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Re: squawk, gawk, and spoke (fwd)
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Anatoly Vorobey <mellon@pobox.com>
My native Russian tells me that 'Nabokov' doesn't rhyme with 'spoke of'
at all; the diphthong sound of 'spoke of' is absent in Russian, which is
why Russian native speakers often mispronounce it in English as a
juxtaposition of two distinct vowels ('go-oo', 'spo-oo-k of'). The
stressed vowel is Nabokov is definitely closer to that in 'squawk', 'gawk'
(or 'God' in the traditionally British pronunciation). 'Nabokov' does
not technically rhyme with 'love' because the stressed syllables are
different; when Nabokov said it did, he meant the *last* syllable of
'Nabokov', which is reduced to schwa in pronunciation, as unstressed
vowels in Russian generally are.
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton
My native Russian tells me that 'Nabokov' doesn't rhyme with 'spoke of'
at all; the diphthong sound of 'spoke of' is absent in Russian, which is
why Russian native speakers often mispronounce it in English as a
juxtaposition of two distinct vowels ('go-oo', 'spo-oo-k of'). The
stressed vowel is Nabokov is definitely closer to that in 'squawk', 'gawk'
(or 'God' in the traditionally British pronunciation). 'Nabokov' does
not technically rhyme with 'love' because the stressed syllables are
different; when Nabokov said it did, he meant the *last* syllable of
'Nabokov', which is reduced to schwa in pronunciation, as unstressed
vowels in Russian generally are.
--
Anatoly Vorobey,
mellon@pobox.com http://pobox.com/~mellon/
"Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly" - G.K.Chesterton