How To Pronounce "De Bruijn"?

Question

[Daniel Standage]

De Bruijn graphs have become a popular of late for solving genome assembly problems. However, I'm not sure if I've ever heard "de Bruijn" pronounced correctly--or even pronounced at all (I'm usually reading about it). As opposed to made-up programs or format names, de Bruijn is someone's actual name from an actual culture (Dutch perhaps?), so there should be a "correct" pronunciation, am I correct?

Here are the possibilities I've considered.

• de BRAIN
• de BRINE
• de BROIN
• de BROON

Is any of these correct, or is my Dutch that bad? :)

Answer 1

[Chris Evelo]

Yes, it is Dutch... And de BROIN would come closest.

You can find some information about Dutch pronunciation, including about the "ui" combination here. But I am not sure that helps a lot. Best ask a Dutch person to pronounce it for you. There is a sound files with a word with "ui" here. Try ""sluis"

Oh and the "j" is a leftover from old spelling. We would now write "bruin" (which means brown) and the j is not pronounced.

Answer 2

[Bert Overduin]

No offense to the non-Dutch people here, but if you're not Dutch (or Flemish or Afrikaans), you probably won't be able to pronounce this, unless you practice a lot. This is based on years and years of experience with people trying to pronounce my last name correctly .... :) The UI sound just doesn't seem to exist in many other languages ....

[Neilfws]

When I learned Dutch, I was told to "shape your mouth as if to say the word onion, but then say ow." It helped :-)

[Daniel Standage]

No offense taken! I'll give it my best shot. I did live met die Afrikaners for two years (Cape Town and East London), so I did pick up a few points of pronunciation. But the ui was always hard for me to remember, even when I lived there.

Answer 3

[Andra Waagmeester]

For an english speaker I would guess broin would be the closest you can get. In the Dutch language it is not uncommon to use two vowels to express one sound.

There is a nice youtube film that explains this to an english audience here. Ui is explained at 3.22

Answer 4

[Jan Kosinski]

I recently found that Google Translate has "Listen" button and it works with many names. I tested with Polish names, and it's very good.

For "de Bruijn" and Dutch as language it says something but I don't know if it's correct.

[Andra Waagmeester]

Well if you remove the j, it is quite good. Bruijn is old spelling, as Chris has already mentioned

[Neilfws]

No, that's completely off I'm afraid.

[Bert Overduin]

Yep, I agree with Andra. Without the j it sounds pretty good.

Answer 5

[Andreas]

For the sake of completeness: this blog entry at genome factory, points to this recording

Andreas

[Bert Overduin]

Yes, that one is perfect! :)