--- Sergejus Tarasovas <
S.Tarasovas@...> wrote:
> >
> > I was wondering if the Russian translitteration
> Western h- > Russian
> > g- had anything to do with the status of the Dutch
> language under
> > Peter the Great (and with that language's later
> replacement by German
> > under Catharina, which would mean a development in
> some loaned words
> > G- > g-)?
> >
>
> I don't know, but I'm quite happy with the standard
> explanation (Russian
> Church Slavonic orthoepical norm, established in
> times of the "Second
> South Slavic influence" under the influence of
> pronunciational habits of
> teachers with Ukrainian or other *g > [G]/[h]
> background).
>
> Sergei
******GK: Just as a small aside on this discussion of
Russian G and KH for Western H. I know from somewhere
that some Russian dialects do have the pronunciation H
(the southern ones e.g. from Kursk and Oryol(?) and
would have no problem in pronouncing Holmes as Holms
rather than Golms or Kholms. Has there been any
discussion as to the possibility of adopting this into
the standard all-Russian, or are the latter's norms
too firmly established? Ukrainian of course has the H
but in Soviet times due to the influence of Russian,
frequently imitated it re e.g. KHeminGway et sim. and
even today there are constant discussions as to the
desirability of eliminating such unnecessary (to the
standard language) pronunciations. One interesting
side effect was the massive presence (in Russian
influenced Ukraine before 1991) of "hiperizatsiia" (I
think Piotr mentioned this term earlier) i.e. the use
of an H pronunciation instead of the normal G just to
avoid the latter (and Kh). And this was "unconscious".
I remember a speech by Shcherbyts'kyj, the General
Secretary of the Ukr. Communist Party at a function
honouring the Ukrainian poetess Lesia Ukrainka who
spoke of her as a "henii" (genius) not "genii"
obviously not realizing what he was doing (Sh. was a
100% lackey of the central Soviet gov. and its
linguistic policies.)******
>
>
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