Subject
Re: FW: Speaking of Ties and "Os" and Bows [originally sent
7/2/06]
7/2/06]
From
Date
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Dear Jerry,
Thanks for yours, and no need for apologies. It was all in good fun, yet
your therapeutic intent was clear. As for Nab - ? - kov, I might mention
that I just had a visitor who, by chance, was not a reader of VN and,
was, in fact, totally bewildered by walls filled with the works of a
sole author, totally unknown to her to boot.. She is a product of US
education, an attorney by trade, and as American as April in Arizona
(even if she does happen to hail from Texas). Well, she spelled my first
name, on the first try, without benefit of a superfluous "i", a
privilege that only my homonym the hockey forward has heretofore
enjoyed; and, mirabile dictu, pronounced our family name not with the
compromise we've all done spoke of, but with an impeccable Slavic "o".
So the Amurrican morphology is capable of it! Instead of dispatching
dozens of Nabokovians on a wild chase whose fruit was not a goose but
only a goose egg, why does Merriam Webster overtax the capabilies of
that nice ponytailed graduate student and her amorphous schwa, rather
than inviting a real Russian -- like me -- to the recording studio to
"hear Nabokov pronounced"?
Sincerely,
Dmitri Nabokov
PS: Incidentally, I do have a photo of a college-age VN with an elegant
papillon (bow tie).
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Thanks for yours, and no need for apologies. It was all in good fun, yet
your therapeutic intent was clear. As for Nab - ? - kov, I might mention
that I just had a visitor who, by chance, was not a reader of VN and,
was, in fact, totally bewildered by walls filled with the works of a
sole author, totally unknown to her to boot.. She is a product of US
education, an attorney by trade, and as American as April in Arizona
(even if she does happen to hail from Texas). Well, she spelled my first
name, on the first try, without benefit of a superfluous "i", a
privilege that only my homonym the hockey forward has heretofore
enjoyed; and, mirabile dictu, pronounced our family name not with the
compromise we've all done spoke of, but with an impeccable Slavic "o".
So the Amurrican morphology is capable of it! Instead of dispatching
dozens of Nabokovians on a wild chase whose fruit was not a goose but
only a goose egg, why does Merriam Webster overtax the capabilies of
that nice ponytailed graduate student and her amorphous schwa, rather
than inviting a real Russian -- like me -- to the recording studio to
"hear Nabokov pronounced"?
Sincerely,
Dmitri Nabokov
PS: Incidentally, I do have a photo of a college-age VN with an elegant
papillon (bow tie).
Search the archive: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu,chtodel@cox.net
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm