Matrushka; Hryvna

[Alice Faber]

Laurence Horn said:
>At 7:12 PM -0400 7/18/02, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
>>Actually Lwów (pronounced /lvuf/) is the Polish. The "o" has an
>>accent mark which changes it to an /u/. It's this fact (among others,
>>including the "barred L)") which makes Lódz (pronounced /wutsh/) the
>>most frequently mispronounced Slavic place-name in English.
>>
>>dInIs Prestonski
>>
>Even by me, and my maternal grandparents emigrated from there.  I
>thought it was /wUdzh/, with the wowel, er, vowel of "look" and a
>voiced final affricate.  But then they'd have spoken Yiddish and
>pronounced it god knows how.
>

Well, most varieties of Yiddish lost final devoicing lo these many
years. And therein hangs a tale, actually, many tales. (It was
subsequently reacquired in some varieties of Polish Yiddish.)

Alice

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Alice Faber                                             faber at haskins.yale.edu
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