As hockey develops, it also globalizes rapidly. While Canadians will still argue that it’s “Canada’s game”, other superpowers have emerged on the scene. The USA and Russia have always been contenders, but in more recent decades other nations have emerged as well. One of these would certainly be Finland, who has pumped out some of the most talented hockey players the game has seen in recent decades (particularly between the pipes).
We’re now finding out that we have been pronouncing these Finnish names completely wrong all along.
A Finnish fan made a video where she took famous Finnish hockey player names and pronounced them correctly, and she teaches you how to as well. Even given the proper pronunciation, many of us would still be unable to pull off an R roll quite as casually as it seems necessary in the language.
Who knew? To be honest, it may be a little jarring if play-by-play commentators started up with these pronunciations in game, so maybe we’ll just stick to our super North American pronunciations.
(H/T YouTube/KatChats)
