pron. of "Medvedev" cont.

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Deborah Hoffman wrote:

> Yes please don't make the second e sound like Nyet!

Well, it does, after all, but then I'm talking about the Russian 
pronunciation and you're talking about the English one.

If we put a "y" in the spelling, an English speaker will give you a full 
yod, not a palatalized consonant: "Mid-VYED-yiff" => "Мидвьедьиф." So at 
least in the stressed syllable, it's better to omit it. And my taste 
would be to omit both, but YMMV: "Mid-VED-iff" => "Мидвэдиф."

Note also that most Americans don't think "CyV" can be anything but two 
syllables: "Kyocera" is pronounced "КИ-о-СЕ-ра," not "Кё-се-ра," and 
"Hyundai" is solved by ignoring the "y." So we may well get people 
seeing "Mid-VYED-yiff" and saying "Мид-ви-ЭД-йиф" with four syllables or 
at best "Мид-ВЬЭД-йиф" with three and a half.

As for "э" vs. "эй" in the second syllable, I hear the raising/closing 
in the Russian, but I don't like the English rendition "Mid-VEY-diff" 
(Мид-ВЭЙ-диф) because only the end of the vowel is raised (the onset 
remains low); we don't palatalize the /v/. The idea that an untrained 
English speaker could say Мид-ВЕЙ-диф with a soft /v/ is a pipe dream. 
And my guess is that a Russian needs no help hearing English "diff" as 
диф and not дыф; the problem lies in convincing him that the English 
"VEY" contains a soft /v/. On that I think we have to rely on his kind 
indulgence.

-- 
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

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