My dictionaries say that 戛 is pronounced “jia”. Is the pronunciation different in Taiwan? In the lesson “The Assassin, it is transcribed as “gan”. I asked about this in the comments on the lesson, but did not receive a reply.
" 戛纳电影节 gānà diànyǐngjié”
My dictionaries and google also gives the pronounciation jiánà 戛纳. But the pronounciation of Cannes in french is [kan] as in “yes we can”. I look at some videos and find out that there are chinese people who say jiánà and other who say gānà which is closer to the french pronounciation.
Liyuchun who is from mainland china clearly says gana.
Baidu gives explicitly gana for Cannes let see
Estimable 742162852,
I think you are confusing two different characters, 戛 and 嘎。 The former is pronounced jia and the latter ga. Also, you are parsing the pinyin for 嘎纳 incorrectly: it’s “ga + na”, not "gan +a ".
I looked up Cannes and got two possible ways to say it:
- Kan cheng, 坎城 which is cited as a Taiwan pronunciation
- Jia na 加纳
I did not find 嘎纳. (ga na). I suppose it could be another Taiwan usage, or it could just have been or typo or even another Mandarin variant that happens to not be in my dictionaries.
I am on very thin ice as far as French goes, but I think 坎 should be the closest to the French pronunciation, and 坎城 would literally mean “city of Cannes.”
Hope this helps.
Good research, Martin. It appears my dictionaries have not caught up to actual usage, and I had not thought to 百度一下。
Different posibilities apparently. One of my dictionaries has this: 戛纳 Cannes (France): Pleco has the same as the first definition, but then addes 坎城 as Cannes in Taiwan… I also ckecked in the book “A New Gazetter of the World” that was published in Beijing… It also says 戛纳 Cannes. At any rate, thank you for the reponses.
Sorry you did not receive any reply on comment board.
As for the translation of Cannes, 坎城 is the official translation in Taiwan. At least most of the media use this term. However, 戛纳 or 加纳 are also used recently, only recently.
戛纳 is used in Mainland. We’ve heard people either pronounce gānà or jiānà. Actually, the correct pronunciation of character 戛 is jiá. However, it’s a relatively uncommon character so people don’t really know the “correct” pronunciation. Moreover, it looks very similar to another character 嘎gā. People would naturally try to pronounce gā when they see 戛. Since 戛 and 嘎 are both onomatopoeia (象声词), we are not that strict to the pronunciation.
In this lesson, we say gānà because it sound closer to the original sound of Cannes and it’s been used in real life.
Hope you find this helpful. 
谢谢， 现在我明白。觉得砍成重要如果你喜欢艺术中国电影
威廉