taking poll on pronunciation

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Kim Braithwaite wrote:

> These occasional exchanges about how non-Russians speaking
> non-Russian ought to pronounce this or that Russian proper name are
> revealing and often amusing. Some Russianists seem to be sticklers
> for saying it the way Russians say it.

My general approach is to do the best I can to imitate the source 
language with the target-language tools available. English doesn't have 
tone, so we can't mimic Chinese tones, nor does it have phonemic 
palatalization, so we can't simulate the быт/быть contrast (though some 
Americans will say bit/beech as a rough first attempt). But we're pretty 
good at controlling stress placement, and our stress looks an awful lot 
like Russian stress (louder, longer, clearer) and not much like the 
Czech or Japanese pitch accents.

> I agree that the natural impulse of English speakers speaking English
> (me, for example) is to say BoroDIno, and frankly it does not offend
> me. I do doubt that it's by analogy with e.g. Tarantino, or for that
> matter Arizona. Phonologists can probably explain it.

Probably.

I don't mind that monolingual nonspecialists guess wrong from the 
spelling of Russian names. I have a higher standard for Slavicists and 
speakers of Russian. And I count myself in that group, so I allow myself 
no excuses for getting them wrong.

> What about Czechs, Poles, and Hungarians (for example)? According to 
> textbook descriptions, Czech and Hungarian have a rigid stress pattern 
> on the first syllable - hence, presumably, BOrodino. And Polish has a 
> rigid stress pattern on the penultimate - hence, presumably, BoroDIno. 
> But maybe their intellectuals and diplomats, or radio and TV announcers, 
> break their native stress rules in deference to the way Russians say it. 
> I'd really like to find out, in case someone on SEELANGS knows.

I would think languages with fixed accent placement or no special accent 
at all would react differently than languages with movable stress like 
English. Here we do have general rules and patterns to help us guess the 
placement in unfamiliar words, but there are numerous exceptions, so 
much so that the English speaker is capable of moving the stress around 
if s/he is so inclined. Not so for a Pole or a Czech.

> Of course there's those tricky akanie vowel gradations too, which those 
> languages do not share - nor, for that matter, does Ukrainian. On the 
> other hand, Belorussian/Belarusan not only pronounces it BaradziNO but 
> actually spells it Барадзiно (I hope my Unicode Cyrillic comes through). 
> That -dz- affrication is an additional curious feature of Belarusan.
> 
> Suppose we do teach Americans to stress the final syllable: -NO. After 
> that, the vowel gradations? Uh-uh. Achieve BorodiNO and quit while we're 
> ahead.

Three unstressed syllables building toward a climax in the final 
syllable is very un-English, I agree. But the vowel gradations are 
doable -- Buh-ruh-dee-NAW is feasible even if it sounds quite foreign 
(and realistically, a Russian name /should/ sound foreign, shouldn't 
it?). The English speaker will want a secondary stress on the first or 
second syllable, more likely the second for metric regularity.

I agree that perfect Russian pronunciation is too much to expect from 
non-Russian speakers. But parts of it are very doable.

-- 
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/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------