Pronunciation watch (cont) - Janacek

[jillfc]

French place and personal names are notoriously unpredictable. In place names, the final 's' or 'z' is often pronounced, and I believe this is also the case for personal names. No-one ever knows how to pronounce Jean Francaix because he keeps changing his mind. If one is heading for the Normandy coast, one is heading 'au Havre'; if (though I'd rather not) one was heading for a meeting with a far right French politician, one would not be moving au Pen.

[french frank]

I take your point, ff: but I assure you that in the course of my brief acquaintance with C Mackerras his pronunciation of 'Janacek' corresponded, both in stress and vowel sounds, with 'anarchic'.

I will happily take your word for it . However, if you were to ask the native speaker of more or less any language where the stress fell in that language, I would guess they'd be a bit flummoxed because if you learn a language (particularly by ear rather from a text book) you don't think about such issues.

Whatever Sir C said on the occasion you heard him, the fact remains that stress in Czech falls on the first syllable. As my example of Boulez shows, even native speakers vary their pronunciation. In linguistic terms, this is no more than variation, not a matter of being right or wrong.

English has a very strong stress, so there's usually no doubt as to where the stress falls; but even that can vary if a speaker wants to make a particular point. In other languages where the stress is weaker there can be a tendency for it to wander. That's fine. It's language as she is spoke. But it would be incorrect to insist that Janáček 'is' stressed on the second syllable, whatever any given speaker (native or otherwise) might say, or appear to say, on any single occasion. 'Classic' pronunciation would put the stress on the first syllable.

[french frank]

I hear various pronunciations from examples on the net.

This one, one definitely first (+ 3 votes), one definitely second (-1), one sort of equal (0)http://www.forvo.com/word/leo%C5%A1_jan%C3%A1%C4%8Dek/

And so on. I think what I say, definitely, is that I disagree with the original statement that the name 'is' stressed on the second syllable ... There appears to be variability in practice.

[jillfc]

ff: you'll see from post #2 that I instinctively tend to agree with you, having stuck with an equal accentuation of Janacek (and Sarkozy and the rest). Few languages are absolute in terms of stress. When I was learning Welsh, I was told that the stress fell on the second syllable. I soon learned that there were so many exceptions as to make the principle entirely unreliable. Mae hi'n bwrw glaw heddiw. Need I say more?

[Richard Tarleton]

I don't believe this

The thing about English speakers is that they find it difficult to pronounce a long vowel without stressing it. The second 'a' of Janáček (á) is long. The first first 'a' is shorter. My theory is that English speakers are hearing a stress when in fact they are merely hearing a long syllable.

This is a matter of phonetics rather than language as such.

From the point of view of phonetics, I agree with this: "Stress is always on the first syllable in Czech"

Or, perhaps, this: "Stress falls almost always on the first syllable. As in French, accents (á, é, etc.) sometimes affect the pronunciation of vowels, but do not imply stress (e.g. Janáček = yah-nah-chek)

Or this: "Stress is always on the first syllable of a word."

Best of all: "Primary stress falls on the first syllable, and there is secondary stress falls [sic] on long vowels."

Or: "Differences in vowel quantity have also been preserved in Czech and Slovak, in which new long vowels developed as a result of contraction. A fixed stress accent is found in the West Slavic languages as well as Macedonian, in contrast to Proto-Slavic, Serbian and Croatian, Slovene, Bulgarian, and the East Slavic languages. In Czech and Slovak, as well as in Sorbian and Southern Kashubian, stress is fixed on the first syllable of the word, but in Polish, Eastern Slovak, and Southern Macedonian, it falls on the next to the last syllable of the word"

And so on...

In French, the stress, such as it is, is (almost) invariably on the final. But, yes, I once heard Boulez say something suspiciously like RA-vel. And so he might. But on another occasion he might (more 'correctly') say Ra-VEL. In any given circumstance there may (or may not) be a reason for deviation. A friend of mine swears he heard Bryn Terfel 'insisting' that his name was pronounce Tair-VEL. I'm sure my friend was, on that occasion right. It doesn't alter the fact that Bryn would most certainly agree that his name was stressed on the first syllable.

Such are the mysteries of stress

Fascinating stuff ff, thank you. I should have stayed for a longer conversation, but the poor lad was trying to eat his meal - his answer to my simple question was also simple, but perhaps I did not realise the complexity of what I was asking and did not appreciate the subtleties of his reply.

[amateur51]

A friend of mine swears he heard Bryn Terfel 'insisting' that his name was pronounce Tair-VEL. I'm sure my friend was, on that occasion right. It doesn't alter the fact that Bryn would most certainly agree that his name was stressed on the first syllable.

Such are the mysteries of stress

As a North Walian Bryn would certainly roll the 'r' and keep both 'e's short. The 'f' is pronounced like the English 'v' and I reckon the two syllables would have equal stress.

His family is in fact Jones - Bryn Terfel Jones - but for some unfathomable reason he's has dropped the Jones in furthering his career

[french frank]

As a North Walian Bryn would certainly roll the 'r' and keep both 'e's short. The 'f' is pronounced like the English 'v' and I reckon the two syllables would have equal stress.

His family is in fact Jones - Bryn Terfel Jones - but for some unfathomable reason he's has dropped the Jones in furthering his career

I understand there was already (not unsurprisingly, when you think about it) a singer called Bryn Jones.

What I think Bryn was trying to explain was that English speakers, in stressing the main syllable strongly, tend to swallow non stressed vowels. Therefore they'll say Bryn Turvil, or Tervle, instead of giving the second 'e' its full value. I suspect he was stressing the second syllable to draw attention to the fact that it was an 'e' sound, not a schwa or any other weaker vowel. He wasn't indicating that the second syllable was normally stressed, though that's what my friend understood him to be saying. Nothing's simple, is it?

[By the way, Tom Jones' real name is Tom Woodward]

[Bryn]

Nothing unfathomable about it a51. 'As every schoolboy knows', there was already a professional singer using the name Bryn Jones, hence the resort to the Bulgarian sounding middle name, Terfel.

[Ah, you beat me to it frenchie.]