pronouncing russian names
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff
ПеребЫйнис (Is this the Russian spelling of Перебийніс ?)
This is a Ukrainian name (and Перебийніс is its Ukrainian spelling), the correct stress is ПеребыйнИс.
A lot of English speakers have so much trouble with stress in Russian names, especially the ones like kurnikova, kafelnikov, etc. It is not a problem of just guessing right, but also of pronunciation. I even have russian friends who stress their own name on the next to last syllable when introducing themselves, which sounds really strange.
I believe the main reason is the vowel reduction, or rather the lack of it in English speech. In Russian, only the stressed vowel is pronounced fully, and the following one gets about half effort. all the others are reduced almost to schwa (not quite a schwa but close, there are 2 kinds one for a/o one for e/i). It comes very natural and most russians do not realize that they are even doing it. it took me a great deal of effort to get rid of it in my english speech.
Now, english speakers do not reduce their vowels nearly as much, and in "kUrnikova" they try to say that last "o" as "o"(in reality it is a very short "uh", similar to the first vowel in "computer"). In a long name like this it is only possible to do by putting the stress there (and they put a secondary stress, another feature of English difficult for russians to reproduce, at the first "u").
Conversely, my friend places the stress on "-ina" in her name because english speakers are typically not able to distinguish the reduced vowels, so when she pronounced the name correctly, they would often ask again, so she got fed up and now does it in a wrong but more understandable way.
Generally, the correct vowel reduction is something a foreigner must learn if he or she wants to ever be taken for a real Russian, it does sound very impressive when foreign students do it correctly (although very few do).