Talk:Sir John Strachan, 5th Baronet

Pronunciation

The name "strachan" is pronounced in at least two ways. Gordon C. Strachan, a Watergate scandal figure, pronounced it "strahn". Others pronounce it "strack-an". Please provide guidance by adding IPA pronunciation. Thanks. Edison (talk) 17:33, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

He died in 1777. There is no way to say how he pronounced it, or those around him pronounced as the only records of his life are on paper. Any attempt on our parts to extrapolate would be inadmissible as original research. This is therefore not a reasonable request. Benea (talk) 17:56, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

You are far too quick to denounce a reasonable request for article improvement as unreasonable. One way to respond would be to note (if it were true) that the name is pronounced exclusively in a certain way by the present day inhabitants of his country. Strachan, Aberdeenshire says that placename is pronounced "straan," for instance. There might also be scholarly discussion of name pronunciation past and present. Another and harder way to address how names or words were pronounced in the days before phonograph recordings would be to find if it rhymed with something in writing from the day. If a poet wrote "John Strachan's duck was quackin'" then a different conclusion would be justified than if the poet wrote "Strachan is long gone." Hundreds of years before 1777, scholars wrote about the pronunciation and spelling of words. Scholars have also determined how words were pronounced in bygone days by how they were spelled by the less literate, who invented spellings to correspond to what they heard. Edison (talk) 00:10, 30 May 2008 (UTC)