How the heck do you pronounce "Yossarian"?

Help! I'm so confused!



Seriously. Catch-22 is one of my favorite books, but not even after reading it 6 times could I figure it out how do you pronounce Yossarian's name.

Can someone enlighten me, please?

 

"Yo sarr ee an", would be my guess.

Think of it as "Yo!" Then "Saar"(which is an industrial part of Germany, and the name 'Iain' as in McDiarmid.

 

Yes, but the accent is on which syllable? That's what I wanted to know.

 

But you haven't written an accent. Probably need a French keyboard.

 

Anywhere you want it to go.

 

I've done a websearch for it under Google. 24,100 entries. There's no accent, you've written it correctly.

 

*slaps forehead* I meant stress. (that's because I'm Slovak and in Slovak the words "stress" and "accent" mean the same thing)

The stress is on which syllable?

 

The accent is on "sar."

 

I'm so lost, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it.

 

Ah yes, the stress.

"Sar" I'd say, but then I'm English. I'd posit that that's a more English way of pronouncing it, whereas "YOsarrian" would sound more American.

Consider the word "Laboratory"

In English pronunciation: "Luh bOr a tree".

American: "LAB ruh tOr ee"

Same with the JC's very own Jedi_Satimber. (Word up, JSat, if you spot this).

I call him Suh tIm buh, but a friend of mine who's American pronounces it "SAh tim bur".

Depends whether you want to follow English or American phonetics really. ?

 

Funny, when I say it out aloud, I pronounce it YossarIan, with "Yos" being the softer of the two stresses.

But since it's an American book, I guess it should be pronounced in an American way.

 

Not necessarily. Look, we bloody Yanks have a nasty habit of mispronouncing foreign names left and right, especially Polish and German ones. Pronouncing it "YosSARian" came pretty naturally to me.

 

Yossarian! What the hell kind of name is that anyway?

 

It's Yossarian's name.

 

Sebulba, Yossarian is an American, I would think he prounounces it in a more American fashion.

-P!-

 

I say i yoss-ARYY-enn

 

@ gator & Latorski

Well, I suppose everyone pronounces it as he/she wants...

 

"I call him Suh tIm buh, but a friend of mine who's American pronounces it "SAh tim bur"."

I'm American, and I pronounce it "kreep-ee faht gheye."

 

Yo - rhymes with 'hello'
Sare - ryhmes with 'snare' (stressed)
Ian - as in McKellan

 

Yoss ari an. Just like it's spelled.