In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Petr Kuzmic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> ...
> In contrast, most folks probably remember a name that had been in the
> daily news a decade or so ago: GorbachEv pronounced "G[a]rba_chov_" in
> Russian. Even NPR, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc., announcers were always
> pronouncing this correctly, with "_chov_" at the end.
It's because the letter there is 'yo' - "e-umlaut" as you call it here :)
Yes, Russian newspapers often omit the two dots above 'e' - a native
speaker will still read it as 'yo'. Good-prepared books, though, usually type
the letter 'yo' correctly - with 2 dots above it.
>
> As far as the umlaut on '...ev', my impression is that it is an older or
> slightly obsolescent spelling of many words with that ending.
No. It's a _regular_ letter 'yo' of Russian alphabet. It's just common for
native speakers to write it as 'e' without 2 dots...
>
> Also, if I remember correctly from all those years of (pretty much
> forced) Russian studies, the "...ev" is pronounced "...ov" only if there
> is accent on it. Compare with Mr. Mendel_e_ev (the periodic man), whose
> name is pronounced with "...ev" because the accent is on the
> pen-ultimate syllable.
No, because the letter there is 'e' while 'Gorbachev' has a _different_
letter of Russian alphabet in it - 'yo' ('e' with 2 dots).
So, the prononciation rule is very simple - different letters are pronounced
differently :)
--
Regards,
Paul Gorodyansky
"Cyrillic (Russian): instructions for Windows and Internet":
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PaulGor/
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