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Re: tSat: Re: 'tEst 'pli:z ig'nOr\

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Thursday, February 1, 2007, 13:28
"Ivan" and "Igor" are somewhat separate topics in (at least US) English,
despite their shared phonemic origins in Russian.  "Igor" is best known as
the name of the shuffling hunchback assistant to Doctor Frankenstein,
pronounced /'i:.gO`r/ modulo lectical variants; due to the pronunciation in
the movies, the initial /i/ is usually exaggeratedly long, even in dialects
that don't normally distinguish length.

 Ivan is, on the other hand, best known as "generic Russian given name"
(appropriate given its common origin with "John", which is probably the most
generic English given name); within the US military it was used derogatorily
to refer to the Soviet Union as a whole during the Cold War, and it is
nigh-universally pronounced /'aj.v@n/.  The closer-to-native pronunciation
/i'van/ sounds to Americanglophonic ears like the female name "Yvonne" (as
in Ms. Craig, TV's Batgirl... ah, fond memories).