taking poll on pronunciation
Hugh McLean
hmclean at BERKELEY.EDU
Sat Jul 3 16:44:06 UTC 2010
Anna's feminine surname even miraculously survived an assault by
Vladimir Nabokov, who insisted on Anna Karenin and tried to establish a
rule that only ballerinas had the right to use their feminine surnames
in Western countries.His wife, of course, was Vera Nabokov, not
Nabokova, with an accent aigu over the e in Vera, because she didn't
like the pronunciation Veera. Even with that accent she still didn't get
the palatalized v. English biographies of Tolstoy's wife can't very well
call her Countess Tolstaya (despite Tat'yana's example); who would know
who that was? Whether they should call her Sonya or not is another
issue, perhaps stressful, but not about stress.
> A thought: Anna Karenina's integrity might have been preserved by her
> first name, as the book's title is repeated more often than the text
> is read, making the seven-syllable collocation a single semantic unit.
> Sports stars (Sharapova) and professors (Shatalina) more often find
> themselves without their first names.
>
> Bradley Gorski
>
> On Jul 2, 2010, at 6:33 PM, Inna Caron <caron.4 at BUCKEYEMAIL.OSU.EDU>
> wrote:
>
>> Richard Robin wrote:
>>> So how did Anna Karenina survive with her name intact?
>>
>> Funny you should ask that. In Bernard Rose's film (1997), Anna,
>> courtesy of Sophie Marceau, asks Vronsky in a jealous fit: "Then why
>> was it delivered by Princess Soro-KIna?" (stress on "i" as opposed to
>> the second "o").
>>
>> Anyway, as the person responsible for the initial query I thank
>> everyone for confirming what I suspected from the beginning: a
>> general reader will be most comfortable with the pronunciation
>> "Boro-DIno." Good to know, and much easier to rhyme.
>>
>> IC
>>
>> ________________________________________
>> From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list
>> [SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] on behalf of Richard Robin [rrobin at GWU.EDU]
>> Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 11:39 AM
>> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] taking poll on pronunciation
>>
>> Specialists in English phonology will correct me, but isn't the English
>> default stress on a four-syllable noun composed of open syllables on the
>> penultimate? As in
>>
>> Manitoba
>> Colorado
>> propaganda
>> panorama
>> emphysema
>> plus the assigned place of stress for most place names of native
>> American
>> origin, regardless of language of origin.
>>
>> Exceptions to this tendency, like amygdala and Kalamazoo, *sound** *like
>> exceptions. So Sharapóva and Borodíno obey that rule.
>>
>> On the other hand, Americans have always had both stress and vowel
>> problems
>> with Russian names containing ё, probably, as Hugh McLean said,
>> because of
>> the transliteration, but also no doubt because word-final stress in
>> nouns
>> (as in -ёв last names) is so rare in English. So Khrúshchev was
>> Khrushchóv
>> only on the lips of President Kennedy and NBC's Chet Huntley. Gorbachev
>> defaulted to initial stress, although a few talking heads insisted on
>> Gorbáchev.
>>
>> Finally, I would add that the hardest vocabulary item for my own
>> beginning
>> students is the last name of our program's course coordinator,
>> Shatalina,
>> which students insist on rhyming with Catalina, even well into middle of
>> first year.
>>
>> So how did Anna Karenina survive with her name intact?
>>
>> -Richard Robin
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 12:56 PM, Hugh McLean <hmclean at berkeley.edu>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> John Dunn is doubtless right that the Casanova model is responsible for
>>> SharapOva, though I wonder why such English models as intErrogate,
>>> regUrgitate, infUriate are ignored. In any case, the mindless
>>> provincialism
>>> of American TV sports announcers is especially noticeable during the
>>> Wimbledon broadcasts. Yesterday we had Berdych consistently pronounced
>>> burr-ditch by the American announcers and commentators, even though the
>>> official referee was doing a very good job of bear-dikh, with an
>>> excellent
>>> velar fricative for the Czech ch.
>>>
>>> Shame! Let's infuriate!
>>>
>>> Hugh McLean
>>>
>>>> As it happens, I have of late been contemplating the rules by which
>>>> English speakers assign stress to unfamiliar Russian names. In the
>>>> instance
>>>> of Borodino, two rules would seem to be relevant.
>>>>
>>>> The first is that final stress is generally avoided. There are
>>>> exceptions
>>>> to this with some two-syllable names, particularly if they are
>>>> transliterated according to French norms (as used to be the
>>>> practice for
>>>> passports and the like), but final stress does not appear to occur
>>>> spontaneously with longer names.
>>>>
>>>> The second rule is that English prefers to avoid sequences of more
>>>> than
>>>> two unstressed syllables. With four-syllable names there are thus two
>>>> options, and while it is my impression that the second syllable is the
>>>> 'default' (if there is one), the actual assignment appears to
>>>> depend on the
>>>> shape of the word. I am sure that a previous correspondent is
>>>> correct in
>>>> suggesting that BoroDIno is prompted by Italian patterns such as
>>>> ValenTIno,
>>>> just as the pattern CasaNOva is probably responsible for stress
>>>> assignments
>>>> of the SharaPOva type.
>>>>
>>>> John Dunn.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Kevin Windle <kevin.windle at ANU.EDU.AU>
>>>> To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>>>> Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 13:27:33 +1000
>>>> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] taking poll on pronunciation
>>>>
>>>> In my experience as a Brit living in Australia, speakers in the UK and
>>>> Australia will pronounce BorodINo with exactly the stress preferred
>>>> in North
>>>> America, i.e. primary stress on the third syllable and a weaker one
>>>> on the
>>>> first. Stressing the last syllable seems unnatural to most speakers of
>>>> English. It may actually render the name unrecognizable to them,
>>>> forcing
>>>> those who do know Russian to shift the stress to the penult when
>>>> speaking
>>>> English. Much the same thing happens with Vladivostok.
>>>> English-speakers will
>>>> generally place the stress on the penult.
>>>>
>>>> Kevin Windle,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> John Dunn
>>>> Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
>>>> University of Glasgow, Scotland
>>>>
>>>> Address:
>>>> Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
>>>> 40137 Bologna
>>>> Italy
>>>> Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
>>>> e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
>>>> johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> John Dunn
>>>> Honorary Research Fellow, SMLC (Slavonic Studies)
>>>> University of Glasgow, Scotland
>>>>
>>>> Address:
>>>> Via Carolina Coronedi Berti 6
>>>> 40137 Bologna
>>>> Italy
>>>> Tel.: +39 051/1889 8661
>>>> e-mail: J.Dunn at slavonic.arts.gla.ac.uk
>>>> johnanthony.dunn at fastwebnet.it
>>>>
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
>> Director Russian Language Program
>> The George Washington University
>> Washington, DC 20052
>> 202-994-7081
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> Russkiy tekst v UTF-8
>>
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