn it into a foreign-language snob-off, I'm 100% in.

Bonjour,
Jessica

The final e's in Coustralée would be pronounced like a long a. So Coo-strah-lay.

No "ou" in French? No French-speaking person would ever say that, because the word for "you" (plural/formal) is "Vous", pronounced "voo"!
So, yes, coo-stra-lay (lée as in entrée)
Maybe you misunderstood what they were referring to?

Carla in Sac

Whoever told you that Coustralee was pronounced "KWAHS tra lee" and that there was no "ou" in French may not have your best interests at heart. And if no alarm bells went off in your head, you may be using the phrase "I do speak some French and German" a bit too liberally. Thought this was a funny-tomato-name contest, but if you want to turn it into a foreign-language snob-off, I'm 100% in.

****

Jessica, if you reread what I wrote you'll see that no one told me how to pronounce Cuostralee and I said that was the way I pronounced it, but others here have been very helpful in helping all of us to pronounce it correctly.

No, no alarm bells went off in my head at all b'c I was wrong, as I've said.

Yes, I can carry on a conversation, limply in German, less so in French and no, I'm NOT a language snob at all as others here who know me well can attest to.

I took several years of German in college and then for my advanced degree I had to read and translate two languages into English and I chose French and German at the time. And the subject matter was science.

I've also traveled quite a bit in Europe and elsewhere and was able to make myself understood in areas where English was not spoken in both Germany and France.

I'm not turning this into a language snob-off as you called it and wasn't too pleased to see you make that accusation towards me. Folks at this site generally don't post such criticisms at others; I didn't check to see how long you had been at this site.

My only intention was to help where I could re pronunciation of some varieties mentioned and it's turned out that many that have been mentioned have been ones that I've introduced, first by listing them in the SSE YEarbook and from there they go out to various retail places.

Looking at some posts above I do think that your terminology could be applied to other posts as well.

But please can we go forward now, and not backward?

Thanks.

Carolyn

lol

Interesting discussions.

I know some German. " Blondkopfchen" is correct with an umlaut on "o". The sound then has no equivalent in English. alternative spelling is " Blondkoepfchen", with an "e" after "o", in lieu of umlaut.

Also in German all names always start with capital letter , anywhere in the sentence. Pronunciation and spelling of German words are very systematic and easy. Everything pronounced exactly as written and written exactly as pronounced.