This has puzzled me for a long time. Luckily, I live in Russia, and here we pronounce foreign words pretty much any way we want, often to the point of unrecoginzeability.
Still, “Yudkowsky” looks like it might be an English transliteration of a Russian(-ish) word anyway, so our pronunciation might not be all that far off.
Typically, the middle syllable of such names is pronounced as “cough” in Britain (roughly as in German/Polish/Russian/Yiddish/whatever) in Britain but anglicised to “cow” in America.
This has puzzled me for a long time. Luckily, I live in Russia, and here we pronounce foreign words pretty much any way we want, often to the point of unrecoginzeability.
Upvoted for truth. Heh.
Still, “Yudkowsky” looks like it might be an English transliteration of a Russian(-ish) word anyway, so our pronunciation might not be all that far off.
His name is said in the first 5 seconds of this video if anyone is particularly interested.
Typically, the middle syllable of such names is pronounced as “cough” in Britain (roughly as in German/Polish/Russian/Yiddish/whatever) in Britain but anglicised to “cow” in America.