Anglo mis-stressing

Fri May 11 03:06:27 UTC 2007

Several of Mr Gallagher's in-depth linguistic points are well taken. I do 
think calling natural speechways "ignorance" is going too far. I don't buy 
the notion that speakers of English ought to reproduce every phonological 
nicety of foreign names when speaking English.

While interacting with Russians and Georgians in Tbilisi, I found it 
perfectly natural and acceptable that they pronounced my surname with a 
"tapped r" instead of the correct retroflex r, or a plain or aspirated t 
instead of the correct interdental th, or a v instead of the correct w. They 
were, after all, speaking Russian and Georgian. (I did point out during one 
interview - with wry intent - that the correct pronunciation of Texas is 
TEK-suss rather than teh-KHASS. They got the joke).

Russian names aside, consider Chinese. Does anyone think that English 
speakers (whether journalists or layfolk) should be obliged to master the 
intricacies of the tones? A wrong tone on a Chinese name or ordinary word, 
as everyone knows, may not only sound strange but could cause serious 
misunderstanding and even offense - when speaking Chinese. When speaking 
English, I say live with it.

My sympathies to Mr Koulbass. Sixty years adds up to a lot of anguish.

Mr Kim Braithwaite, Translator

   "Good is better than evil, because it's nicer" - Mammy Yokum (Al Capp)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul B. Gallagher" <paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM>
To: <SEELANGS at BAMA.UA.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, May 10, 2007 6:32 PM
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Anglo mis-stressing

> 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
>
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