Putin

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, The usual American pronunciation, "POOTn," has no relationship
at all to the Russian pronunciation. To the extent that that can be
rendered in English, "POOchin" is much closer to the Russian
pronunciation than, and is just as easy to say as, "POOTn."

Someone, somewhere (NewsTime? NYT?), claimed that this name means
"born by the side of the road." There's a Russian noun with the
meaning, "path." Its usual transliteration is _put'_, wherein _t'_
represents palatalized /t/. The Nominative case, Masculine gender,
Singular number of the adjective derived from this noun is usually
transliterated _putin_. It doesn't mean "born by the side of the
road."

-Wilson

On 6/5/07, Chris F Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Chris F Waigl <chris at LASCRIBE.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Putin
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
> > On 6/5/07, Laurence Urdang <urdang at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Though scarcely an issue for the ADS, it occurs to me that you might be amused
> >> by the following:
> >> The pronunciation of President Putin's surname in French would normally be identical
> >> in pronunciation with that of putain 'prostitute,' so, some months ago I queried some
> >> French friends about it and was informed that to avoid any hint of unfriendliness, his
> >> name in French is pronounced "poo-TEEN."
> >>
> >
> > William Safire devoted an "On Language" column to this in 2005:
> >
> > http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/03/opinion/saf4.php
> >
> > Languagehat, however, questioned the accuracy of Safire's analysis:
> >
> > http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001825.php
> >
> >
> >
>
> I'm with Languagehat on this. The "prostitute" laugh relies on noting
> that if you transliterated the name the English or German way (and *not*
> the French way), and then pronounced the result the French way, it would
> sound like a taboo term. Well, yes.
>
> Chris Waigl
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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