Vladimir Nabokov

NABOKV-L post 0003996, Mon, 26 Apr 1999 08:19:07 -0700

Subject
Re: squawk, gawk, and spoke (fwd)
Date
Body
From: Philosophers <J.Goodenough@uea.ac.uk>

> 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."

Oh well! If Matt has inherited the speech of anywhere near Bow then it is no
surprise if his vowels are somewhat extreme! My guess is that my own "Nabokov"
falls about halfway between his 'gawk of' and your 'spoke of'.

By the way, in the BBC World Service programme I referred to in an earlier
message, VN was referred to as Vla-DEEM-er Na-BOCK-off, which is the first time
I have heard his name pronounced anywhere near correctly on the radio in a long
time. This may well be because you tend to get a higher standard of
pronunciation (and English in general) on the World Service than on BBC's
domestic services.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
|* 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 *|
--------------------------------------------------------------------