UKH

I’m writing a book about working with Stanley Kubrick (particularly as music editor on The Shining) and something that has come up is the correct pronunciation of the composer Penderecki. On The Shining we always pronounced it ‘Penderesky', but someone has told me now that they think it should be said ‘Penderetsky’. I’m not at all convinced they’re right. It would be helpful if a Polish speaker could settle this once and for all.

Your friend is right, it should be pronounced Penderetsky. The 'c' in Polish is pronounced 'ts'.

(Disclosure - I'm not Polish myself, but I lived and worked in Warsaw for 5 years.)

Thanks.

Found you on IMDb. Cool !! 

Despite possibly appearing cryptic at first, Polish words are easy to pronounce: once you've learned the rules, the language is strictly phonetic (unlike English, for example.)

The grammar, on the other hand, is rather complex ...

Daft question, but if you're writing a book, where does pronunciation come into it.. 😉

I suppose the only answer I can give to that is that the author of a book needs to 'know this kind of thing', i.e. to know what he’s talking about, and not write difficult words without knowing how to pronounce them.

I´m amazed that it wasn´t a point of honour (or simple respect) back then to know how to pronounce the name of a great composer whose music you´re taking and mixing into your (brilliant) soundtrack. Even more amazed that you need to ask on a climbing forum, of all places (even though we are rather good at answering obscure questions which have nothing whatsoever to do with rock and its ascension). Wishing you success with the book!

PS I think it´s a very British thing - if you happen to know Matt Groom could you please tell him that Janja doesn´t come from Slovinnia, it´s Sloveeenia ... and even though he lives there, it´s not SHAMMony, it´s ShammonEE ... little rant over, roll on the dislikes

First, using UKC for such general questions tends to bring very prompt, helpful answers. And this has been a good example. I can’t think of any other forum like it, in that respect. Secondly, I think we presumed we were pronouncing Penderecki correctly then (because I’m fairly sure that was how SK himself pronounced it.) Thirdly, it’s just possible we did pronounce his name correctly then (in 1980) and, over the years, I’ve simply forgotten the correct pronunciation/have got into the habit of pronouncing it incorrectly. 43 years is a long time

Agree.

I'm also not Polish, but my company employed over a hundred poles and I paid careful attention to the pronunciation of names. 

I am not Polish but Czech and our languages are close. Penderetsky is right.

Write it to google translator and you will hear it correctly

You must have heard Górecki pronounced correctly on R3 or Classic FM recently, as he's such a staple these days.

Yes, but I hadn’t particularly thought about the spelling of the name.