Buzz
So-shee? Sah-chee? So-chee? Before Sochi became the official host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics, few people were familiar with it, so its English pronunciation wasn't widely established. Fortunately, the Russian pronunciation has easy equivalents in English. Unlike some Russian words, such as Nazyvayevsk, Srednekolymsk, or Zheleznodorozhny, Sochi doesn’t have any particularly challenging sounds. Still, there has been some uncertainty about the correct way to say it.
The 'ch' sound in Sochi causes some confusion because, while we usually pronounce it like in "cheer," we also know that in foreign words, it sometimes sounds like 'sh,' as in "chalet" or "chic," or even has a guttural sound, like in "Bach" or "chutzpah." But there’s no need to worry. The Russian 'ch' (represented by the Latin alphabet transcription ч) is exactly like the English 'ch.' (This is why people sometimes mispronounce "dacha" with a back-of-the-throat sound instead of the typical English 'ch.' )
The 's' in Sochi is essentially the same as in English, and the 'i' corresponds to the 'ee' sound found in words like "sushi" or "spaghetti." The 'o,' however, doesn't match up as easily, which leads to confusion. The Russian 'o' is somewhere between the 'o' in "note" and the vowel in "caught." (If your dialect includes the cot-caught merger, it will sound even further off from the Russian version.) When the 'o' appears in an unstressed syllable, it is pronounced like 'ah.'
Here’s how to pronounce the stressed Russian 'o':
And here’s a Russian speaker saying "Sochi."
In English, the 'o' in Sochi tends to shift, either becoming So-chee or sometimes Saw-chee or Sah-chee. For foreign words in English, we often find ourselves switching between pronunciations (like 'Olga' vs. 'Vodka'). So what’s the right choice for Sochi? It seems that as we discuss it more, So-chee is gaining traction in the U.S., while Saw-chee may be gaining ground in the UK. This wouldn’t be the first time we've had differences in the pronunciation of an 'o' sound from a borrowed word. For example, in the UK, the 'o' in 'cognac' and 'yoghurt' is often pronounced closer to 'aw.'
