The Bartitsu Pronunciation Guide

  • Originally published on the Bartitsu.org site on Thursday, 10th November 2016
past-and-present

Because Bartitsu is a culturally eclectic, Edwardian-era self defence system, revivalists are faced with a variety of words that have fallen out of fashion over the past century or simply originate in languages other than English.  Here’s a quick and easy guide to the phonetic pronunciation of some of these words:

Apaches (as in the Parisian street gangsters rather than the Native American people) – Apahsh.

Bartitsu – Bart-it-soo.

la canne  – pronounced lah kahn.

jiujitsu – in Japanese, joo-jits’ (with a very lightly voiced “oo” sound at the end); in standard English adaptation, joo-jitsoo.

pugilism – soft “g”, as in pew-jill-ism.

savate – sah-vaht.

Suffragette  – pronounced with a soft “g”, like suffrajet.

Vigny – we’re not certain how Pierre Vigny pronounced his surname, but most likely either Vih-nyee or Vih-nyay.

Yukio Tani – Yoo-kee-oh Tah-nee.

Sadakazu Uyenishi – Sah-dah-kah-zoo (oo)yen-ee-shee.

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