Speaking of pronunciation

[Atticus]

With Ukraine in the news so much, I heard the proper pronunciation of its capital and was shocked how badly Murkans butcher it.

I thought it was

Key-ev

but give a listen here; it's much closer to

Kay-ee-yu

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/u...login=facebook

[tandfman]

I've been there, and I don't recall anyone pronouncing it that way. On the other hand, nobody there was speaking to me in Ukrainian. The Ukrainians speaking to me (e.g., in the hotel) may have been pronouncing it in a way that they expected that I would better understand it. It's also possible that some of the people who spoke to me (again, hotel and restaurant employees) may not themselves have been Ukrainian.

There's also the question of how you spell it. Wiki sez both Kiev and Kyiv are ok, and neither is pronounced the way it's pronounced on that NYTimes audio.

[gh]

and we use the National Geographic spelling: Kyyiv

(but no matter what, it'll always be Chicken Kiev :-)

[Pego]

I never heard it pronounce any other than kee-yev.

[gh]

that's old-school Russian apparently. From NYT briefing this morning

<<Yuri Shevchuk, a lecturer in Ukrainian at Columbia University, said Ukrainians stressed the first vowel, and pronounced it like the “i” in the word “kid.” The second vowel sounds like the “ee” sound in “keel,” and the “v” is also pronounced like the end of the word “low.” (It’s a bit hard to describe; there is an audio clip here.)

In Russian, Kiev sounds more like “KEY-ev.” But U.S. State Department employees generally try to pronounce it the Ukrainian way — though at some points on Wednesday it sounded more like “keev,” with the long “ee” pronounced as a single syllable.>>

[bobguild76]

I never heard it pronounce any other than kee-yev.

Same here.

One other thing ... as my Ukrainian foreign exchange daughter told me years ago, it is Ukraine, NOT "the" Ukraine. Any more than we say, the Brazil or the Russia or the Canada.

[tandfman]

Yes, but Bronx County, New York, is still The Bronx.

And then there's The Gambia.

[dukehjsteve]

Peking to Peiping to Beijing

[tandfman]

Interestingly, I've seen Peking Duck on menus in Beijing. I guess some things don't change.

[Django]

Years ago, I was in Oxford, England, and wanted to travel by train through Slough ( I've forgotten now why I had that plan. I went to the ticket window, and requested a ticket to "souff", and the ticket agent smiled, and said, "oh, you mean 'Slow' ((pronounced like sow), Sir)!
On another occasion, I was in Marseille, and took a taxi. In my limited French, I asked the driver how to properly pronounce the name of the nearby town, Cassis. He laughed, and explained that,locals pronounced the terminal s, while Parisians did not.