--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
> What's wrong with "Pouchkine", "Lénine", "Gorbatchev", "Poutine" ?
> This is a standard translitteration into French phonetics.
In a weekend spirit, let me make the following reasoning.
"Lénine": French pronunciation <le'nin>
But Russian pronunciation is <'ljenin>
The French transliteration results in a wrong stress
(And let us pass over the wrong rendering of Russian /je/, which is
shared by most of other foreign renderings of Lenin's name, although
here in Italy learned people write it "Lenin" but generally
pronounce it correctly as <'ljenin>)
"Poutine": French pronunciation <pu'tin>
But Russian pronunciation is <'putjin>
The French transliteration results in a wrong stress
(In Italian or English renderings: no stress problems)
"Pouchkine": French pronounciation <push'kin>
But Russian pronounciation is <'pushkjin>
Wrong stress again!
(In the Italian or English renderings: no stress problems)
I could go on endlessly with examples of words, selected from any
language of the world, that the "very scientific" rules applied to
the standard transliteration into French phonetics would invariably
turn into words with wrong stress (and dubious renderings of vowels).
That is what most irritates me. All other languages are made
subservient to the "rules" of French phonetics inasmuch as the
latter must be evidently the "correct" ones, no matter if the rest
of the world don't speak that way!
======
The major problem is stress is a completely unknown thing to monolingual
French speakers.
About as ununderstandable as Chinese tones to most Europeans.
Pitch or length is mainly a demarcative device and there is no lexical
accentuation in French.
I suppose you know that.
To be frank, I was expecting somethink a little bit more intelligent from
you, Francesco.
Your criticism is particularly stupid and underinformed.
I once had a Russian colleague from Siberia
His name was Neretin and it sounded [neritin] with no palatal consonant at
all.
Your "Russian" pronunciation is probably the literary orthoepy
but I think many Russians do not follow it.
I have no idea what the dialectology of Russian is.
Mainly this could be an interesting thing to discuss, if somebody feels like
it.
Usually, French transliteration of cyrillic is straightforward.
The only adjustement is the addition of -e to avoid nasal vowels as in
Lenin-e.
Most palatal miagki znaki are also discarded as they make no sense to a
French speaker.
If you had tried to write something intelligent, you may have noticed that
the French transliteration does not take into account the fact that many
surnames written -ev are in fact pronunced -ëv [yof] in Russian. Hence
Khroutchev, Gorbatchev etc
This tradition is definitely the most questionable point
as Khroutchyov, Gorbatchyov would be perfectly acceptable.
You missed the only thing intelligent you could have said on this matter.
If I had a reform to suggest, that would be to change this point.
Arnaud
============
Now the French have also turned their new First Lady, the Italian
top-model Carla Bruni (Italian pronunciation: <'carla 'bruni>) into
<caR'la bRy'ni>: wrong stress again, both in her first name and
surname! I would like to suggest the French government to officially
spell this name as "Cârla Brûni" to avoid its mispronunciation in
France (let's pass over the inevitable use of the French R to
pronounce it, although that type of R is certainly not found in the
original...). But this, of course, would never be possible because
it would go against the "scientific rules" of French phonetics!
Happy weekend!
Francesco
=======
I'm not sure she is especially interested in emphasizing she is Italian
born.
And I'm afraid no graphic gimmick will help italianize the pronunciation.
Do you think it necessary to change Sarkozy into Charcosis to be closer to
the Hungarian original ??
A.