Anglo mis-stressing

[Emily Saunders]

Not having studied the stress patterns of my native language, I can't  
really comment on the "mis-stressing" of Russian names by  
anglo-speakers, but I have noticed some common errors in the opposite  
direction:

DZHEEP CheROkee
SuBAru FoRESter

being two of my favorites.   (Though I have been told that SuBAru is  
the original Japanese pronunciation and that we anglo-speakers have  
that one wrong while the Russians have it right.)

And there are more, but I can't think of any offhand.  At any rate I  
would say that butchering the pronunciation of foreign words is common  
across all languages and is not something culturally specific to one  
linguistic group.

Cheers,

Emily Saunders

P.S.  To the previous list of commonly mispronounced Russian words I'd  
also add baBUSHka and VLADiVOStok (two stressed syllables and neither  
of them the right one...)

On May 10, 2007, at 3:50 PM, 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.
>
> 	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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