Quote:
Originally Posted by library addict
Did you listen to Nalini's interview on NewstalkZB? She pronounced his name as Val-in-ten (not like Valintine with a long "I"). She pronounced it the same way I would have guessed (that is not like the holiday).
How did the narrator pronounce it? Also Anastasia in Russian is with a short "a" sound in the middle, not An-a-stay-zee-a like I've heard it pronounced a lot.
I am by no means an expert. I took two years of Russian in high school, but still had to google most of the phrases in the book. |
I'm listening to the interview now, and she says Valentin the way I expected - with the stress on the first syllable. But the audiobook narrator is both 1) stressing the second syllable instead and 2) sometimes she's ending it with "ian" instead of "in". Think of how you'd say Se-BAS-tee-un. She's more than half the time saying Val-IN-tee-un. Arrgh.
Like you, I studied Russian long ago (I was in college, not high school, but that was almost 40 years ago!!) So I understand about the "a" being more like "ah". To my mind, it would be AHN-uh-STAH-seeya, not Ahn-uh-stuh-SEE-ya.
But I also admit that it's been a long time since I was exposed to anything but the most peripheral Russian (two of my co-workers speak it, so we all say the Hi, and How Are you....but then I'm out of conversation.
)