linguistic emergency!priestess_grrrlMay 4 2006, 03:21:39 UTC
Okay, maybe not an emergency, but I thought that might get your attention. ^_^
So I have this new friend and fellow smut writer online who is Russian, and I really want to know how to pronounce her name. Except we only know each other online, and she doesn't know IPA or have any technical way of telling me how to say it. It's transliterated "Asya" and she says it's pronounced "something like [Ah-ssiah]" but "none of the non-Russian speakers can pronounce it" and she also says it sounds like "I see you," which contradicts [Ah-ssiah] but as I said, she doesn't know IPA symbols so... yeah.
She also said Russians often think it's short for "Anastasia" which in the Cyrillic alphabet is spelled Анастасия, which would make her name Aсия. The letter я is supposedly pronounced in English as "ya" as in "yard", but I wasn't able to Google a decent IPA chart with the Russian vowels clearly marked. Why я would be pronounced [u] is a mystery to me, but maybe it's a dialect, or maybe it's actually not я at all but another vowel entirely, which sounds a bit like [u], and which transliterates into the Roman alphabet as "a".
Thoughts? Help me, obi-wan-katarina, you're my only hope! (er, at least, the only one of my friends who is going to give a damn)
Re: linguistic emergency!meiteneMay 4 2006, 15:07:28 UTC
Okay, it seems like your friend's name is something more or less like this: asij(schwa) with stress on the i. With that stress, it would sound rather close to "I see ya". That Я sound is a soft series vowel, that palatalizes or "softens" the preceding consonant or inserts as a /j/ between two vowels. I hope this helps.
Re: linguistic emergency!priestess_grrrlMay 4 2006, 22:19:03 UTC
yeah, that would be awesome! I can call you back cuz I have free long distance. Sun I will be seeing Wicked in Boston, but Sat I should be around... and Fri, prolly...
Re: linguistic emergency!priestess_grrrlMay 5 2006, 01:04:22 UTC
Thank you! Yeah, I read about the hard and soft vowels. I didn't think about "I see ya" as opposed to "I see you"... she probably didn't mean for me to think it was [u] at all. But I am curious as to why she has the impression that English speakers are unable to pronounce her name. Is Я a vowel that is particularly difficult for English speakers? Is there any other difference between Я and [j(schwa)] besides the palatization?
These are the days when I wish I were still in school and I could just ask Brian (Joseph) about it...
So I have this new friend and fellow smut writer online who is Russian, and I really want to know how to pronounce her name. Except we only know each other online, and she doesn't know IPA or have any technical way of telling me how to say it. It's transliterated "Asya" and she says it's pronounced "something like [Ah-ssiah]" but "none of the non-Russian speakers can pronounce it" and she also says it sounds like "I see you," which contradicts [Ah-ssiah] but as I said, she doesn't know IPA symbols so... yeah.
She also said Russians often think it's short for "Anastasia" which in the Cyrillic alphabet is spelled Анастасия, which would make her name Aсия. The letter я is supposedly pronounced in English as "ya" as in "yard", but I wasn't able to Google a decent IPA chart with the Russian vowels clearly marked. Why я would be pronounced [u] is a mystery to me, but maybe it's a dialect, or maybe it's actually not я at all but another vowel entirely, which sounds a bit like [u], and which transliterates into the Roman alphabet as "a".
Thoughts? Help me, obi-wan-katarina, you're my only hope! (er, at least, the only one of my friends who is going to give a damn)
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Thanks!!
Work is kicking my ass right now, but maybe I can give you a call this weekend.
XOXOXOXO
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These are the days when I wish I were still in school and I could just ask Brian (Joseph) about it...
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