How do you pronounce "Budapest"?
 

I saw a Rick Steves show this week where he kept pronouncing it "Buda-pesth". Is that right or does Rick need to get his teeth fixed?

Budapest...

Boo ~ as in Casper

da ~ as in 'duh'

pest ~ as in 'I don't want to be 'pest'ered, I want to go on vacaction.'

Man, AisleSeat, have we been pronouncing it wrong, lol?

((L)) Tiff

Tiff,
That is the way I have always heard it until this RS show where the 'pest" part came out with a lisp every time.

I believe in Hungarian one would say /-pesht/ (not /-pesth/). But I don't see any reason to say it that way in English.

The locals and travelers who think they are hip do pronounce it "Budapesht" but I don't bother to indulge in that pronounciation...

Andrew

I have an Hungarian friend who pronounces it budapesth.

The English is Byewdapest. No aspiration anywhere.

What it is in Hungarian is entirely a matter for the Hungarians.

There's no evidence this Steeves person speaks English anyway.

Budapest is fine. That is what most people call it. Hungarians call it Budapesht. But then, that's just us being Hungarian.

Sort of like "Ibiza" vs "Ibitha" which is what I always hear when in the UK.

I've always heard it pronounced Buddha-pest (i.e. "bu" as in "bull"), which strikes me as a reasonable Anglicisation.

Very simple if you speak Magyar (pronounced Mad-yar) like all the Hungarians and only the Hungarians, its BOOD-A-PESHT. What's dificult to pronounce a city as the locals do? For example Moscow is MOSKVA and not Mos-COW as CNN readers think, Beijing is BEY-JHING and not Peking, Taipei is TDAIBEI, etc etc. Any other exapmples?

AisleSeat, are you sure he said "-pesth" and not "pesht"?

I always pronounce it the American English way, as many people have already posted (the "u" sound appareantly not the same as the British Englush pronunciation). Though I've never been to Hungary, I thought the Hungarian pronunication was as Jahoulih, Joegri, Astigiano, SeaUrchin, Andrew and maybe a few others have described ("-pesht" sound at the end). Pronouncing it with a "-pesth" ending just sounds like a lisp.

>Beijing is BEY-JHING and not Peking, Taipei is TDAIBEI, etc etc. Any other exapmples? <

Leghorn is LI VOR NO

((I))

There is no way for any English speaker to say "pesth". What CAN you mean?

Pest-heh? pes-th?

Hungarians, in my recollection, pronounce this word as others on this board have indicated: A throaty BOO-da-pesht. (All Hungarian words accent the first syllable)

There are loads: Rome - Roma, Vienna - Wien, Munich - München, Florence - Firenze, Milan - Milano, Naples - Napoli, Genoa - Genova, Padua - Padova, Nuremberg - Nürnberg, Hanover - Hannover (hanó:fer), Antwerp - Antwerpen, Bruges (also French) - Brugge, Gothenburg - Göteborg (Yoetebori), Seville - Sevilla etc. General convention is to refer to them in the usual Anglicised versions. The same thing goes for other European languages, e.g. Germans say Rom, Mailand (Milan), Florenz, Brügge, Luxemburg; Dutch say Parijs and Italians say Monaco (for Munich as well as the Principality). Only when the city name is part of a proper noun, like the football team AS Roma, indigenous name is normally used (but see Bayern Munich). Saying München in a normal English conversation is seen as pedantic, except perhaps when both speaker and listener are German-speaking or have a close affinity with Germany.

cmt, I could be mistaken, but I thought seaurchin said she had a Hungarian friend would pronouced it "budapesth" as RSteves does. Maybe there is a dialect that accounts for the difference?
I have always heard it pronounced Budapesht, if in the mother tongue, although I just say it as "Boo-da-pest", since I don't speak Hungarian.
When I was about 9, my family hosted a young woman refugee from Hungary for 2 months, she said Budpesht.
lol, Tedgale is right, I have been trying to wrap my tongue around the "pesth" mentioned on the OP, and just can't do it!
Maybe RS has some sort of linguistic gift that I don't-who knew? Not me, cause I've only ever viewed part of one of his programs.

OOPs sorry- meant to say she said "Budapesht"- Obviously, I can't pronounce OR spell it!

bellastar, he does say it somewhere in between what I wrote and what you wrote, it is hard to write phonetically in English. I do know positively that he does not say -pest. His name is Bela like our old friend Bela Lugosi and he pronounces it BAY-la.

I will ask him when I see him tomorrow to say Budapest for me slowly, lol. (He was born and raised there)

Rick Steves pronunciation is ALWAYS messed up!

I was lmao when I heard him pronounce the German goodbye in the Vienna episode. It's written " Auf Wiedersehn" but pronounced more like ofveedazen. How did Rick Steves pronounce it? ouf weedeRseen !!

I can't imagine anyone saying budapesth, either, and thought that a mistake in transcription (it's hard to say).

Rick Steves often doesn't pronounce simple words in foreign languages correctly, I think he has a tin ear for languages, as some people do, no matter how hard they try. I think he also has a lisp, in general, even in English, so that may be the problem with Budapest.

I have studied Hungarian a very little bit for a trip there, and I learned that "s" is pronounced as "sh" -- budapesht. sz is pronounced as "s". It's the opposite of Polish or similar to the Czech s with a hacek over it (but they don't have haceks in Hungarian). I think that's like Serbian, also, as in Pristina or Milosevic. There is an exception when s is pronounced more like zh in Hungarian and that is before a voiced consonant, like b, as I recall. zs is also pronounced that way. The s is pronounced like the conductor George Solti's name, the sz as "s" is as in the composer's name Liszt.