How do you pronounce Jhonas? Elite Prospects to the rescue

Elite Prospects have a new feature that lets you play a sound file to learn how to pronounce players’ names.  They made a video to show you how to use their new feature.

So to learn how you do say Jhonas, you can simply go to the Leafs team page and click on the audio links like you can see below.

This is a brand new feature, and not every name has a sound file attached.  We might have to remain in the dark on Nikita Zaitsev for a while. William Nylander hasn’t been done either, but there’s a workaround for that.  Just check out Alexander’s page and you can hear the lyrical Swedish way with the name Nylander which sounds nothing at all like how Jim Hughson shouts it out during a game.

Some of these pronunciation guides are more than mere information about one player, they are a window into an entire culture.  Click on Frederik Andersen.  Turn the volume up and try again.  Clear as Danish mud, wasn’t it?

Danes have a bit of a reputation for mumbling.  There are reports that they’ve gotten so bad they’ve turned on the subtitles in the movie theatres for Danish films because even the locals can’t understand the actors.  I personally think Danes sound like a Swede who’s just been to the dentist, but others will tell you that Danish is simply a fairly softly-spoken almost monotone language.  If you’ve ever listened to Andersen’s interviews in English, you can believe that.

This is him ecstatic after beating the Washington Capitals.

There are Marlies names you can hear as well as Leafs on Elite Prospects, but not many of them. You need to listen to Andreas Johnsson, though.

He used to be Andreas Johnson, now he’s Johnsson, and the best he’s every going to get is Yawnson as a pronunciation in Canada, but if he ever hears it in an NHL arena calling out a goal, it might be consolation enough.

Jhonas Enroth, on the other hand, has to be resigned to the English version of his name by now.

It’s a wonderful feature, and a lot of fun, but they really should reconsider using the Anglophone guy to do some of the French-Canadian names.