[Ads-l] Keev

Paul A Johnston paul.johnston at WMICH.EDU
Mon Nov 18 19:16:35 UTC 2019


I don't work with Ukrainian very much, but I do work with a dialect of English that might have a similar sound to the sound in the middle of Kyiv, though it is monosyllabic, and it is only sporadic before consonants.  You can find it in the word "Key" in northern Northumbrian (Wooler and Bellingham) and as a variant in all cases of final /i:/.  I transcribed it as ["ei].  It could be that the Northumbrian vowel starts with a fronter sound than the Ukrainian one, but it is still centralized; it's not a true [ei].  The examples given here sound like they start with a true barred small cap i, but I'm not sure.
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Subject: Keev

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Rhymes with sleeve.

That's how the talking heads are pronouncing the name of the capital of
Ukraine (formerly *the* Ukraine) these days.

JL

"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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