Pronouncing 'Budapest'
Ok so this is a boring topic, it's one that bothers people and it bugs me, so this is a cathartic post and I hope never to have to talk about this again.
If you are an English speaker the correct pronunciation of 'Budapest' is, 'Budapest'. Simple!
No silly attempts at lisping your way to the end of the word.
If you are Hungarian (like I have to tell you) 'Budapest' is pronounced 'Boo-do-peshd' (with the 'o' in 'do' the same as in the English word 'hot'). The ending is definately more of a 'd' than a 't', this is because Hungarians don't aspirate their plosives anything like as much as English speakers do (and this is one of the easiest give-aways for even the best non-native Hungarian speaker). So, to the untrained ear, the end result is that their [d] voiced alveolar plosive sounds more like a [Ʈ] voiceless retroflex plosive.
If you want to pronounce 'Budapest' the Hungarian way I advise learning enough Hungarian to fit is into a sentence and that way you won't sound pretentious.
So there you have it.
n.b. f you're an expert in these things I'd love to learn more about the differences in the English-Hungarian sound system and how to improve my pronunciation. Any help appreciated.
