[Highlight] Announcers pronounce Warriors Summer League participant Abudurexiti Abudushalamu (阿不都沙拉木 阿不都热西提)’s name.
The commentators just deciding on handling one part of his full name is killing me
Bro when they started taking turns I lost it lol
Happened with Kerr’s son too
Funnily Chinese commentators gave Giannis a nickname called 字母哥 Alphabet Brother because it was a lot of alphabet and they couldn’t pronounce his name. Now we have Alphabet Brother Jr in summer league.
Alphabet Brother is amazing.
The alphabet was a pretty common nickname for Giannis when he was early in his career
i remember a reddit comment saying its disrespectful calling giannis that meanwhile at that point people here were calling him the greek freak
It is Still now. I think it’s said more in broadcast and news than his real name. This brother alphabet thing is in video games and stuff like that.
This is from 2018. He’s not in this year’s summer league
Chinese nicknames are truly undefeated, their League of Legends ones are unhinged.
Love the one they had for Chandler Parsons lol
Double Gun Obama
Ima call him Abu
Abu abu goes hard
Abu-deuce
Oh shit I love that
Oh shit… deuce…
In Bengali it would mean dad dad
In Indonesian it means gray
Imma call him Rex
Any syllables are fair game for a nickname, except for that dush sound.
Timu
I think his non Pinyin name is like Abdusalam, so Abdu would be more fitting
abdu is the prefix part of his name though, would be like calling a dude named abdul jabbar just abdul
His mama named him Clay. Imma call him Clay.
“Abu don’t cry”
Abu abu is easy enough.
OBU
He is of Uyghur ethnicity (Abdul-salaam Abdul-rashid), not Han from which this transliteration originates.
This was from 2018 summer league.
Very interesting. One of the things that drives me nuts is that Giannis Antetokounmpo’s surname is just a one-to-one letter-to-letter transliteration from Αντετοκούνμπο – but the Greek version of his name includes two digraphs, because the Greek alphabet doesn’t include letters for /d/ (in modern Greek, δ is pronounced /ð/), so the Greeks use ντ for /d/ sounds, or /b/ (in modern Greek, β is pronounced /v/), so the Greeks use μπ for /b/ sounds. But English does have letters for those sounds! His name should be spelled Adetokunbo. That’s how it’s pronounced, and spelled, in Yoruba.
I always found this interesting too
If I had to guess, retaining the Greek transliteration into English would have something to do with acceptance of him/his family as being Greek, as Nigerian immigrants who likely faced a lot of racism and xenophobia in Greece.
Yoruba > Greek > English vs. Uyghur > Mandarin > English
Right – and that intermediate step is the problem. If a book in Yoruba gets translated into Greek, I would want to read an English translation of the original Yoruba text, not an English translation of the Greek translation. Same thing for transliterations. So Mandarin speakers can’t pronounce “Abdul-Salaam”? English speakers can, so if that’s the guy’s name, we should use our transliteration, not the pinyin version.
What’s especially silly is when something gets translated into a foreign language and then back into the source language. Pokemon is called Pokemon because Japanese speakers can’t pronounce all the consonant clusters in “Pocket Monsters”. English speakers can, because it’s an English phrase! We don’t have to say “ポケットモンスター” when we can just say “Pocket Monsters”!
idk i think the linguistic telephone game stuff is cool tbh
I’d make a basic rule - if the person gives you their preferred pronunciation, try to do that.
If my name is John, don’t try and pronounce it as Giannis just because you were introduced by a Greek person, Owen because they were Welsh, Jack because their Irish, or Ivan because they were Russian. Try to say John in your language.
Yeah, but this isn’t a book. The anglicization of the greek version of his family name actually reflects his family history. I’m sure he could have chosen to go by Adetokunbo if he wanted to when he started his career in the US.
His name used to be spelt like that— that’s what it was when he was first drafted, matter of fact
In Slovenian, we do (technically) spell it like this
I assume he specifically made the choice to use the Greek form of his name on his jersey
Actually three digraphs, including <ού> for /u/.
So we’ve all kinda been saying his name wrong this whole time?
Yes, and this includes Giannis himself, because there are three correct answers, and not using any one of them is wrong when using any other.
Unless you can simultaneously pronounce it three ways at the same time with your mouth, you are wrong.
It confused me because it was Doug Christie trying to pronounce his name.
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He was the CBA MVP in 2023 and plays for the Chinese national team
Shalamu!
Shalamu will you do the Fandango
Streamable sucks now, idk why r/nba only allows it. They keep taking down vids. Mods should just allow people to upload vids directly on reddit’s servers which you can do now.
Yeah, does anyone have an alternative link? Wanted to see it and now it’s down. I’m getting blue balls over here
mirror: https://www.reddit.com/user/Ok_Yoghurt9155/comments/1uoi8y5/abudurexiti_abudushalamu/
r/nba video posts never load for me (despite every other sub being fine) so being able to go to stream able is great
Hey that’s Alex Caruso
Dude’s hairline aged more gracefully than Bron or KD
We need a Charles Barkley pronunciation on that
Any mirror?
Abudurexiti Abudushalamu
just rolls off your tongue
Warriors announcers catching the Holy Spirit…
God damn it Streamable
Rex
Abu boo
This is awesome but can’t help think wanting to say yabba dabba doo for the 3!!
BRUH
Adam Sandler on the mic
The Uyghur Giannis
I turned the sound on and my cat started fucking floating.
I just said it out loud and my furniture started floating.
how many points in scrabble is this ?
as someone who follows international ball i love that they actually tried pronouncing it. most announcers would just call him 24 and move on 😂
Grant Napear and Doug Christie have some serious beef these days
Will he be the first Uyghur player in the G-league/NBA if he makes it?
This was in 2018
Rog
I guess the question remains though have any Uyghur players played professionally in the US?
No. There hasnt been any Uyghur player in the history of the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, or MLS.
Abdusalam is the closest any have gotten, and he had 1 summer league stint in 2018 playing 5 minutes/game and averaging 1 ppg on 25% shooting.
Maybe he would have a better shot now at 30 years old, because since then he stayed in the CBA and won the most improved player award for the 2018-2019 season (the season following his summer league attempt) and has since won a CBA MVP in 2024.
Although notably the CBA has separate MVPs for domestic and international players…because the international players who fell out of the NBA are still better than almost all the chinese born players. Jared Sullinger won the CBA international player MVP in 2024 with significantly better efficiency stats in every advanced stats category…and Jared Sullinger hasnt been in the NBA since 2017. So Abdusalam’s best season was still a weaker season than a guy who was waived by the Suns 7 years prior.
Humuhumunukunukuāpua’a
They sounded like their summoning the devil
Abudushalamusanity
I’m guessing it’s Abdurrashid Abdussalam and it got mangled in translation and transliteration
Yeah, it’s the Mandarin way of pronouncing Abdul-Rashid Abdul-Salam
Abu durex iti Abu dusha lamu?
Abudur Abudush
Abudushalamu sounds like Adam Sandler saying timothee chalamet
Double A about to give the warriors the energy it needs
Will never beat Ho You Fat
Henry Rowengardner
I like when people try to sound out names instead of saying “I’m not even gonna try”
I’ve never rooted for someone more to become an NBA star, purely just a fuck with announcers and people who talk about the NBA.
The fact that there’s a random X in his name is just glorious
Putting more effort into this than most do in properly pronouncing wembanyama and antetokounmpo
Honestly it’s surprisingly easy to remember. Rolls off the tongue.
Amazing name
announcers did their best lmao, that’s a tongue twister even for native speakers
Abudu Shalamet
I can already hear the fans chanting “Abudurexiti Abudushalamu!”
To be fair, it’s even a little bit of a mouthful in Chinese. Great effort.
It’s not a Chinese name. It’s transliterated into Chinese.
Yes I meant that it’s using Chinese. I think if the name is written in latinized Uyghur, the announcer might struggle less.
You can make a career out of that name.
they really struggling with the first name part huh
I haven’t listened but I’m just going to assume it sounds something like John Sterling trying to pronounce Hideki Irabu that one time
Bro is going to get a nickname real quick. Not for any other reason that nobody wants to pronounce his name often.
“My man AA”, “What up, Abu?”
Lmaooo
What does this score in scrabble?
Abudu, people who get up in arms of their name pronunciation need to find more purpose in life. It’s not that deep.
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Lol why is the Chinese persons name in Chinese?
what kind of dumbass comment is this, they don’t write japanee players with the japanese alphabet or ukranian players with the ukrainian alphabet or israeli players in hebrew, bulgaria, etc etc etc
“Abudushalamu Abudurexiti” is the Chinese Pinyin rendering of his name.
The Chinese Phonetic Alphabet, commonly called Hanyu Pinyin or simply pinyin (pīnyīn), is the most common romanization system for Standard Chinese. Hanyu literally means ‘Han language’ — that is, the Chinese language — while pinyin literally means ‘spelled sounds’.
His actual name is 阿不都沙拉木·阿不都热西提 in chinese, and ئابدۇسالام ئابدۇرېشىت in Uyghur.
his name isn’t spelled Abudushalamu Abudurexiti, that is just a phonetic pronunciation key for western-speaking people to understand how to verbalize his name, “the chinese pinyin rendering of his name”
and? they still don’t write out any other players in Cyrillic or Hebrew, etc.
it’s literally his name
you’re right, he should change it to satisfy your delicate american senses. everyone worth a shit in this world does things in english or they’re not worth anyone’s time
you think if you go to greece they start writing names out in cyrillic or greek alphabet?
you can’t possibly be this dense.