How do you pronounce Natal?

[theprof00]

hsrob said:

theprof00 said:

for the love of god, learn phonetics. It's not that hard.

it's actually: n(ei)'tal

In pronunciation respelling, it's nay-TAHL

and to simplify even more, it's

Neigh, as the horse vocalization, or nay as in "I said, 'nay', good sir"

and then tall, as in, "Yao Ming is tall"

furthermore, the emphasis is on "tall", not "nay". In your OP selections, capitalized sections means that is where the emphasis is. Like EM-pha-sis, not em-PHA-sis

 

Phonetics are well overrated.  I taught English as a foreign language for 5 years to students who had learned phonetics for many years previous and they were still crap at pronunciation.  They fail to render subtle differences in pronunciation which occur between languages and even in regional accents. 

For example I don't think the 'tal' in Natal would sound quite like the English tall as you state in your admittedly well thought out rant :)

My take, Natal sounds exactly like the guy who came up with it says it sounds. 

rightly so, but my beef is with the many variations of the same sound people are saying. Nah'tahl, Nuh'tahl, nah'tal, na'taal. The problem with sounding things out in this way is that people forget that there are regional accents and pronunciations for those sequences. Those have incredibly different sounds depending on who you talk to. The only way to really explain, is to give the exact sound with actual words. The second best way, is to use IPA.