Quick response to today's F!S

[perpetual_motion]

Someone posted today about how Checkov's accent in Trek has always been a sticking point. Because Chekov can always pronounce his first name but has trouble saying "victor" and other words beginning with 'v'.

For most of my childhood, I could pronounce the letter 'r' correctly as long as it was at the beginning of a word. However, I couldn't pronounce the 'r' if there was a vowel in front of it. It came out as a flat 'a' sound similar to the stereotypical Boston or Brooklyn accent. People who talk to me now probably have no idea that I had a speech impediment [and a pretty bad one] back in the day. Couple of years of speech therapy helped clear it up, and the rest of its faded over time.

My point is this: There's a difference between hitting the 'v' in "Pavel" and hitting the 'v' in "victor". Placement is everything, and while I can't speak to how a Russian accent with English words actually sounds, it makes sense that someone could pronounce their own name due to the placement of the trouble letter [I could always hit my middle name no problem] and screw up the letter when it's in a different place in another word.

Disagree with me if you've got more knowledge of linguistics or Russian accents.

[Kate, did not, in fact, make me do it. I just haven't whipped out this icon in awhile.]

Comments

[leaper182.livejournal.com]

Y'know? I hadn't realized that there was a V in Pavel's first name until you pointed it out just now? Because I'm totally oblivious.

It was kind of interesting catching "inwisible". You could argue that with a vowel in front of it, it's a V, and with a consonant or the beginning of the word is a W. *nod*

[amazonqueenkate.livejournal.com]

I was reading about this the other day, actually. Despite the fact that there are Vs in the Russian language, they function differently than those in English. It's sort of like the R/L problem in Japanese and other Asian languages; they have a version of the letter, but because they function differently, the movement over to English leads to mispronunciation (you know, the whole "flied lice" thing). The same happens with V and W for Russians.

He can say the V in Pavel and Chekov because the letter flat-out functions the way he's used to. In the other words, it doesn't.

I am such a nerd.

[perpet-fic.livejournal.com]

I love that you're a linguistics nerd. It gives scholarly backing to my off the cuff theories.