[FizzyWater]

Originally Posted by omk3

Sounds something like chitatel(v) - the v in the end is barely heard, it seems.
It is easy to find how a russian word is pronounced if you just look at the alphabet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet.

Originally Posted by HarryT

It's pronounced "chit-a-tell". I think it's rather a nice word!

Hmmm...it's been years (and years) since my college Russian classes. I would have said this would be more like:

chee-TOT-l.

The character at the end isn't the "v" in Russian, but a character that denotes whether to make the consonant "hard" or "soft". If I remember correctly, this is the "soft" character. So you de-emphasize the "L" sound.

Maybe that's close to Harry's - but to me, Harry's version looks a lot like citadel, with the emphasis on the last syllable, where I believe this would have the emphasis on the second and sort of swallow the last one.

But I'll be the first to admit, I'm long out of practice and could be wrong!