Anglo mis-stressing

[Paul B. Gallagher]

George Kalbouss wrote:

> 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.

I've never heard anyone say "Dakha"; maybe I should get out more. Or 
maybe not.

> 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:

If you're looking for psychological motivations, the top two have to be 
laziness and ignorance. For the general public, I'd say ignorance tops 
the list -- if you don't know Russian, you haven't got a clue. For the 
news media, it has to be laziness -- if you're standing there 
interviewing someone and you don't bother to listen to how they say 
their name, or even ask, you have no excuse.

Be that as it may, what do naive monolinguals do when confronted with a 
foreign name? I'd say they try to apply their native stress rules and/or 
find one or more similar-sounding words and stress them like that. Since 
English is a mélange of words from languages with different stress 
patterns (Germanic with initial stress except for prefixes, French with 
final stress, Latin with penultimate or antepenultimate stress, etc.), 
we end up with a very complicated set of rules and patterns to try.

My guesses on the specific names you mention:

> VLAdimir

VL- is foreign and attracts stress; also the Germans have initial stress 
on Wladimir.

> PavLOVa
> SharaPOva (she finally gave in and said, ok, that's my name)

There seems to be a pattern of stressing -Ova/-Eva in Slavic names even 
when that would be completely inappropriate in the source language 
(Polish immigrant substratum?). For example, Navrátilová with initial 
stress and long vowels in the second and fifth syllables mysteriously 
gets primary stress on the first and fourth syllables -- obviously 
because people have only seen it, never heard it. The one in this 
pattern (other than Share-u-POE-vuh) that bugs me lately is 
Dementi-YAY-vuh. And of course there's the model who fancies herself a 
tennis player (who shall remain nameless).

> Ki-EV

To keep the syllables separate? (IE normally spells /i/, and I do often 
hear "Chicken KI-ev").

> TOLstoy

Germanic initial stress?

> LerMONTov  (I doubt the pronouncers have heard of Learmont)

Never heard this one; wild guessing that a heavy syllable attracts stress.

> KHRUSHchev
> TURD-jenev

Germanic initial stress?

> LeNEEN, StaLEEN  (yes, despite the notoriety of these names)

Never heard either of these, but if you listen to hockey games on 
radio/TV you'll hear a lot of Swedish names ending with /in/, so maybe 
that's what they're imitating.

> StolichNAYA  (the escape route is STOLi,  not StoLI).

Americans seem to favor stress on -Aya; cf. SlutsKAya, ButyrsKAya, etc.

> 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.

Cute.

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

To paraphrase the prince in /Amadeus/, "too many consonants, couldn't 
you manage with less"? ;-)

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------