Anglo mis-stressing

[George Kalbouss]

The discussion on the pronunciation of Kluev has led me to wonder out 
loud about a
phenomenon that I have been patiently putting up with lo these 60 
years, namely, how
Anglo-speakers seem to have a talent to rarely guess where the stress 
should go on
a Russian name.

	Some of the worst mis-stresses I can figure out.  MiKHAIL becomes 
"Mick-HALE"
because it looks like that, and DACHa is stressed correctly but the 
pronunciation is
DAKHA (not the way the word actually looks) because an analogy, for 
some unknown
reason, is made with the concentration camp, Dachau.

	Others, however, make me wonder -- and perhaps some linguist 
colleagues can
help out -- is there an overriding principle in the English language or 
culture why this
butchering is done?  Some of the more common examples:

	VLAdimir
	PavLOVa
	SharaPOva  (she finally gave in and said, ok, that's my name)
	Ki-EV
	TOLstoy
	LerMONTov  (I doubt the pronouncers have heard of Learmont)
	KHRUSHchev
	TURD-jenev
	LeNEEN, StaLEEN  (yes, despite the notoriety of these names)
	StolichNAYA  (the escape route is STOLi,  not StoLI).

In exasperation, I tell my Anglo speakers, just decide where you want 
to put the stress and
then move it one to the right.  If you think the stress should go on 
the last syllable, then put
it on the first.  At least I increase the probablity of getting it 
right.

	As a consolation, they get BLOK and TVER right the first time.

	Then, there's Nemerovich-Danchenko,  Dnepropetrovsk and 
Petrodvorets.-- maybe we're
asking too much.

George Kalbouss
(The) Ohio State University

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