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Re: squawk, gawk, and spoke (fwd)
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Tim Henderson<thenders@mail.lanline.com> wrote:
Good point: I'm sorry to stereotype the rich variety of language in the
UK. I'm using for my example Matt Davies, our editorial cartoonist, who
says he was born and raised in London, outside the sound of Bow Bells.
He understood the difficulty immediately and his "gawk of" sounds very
much like "Nabokov." My West-by-Midwestern-US tongue produces the sound,
as I said, only in "spoke of."
> From: Philosophers <J.Goodenough@uea.ac.uk>
>
> Jerry Goodenough writes:
>
> There is much reference in this debate to "British" pronunciation of
> VN's name,
> though there is, of course, no such thing, pronunciation in this
> country no
> doubt varying as much as it does in the States.
>
> I speak a pretty flat southern English - a little like BBC Received
> Pronunciation, though somewhat rougher round the edges (my
> working-class
> origins!), and certainly not to be confused with the (to my ears)
> horribly
> strained noise made by aristocrats and the Royal Family with their
> vowel
> sounds. I can mark the difference here easily: the Queen pronounces
> the
> words 'oral' and 'aural' differently, but in my accent they sound the
> same.
>
> That said, the central syllable of Nabokov for me rhymes almost
> exactly with
> CLOCK. (This may be of no help to Americans, since their hard o sound
> is
> different - an American CLOCK comes out a little closer to my CLARK.)
> But
> what I get is Vla-DEE-mur Na-BOCK-uf. Which I thought was pretty much
> in
> line with what VN himself wrote somewhere.
>
> Interestingly, on the rare occasions when I hear VN referred to on the
> radio,
> the BBC (like Sting!) always seem to call him NABBER-kov. Since they
> have
> access to an expert pronunciation unit for foreign words, I wonder why
>
> they say it this way.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> |* Dr. Jerry Goodenough
> *|
> |* Philosophy Sector Tel: +44 (0)1603-593406
> *|
> |* School of Economic & Social Studies Fax: +44 (0)1603-250434
> *|
> |* University of East Anglia E: j.goodenough@uea.ac.uk
> *|
> |* Norwich NR4 7TJ England
> *|
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Tim Henderson, Asst. Systems Editor
The Journal News
1 Gannett Drive
White Plains, NY 10604
thenders@mail.lanline.com
(914) 694-5309
Good point: I'm sorry to stereotype the rich variety of language in the
UK. I'm using for my example Matt Davies, our editorial cartoonist, who
says he was born and raised in London, outside the sound of Bow Bells.
He understood the difficulty immediately and his "gawk of" sounds very
much like "Nabokov." My West-by-Midwestern-US tongue produces the sound,
as I said, only in "spoke of."
> From: Philosophers <J.Goodenough@uea.ac.uk>
>
> Jerry Goodenough writes:
>
> There is much reference in this debate to "British" pronunciation of
> VN's name,
> though there is, of course, no such thing, pronunciation in this
> country no
> doubt varying as much as it does in the States.
>
> I speak a pretty flat southern English - a little like BBC Received
> Pronunciation, though somewhat rougher round the edges (my
> working-class
> origins!), and certainly not to be confused with the (to my ears)
> horribly
> strained noise made by aristocrats and the Royal Family with their
> vowel
> sounds. I can mark the difference here easily: the Queen pronounces
> the
> words 'oral' and 'aural' differently, but in my accent they sound the
> same.
>
> That said, the central syllable of Nabokov for me rhymes almost
> exactly with
> CLOCK. (This may be of no help to Americans, since their hard o sound
> is
> different - an American CLOCK comes out a little closer to my CLARK.)
> But
> what I get is Vla-DEE-mur Na-BOCK-uf. Which I thought was pretty much
> in
> line with what VN himself wrote somewhere.
>
> Interestingly, on the rare occasions when I hear VN referred to on the
> radio,
> the BBC (like Sting!) always seem to call him NABBER-kov. Since they
> have
> access to an expert pronunciation unit for foreign words, I wonder why
>
> they say it this way.
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> |* Dr. Jerry Goodenough
> *|
> |* Philosophy Sector Tel: +44 (0)1603-593406
> *|
> |* School of Economic & Social Studies Fax: +44 (0)1603-250434
> *|
> |* University of East Anglia E: j.goodenough@uea.ac.uk
> *|
> |* Norwich NR4 7TJ England
> *|
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Tim Henderson, Asst. Systems Editor
The Journal News
1 Gannett Drive
White Plains, NY 10604
thenders@mail.lanline.com
(914) 694-5309