The other day I heard a Ukrainian journalist on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday. She had barely any accent; in fact, I would not have thought she was a second-language speaker at all except for her pronunciation of these words:
Disrupt and increasing: she pronounced them with a z sound instead of an s sound
Ripple: this she pronounced reeple (and used twice, so it was very noticeable)
Catastrophe: she also used this twice, and pronounced is cat-us-strof. While there are many words that we all learn from reading, and then sometimes mispronounce (including other words that end in "e," like epitome and hyperbole, I've never heard a native English speaker say catastrophe incorrectly. Maybe because it's a more common word?
I have a friend who's originally from St. Petersburg and also fluent in English. Her accent is more pronounced, and this use of z for s and ee in words like ripple is familiar from listening to her. This journalist, however, had otherwise unaccented speech, so hearing these little tells was at first surprising and then like a radio treasure hunt as I listened for other ones.
Russian and Ukrainian are not the same linguistically, but I gather from this that they are similar enough that they lead to similar effects on their accents in English.
1 comment:
I remember our pediatrician, Russian-born, always encouraging the eating of “leever.” Despite that food tip, she was an excellent doctor, now retired.
She had somehow latched onto the word “guys” as a bit of Americanese, but pronounced without the “z” sound. (A hypercorrection for a non-native speaker?) So it was “Leever, geiss.” My kids can attest that I’m not making this up.
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