Oregon, Ukraine and svoj/chuzhoj

[Vakareliyska]

Ron Feldstein writes:

>As a native Newarker, I wince at Oregon when the final vowel is a schwa,
>and I hate the syllabification Wi-scon-sin, which deprives the second
>syllable of its much needed aspirated [k].
>
>But why should regional dialects offend in the proper nouns only, yet
>be fully acceptable in the domain of common nouns?  Can it be that our
>prejudices are tolerated in the case of proper nouns, but remain suppressed
>in the case of other words?
>

       Isn't this a _svoj/chuzhoj_ issue?  With regard to "Oregon", it's
been my impression, although I've never researched it, that in most
variants of American English, unstressed syllables of a word tend to be
less reduced, and secondary stress tends to be heavier, where the referent
of the word is perceived by the speaker as _chuzhoj_. I used to pronounce
the last syllable in "Oregon" as "gone" until I moved here -- then I very
quickly adapted, sensing that my non-Pacific-Northwest pronunciation would
suggest that I didn't view myself as having any sort of connection with the
state (note that people from Washington, Idaho and (at least Northern)
California also use the _svoj_ pronunciation of "Oregon"). Perhaps the
offense given by a failure to adopt local pronunciation of place names
comes from the perception that the speaker is branding the place as
_chuzhoj_, almost setting it off in quotation marks, as it were.  It may
also be that feelings of restraint toward a _chuzhoj_ place are exactly
what makes outsiders uncomfortable with the local pronunciation of the
place name:  using it might suggest more of a familiarity with the place
than the speaker actually feels. (And, of course, going a step further and
using the _svoj_ nickname of a place not one's one, such as "D.C.", "the
City", etc., can be viewed as inappropriate in suggesting an intimacy with
the place which the speaker does not have.)
       By the way, with regard to _svoj-chuzhoj_ prosodic patterns, as a
native New Havener, I'm continually amused when I say I'm from "New
HA-ven", and yet interlocutors not from New Haven continue to refer to it
in the same conversation as "NEW Haven" -- it always sounds as if they
think somehow that the _svoj_ prosodic pattern is "incorrect" or informal,
and the _chuzhoj_ pronunciation is the "real" way. It certainly emphasizes
heavily the fact that they're not from there themselves, as if they're
deliberately distancing themselves from the place.  I wonder if part of the
offensiveness of a definite article preceding "Ukraine" to those with a
_svoj_ relationship with that country might not also come, on the
grammatical level, from a sense of the definite article's marking that
place as more _chuzhoj_ than most.

        Cynthia Vakareliyska



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C. Vakareliyska                               vakarel at oregon.uoregon.edu
Asst. Professor of Slavic Linguistics                tel: (541) 346-4043
Department of Russian                                fax: (541) 346-1327
University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1262