----- Original Message -----

From: Mark Odegard

To: phoNet@egroups.com

Sent: Saturday, October 07, 2000 2:14 AM

Subject: [phoNet] Serbian.

At least the essentials of IPA should be taught in schools worldwide, if only to facilitate learning foreign languages or the pronunciation of foreign names. Some printing houses (especially in Europe) already make a point of using IPA in the dictionaries and encyclopaedias they publish.

 

I've seen worse than this. The spellings you quote are quite consistent (although God knows why Nebojs^a has a final "ah" while Kus^tunica has "uh"). Admittedly, an American reader might get the absurd impression that all Slavic vowels should be tortured by drawling or tensing, as in ['neI boI Sa:] etc. (French vowels often suffer the same indignity in the mouths of English-speakers). Then, those Americans for whom "aw" = "ah" might be tempted to yawn out [sla: 'ba: da:n], while, ironically, something more naturally English like [sl@ 'boU d@n] (if this is the correct stress pattern) would be more comprehensible even to a Slavic ear.

 

"Slobodan", by the way, is an originally epithetic "wishing" name; it derives from *slobodInU, a South Slavic variant of *svobodInU 'free, independent' (cf. svoboda 'liberty, freedom' in a number of Slavic languages). An oddly inappropriate name in this case.

 

Piotr

 

 

 

Mark wrote:

 

... I offer this as a prime example of AmE 'eye-spelling', our home-grown, hopelessly unscientific, hopelessly imprecise phonetic spelling system.

 

 

 

            Vojislav Kostunica - VAW-yee-slahv
            kosh-TOO'-nee-tzuh

 

            Slobodan Milosevic - slaw-BAW'-dahn
            mee-LAW'-sheh-vitch

 

            Milan Panic - MEE'-lan PAN'-itch

 

            Milan Milutinovic - MEE'-lan mee-loo-TEE'-naw-vitch

 

            Nebojsa Pavkovic - NEH'-boy-shah PAHV'-kaw-vitch

 

            Dragan Tomic - DRAH'-gahn TAW'-mitch.

 

Even before he became notorious, the name 'Slobodan' provoked giggles in English, first because of the apparent element 'slob' in his name, and among older Americans, associations from the old comic strip L'il Abner and it's joke nation of 'Lower Slobbovia', a frozen realm where everyone spoke a fractured faux-Yiddish/Russian.