József Attila

[ausermilar]

Hello!

Maybe the question is obvious but, why a lot of Hungarians (TV, radio, at the schools..) pronounce the full name of the national poet József Attila as "József Atíl-la", with the stress in the second sillable of "Attila" (as it were an Italian name, I mean), although there are two nice "T" and just one "L"?

Sometimes I've heard the József Át.tila, but rarely.

Could any of Árpád fiai help me?

Many thanks.

 

[Panceltic]

Let’s wait for native speakers, but in my experience some personal names are just stuck with archaic spellings, and this one seems to be one of them. Wiktionary gives the pronunciation as [ˈɒtilːɒ] (Atilla). As regards the place of the stress, there is another word where (to my ears) the stress is on the second syllable: vagyok.

 

[francisgranada]

... why a lot of Hungarians (TV, radio, at the schools..) pronounce the full name of the national poet József Attila as "József Atíl-la", with the stress in the second sillable .....

The stress, strictly speaking, is always on the first syllable, even if they pronounce it with double "LL".

.... there are two nice "T" and just one "L"?

I do pronounce it spontaneously with double "TT" and simple "L", so I may belong to the few natives that do not say "atilla". ....

I don't know the right answer to your question, but I suppose that the pronunciation of this word is influenced by words like szempilla, Csilla, villa, .... I.e. the ending -illa is probably much more typical or frequent in Hungarian than -ila.

However, this is an exception and in my personal opinion the correct pronunciation should be with double "TT" and simple "L".

 

[francisgranada]

... in my experience some personal names are just stuck with archaic spellings ....

This is true e.g. in case of old or historical surnames like Dessewffy, Szécheny, Zichy etc., but the orthography of these names can be satisfactorily explained. The pronunciation of Attila does not belong to this category, in my opinion.

 

[Zsanna]

I haven't found any particular explanation for the pronunciation only that the first name can also be spelt like this Atilla, the same way as the ornamented garnment (atilla) and that they are all (3 forms) pronounced the same way, as ausermilar described it. (I also pronounce it like this.)
Maybe the pronunciaton comes from or connected to this (older?) version of spelling.

 

[ausermilar]

The stress, strictly speaking, is always on the first syllable, even if they pronounce it with double "LL".

I do pronounce it spontaneously with double "TT" and simple "L", so I may belong to the few natives that do not say "atilla". ....

I don't know the right answer to your question, but I suppose that the pronunciation of this word is influenced by words like szempilla, Csilla, villa, .... I.e. the ending -illa is probably much more typical or frequent in Hungarian than -ila.

However, this is an exception and in my personal opinion the correct pronunciation should be with double "TT" and simple "L".

Maybe, because is much easier and poetical if Attila rhymes with Csilla! To me (as a foreigner) is much easier, but it doesn't matter! Thanks for the ideas.