taking poll on pronunciation
Melissa Smith
mtsmith02 at YSU.EDU
Sat Jul 3 18:06:57 UTC 2010
Today, when watching the Wimbledon women's tennis final, I didn't
understand who Serena William's opponent was until I saw it written:
Zvonareva. The initial consonant cluster is impossible for English
speakers. My greatest shock, however, came a few years ago when,
listening to a Metropolitan Opera broadcast of "Boris Godunov," and
heard our colleague Harlow Robinson pronounce the composer's name as
MoussOR(G)sky. Now I tend to "correct" the Russian-like pronunciations
that escape my lips with a "normative" American-like version (always
prefaced by a necessarily pedantic, "you probably have heard it
pronounced as...").
Melissa Smith
On 7/3/10 12:44 PM, Hugh McLean wrote:
> 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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> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
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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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------------------------------------
Melissa T. Smith, Professor
Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures
Youngstown State University
Youngstown, OH 44555
Tel: (330)941-3462
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