| Author |
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Robert Bannister
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 8:21 am
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Sericinus hunter wrote:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:
...
The problem, IMO, is insoluble. Even if the Russian government
decreed an official system (as the Chinese government has for
Chinese), it would be difficult or impossible for us to conform with
respect to well-established spellings of well-known Russian names.
Sankt-Pitersburg? Trotskij? Pyotr the Great?
I don't think we need worry about that. Certainly, keep historical
names the way they have always been spelt, but new names should have
an orthography which gives an English speaker a chance of coming
close to the actual pronunciation.
Then German or French speakers would need their own version
of spelling, which will be highly inconvenient.
|
But they do already. I don't suppose they find it as inconvenient as
they would if they used 'our' spellings or even the country's spellings.
--
Rob Bannister |
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Joe Fineman
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 7:52 pm
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Robert Bannister <robban@it.net.au> writes:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
But it's "Sankt Peterburg" (no "s" in Peterburg).
Whoops! The last time I was there, it was still Leningrad, but I
still should have spelt it right.
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And so should I have, tho I have never been in it under either name.
There is an old joke about a veteran returning to the USSR after
W.W. II. He is given a form on which he is told to list all his
previous places of residence, and then to choose one of them to be
given transportation to. He lists St Petersburg, Petrograd, and
Leningrad, and chooses St Petersburg. Now, if he lived long enough --
--
--- Joe Fineman joe_f@verizon.net
||: Cheap repairs for the cheap 'uns.  | |
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R H Draney
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 9:36 pm
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Joe Fineman filted:
| Quote: |
There is an old joke about a veteran returning to the USSR after
W.W. II. He is given a form on which he is told to list all his
previous places of residence, and then to choose one of them to be
given transportation to. He lists St Petersburg, Petrograd, and
Leningrad, and chooses St Petersburg. Now, if he lived long enough --
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So they shipped him off to Florida....r |
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Sericinus hunter
Guest
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| Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2004 10:02 pm
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Robert Bannister wrote:
| Quote: | Sericinus hunter wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:
...
I don't think we need worry about that. Certainly, keep historical
names the way they have always been spelt, but new names should have
an orthography which gives an English speaker a chance of coming
close to the actual pronunciation.
Then German or French speakers would need their own version
of spelling, which will be highly inconvenient.
But they do already. I don't suppose they find it as inconvenient as
they would if they used 'our' spellings or even the country's spellings.
|
Thinking of transliteration rather than transcription looks the way
to go for me. It will be consistent with what is used across Latin script
based languages.
Just out of curiosity, is "Putin" spelt differently in English, German
and French? |
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Roland Hutchinson
Guest
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| Posted: Thu Dec 23, 2004 8:18 am
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Sericinus hunter wrote:
| Quote: | Skitt wrote:
Robert Bannister wrote:
...
The problem, IMO, is insoluble. Even if the Russian government
decreed an official system (as the Chinese government has for
Chinese), it would be difficult or impossible for us to conform with
respect to well-established spellings of well-known Russian names.
Sankt-Pitersburg? Trotskij? Pyotr the Great?
I don't think we need worry about that. Certainly, keep historical
names the way they have always been spelt, but new names should have
an orthography which gives an English speaker a chance of coming
close to the actual pronunciation.
Then German or French speakers would need their own version
of spelling, which will be highly inconvenient.
|
"Would need?" Oy! to the conditional there -- that is in fact precisely the
situation we have now.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it. |
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Wayne Brown
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:19 am
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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"Robert Bannister" wrote:
[...]
| Quote: | So in the example of Khrushchev, the spelling Khrushschoff seems as good
as any to me. Stress is another issue and one that can only be addressed
by the media - in the old days of the BBC, this was done, but now we are
used to the names of Russian tennis players being mis-stressed repeatedly.
|
To me, too. Moreover, the BBC has been an inspiration to many an
international broadcaster over the years. The BBC figured out from the
outset that a broadcaster venturing into the world arena should make every
effort to present an approximate pronunciation of people's names, the names
of foreign publications, geographical locations and much more because they
believed gross mistakes would distract listeners' attention from the message
that a broadcaster was trying to get across. The BBC set up a pronunciation
unit to provide immediate and accurate support to its broadcast services at
Bush House. The result was admirable and for many years the BBC was a model
for many a broadcaster far and wide. If one's Swahili wasn't very strong and
there was a Swahili word in the news, then just listen to the BBC to find
out how to pronounce it correctly. But they didn't excel just in Swahili,
their pronunciation of most names, including those of Soviet politicians in
the news, could serve as a standard. I had to think of the BBC and its high
standards as I watched a report last night on CNN about the latest
US.military casualties in Iraq being flown for treatment to Ramstein and
another base in Germany. A well-known CNN moderator kept calling the
American base in Germany "Ramsteen." As the BBC once had so correctly
feared, thinking about the wrong pronunciation made me miss a bit of the
report. Ramstein has been around for a very well long time and has come up
again and again over the years, and there are definitely people at CNN, even
in Atlanta, who know how to pronounce it. I couldn't help but think that a
broadcaster who couldn't make the effort to verify the pronunciation of a
foreign base perhaps couldn't be bothered to make an effort to check the
facts of his report. The BBC and other serious broadcasters figured out a
long time ago that every single element of story had to be right. The old
days, those were the days!
Regards, ----- WB. |
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Roland Hutchinson
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 3:40 am
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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Wayne Brown wrote:
| Quote: | The BBC figured out from the
outset that a broadcaster venturing into the world arena should make every
effort to present an approximate pronunciation of people's names, the
names
of foreign publications, geographical locations and much more because
they believed gross mistakes would distract listeners' attention from the
message that a broadcaster was trying to get across. The BBC set up a
pronunciation unit to provide immediate and accurate support to its
broadcast services at Bush House. The result was admirable and for many
years the BBC was a model for many a broadcaster far and wide. If one's
Swahili wasn't very strong and there was a Swahili word in the news, then
just listen to the BBC to find out how to pronounce it correctly. But they
didn't excel just in Swahili, their pronunciation of most names, including
those of Soviet politicians in the news, could serve as a standard. I had
to think of the BBC and its high standards as I watched a report last
night on CNN about the latest US.military casualties in Iraq being flown
for treatment to Ramstein and another base in Germany. A well-known CNN
moderator kept calling the American base in Germany "Ramsteen." As the BBC
once had so correctly feared, thinking about the wrong pronunciation made
me miss a bit of the report. Ramstein has been around for a very well long
time and has come up again and again over the years, and there are
definitely people at CNN, even in Atlanta, who know how to pronounce it. I
couldn't help but think that a broadcaster who couldn't make the effort to
verify the pronunciation of a foreign base perhaps couldn't be bothered to
make an effort to check the facts of his report. The BBC and other serious
broadcasters figured out a long time ago that every single element of
story had to be right. The old days, those were the days!
|
The sequel to that story is of course that after the BBC pronunciation unit
was forced to pay its own way by charging other departments, it had to
close up shop because even at the Beeb no one was willing to support it out
of their own departmental budgets.
--
Roland Hutchinson Will play viola da gamba for food.
NB mail to my.spamtrap [at] verizon.net is heavily filtered to
remove spam. If your message looks like spam I may not see it. |
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Don Aitken
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Dec 24, 2004 5:19 am
Post subject: Re: Khrushchev and Brezhnev - pronunciation |
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On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:40:59 -0500, Roland Hutchinson
<my.spamtrap@verizon.net> wrote:
| Quote: | Wayne Brown wrote:
The BBC figured out from the
outset that a broadcaster venturing into the world arena should make every
effort to present an approximate pronunciation of people's names, the
names of foreign publications, geographical locations and much more because
they believed gross mistakes would distract listeners' attention from the
message that a broadcaster was trying to get across. The BBC set up a
pronunciation unit to provide immediate and accurate support to its
broadcast services at Bush House.
|
[snip]
| Quote: | The sequel to that story is of course that after the BBC pronunciation unit
was forced to pay its own way by charging other departments, it had to
close up shop because even at the Beeb no one was willing to support it out
of their own departmental budgets.
|
Not so. The Unit still exists, but it seems from this interview with a
newsreader that they are not encouraged to use it; doubtless some
managerial-type person has to approve such requests.
------------
Alastair Williams: What happens when there is a word you can't
pronounce or find difficult to say.
Philip Hayton: The BBC has a pronunciation unit and the people in
there spend their lives trying to pronounce things. You just do your
best or ask everyone in the studio if you can't get to them. We
usually have a pretty good guess at it. It's unusual that names come
completely out of the blue.
--------------
From
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/communities/onionstreet/liveguests/interviews/philiphayton.shtml>
There are several other recent items on the BBC site which refer to
the Pronunciation Unit. The "Producers' Guidelines" at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/producer_guides/text/section4.shtml
says (about halfway down the page, under "Style and Language") that:
"Pronunciation of names and places should be correct. BBC newsrooms
and the BBC Pronunciation Unit can give advice."
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com". |
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