On the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster it seems appropriate to discuss the way the name is pronounced in English. In 1986, the main question was whether the stress should be placed on the first or second syllable: ‘Chernobyl, or Cher’nobyl. As it happens, this was a question that had been settled for the BBC as early as 1944, according to the entry in what was then a card index. Presumably there had been some action between Soviet and German forces there which had been important enough to get a mention in BBC news. The name also figured in the Duden Aussprachewörterbuch, which bears out this supposition. Stress is on the second syllable.

But now, how to deal with the stressed vowel? Russian /o/, in stressed position, is probably closest to Southern British English /ɔː/, but since the reversion of off, cross and suchlike words to /ɒ/ from /ɔː/, there is no common English word spelt ‘o’ and pronounced /ɔː/ in British English (provided the following letter is not ‘r’, of course). The choice lies between /əʊ/ and /ɒ/. I’m not sure if there is a definite pattern in all cases that determines which of these two is chosen, but names ending in -ovich (Shostakovich, Rostropovich) have /əʊ/, while -ovsky names (Tchaikovsky, Mayakovsky) have /ɒ/. This might lead one to think that it depends on whether the syllable is open or closed, with /ɒ/ before consonant clusters. However, Prokofiev, which in English is /prəˈkɒfief/, with /ɒ/ in an open syllable, goes against this.

The Pronunciation Unit’s recommendation to announcers was always /tʃə(r)ˈnɒbɪl/, but I’m not sure that there is any good phonotactic reason why /tʃə(r)ˈnəʊbɪl/ might not be preferred.

In a previous post, I mentioned the Spanish problem of Barcelona (/-əʊnə/) versus Tarragona (/-ɒnə/), which may be influenced by the long or short vowel in the first syllable. But then there’s Pamplona (/-əʊnə/)…

Attending BAAP last week, I was very pleased to find there was a whole session devoted to rhythm, which I have written about before (here). One of the general conclusions was that the perception of rhythm in a language depends on the native language of the perceiver. English has a relatively complex syllable structure, while French and Spanish have far fewer consonant clusters, so that their vowel onsets are closer together. The syllable durations of French and Spanish, measured in milliseconds, are therefore shorter and more similar that those of English syllables.

Poetry, as the most rhythmical form of lanuage, may be able to help. English verse lines are measured in stresses, and one of the papers at BAAP measured the rhythm of the most regular form: the limerick. This is either a verse of five lines, with three stresses in each of the first two, and the last, and two stressed in the third and fourth lines; or it is a verse of four lines, each of four stresses, the final one of the first, second and final lines being silent, and an internal rhyme in the third line. The rhythm of a limerick can easily be tapped out as it is being read, and the silent stress is obvious.

French verse is measured in syllables: an Alexandrine has 12 syllables, with a caesura after the sixth (in a classical poem). Any line that does not have 12 syllables is not an Alexandrine. Each line can therefore be tapped out with twelve beats.

Spanish verse seems to be a hybrid: a Spanish Alexandrine has 14 syllables. There is no necessary caesura, but a condition of its being a true Alexandrine is that the thirteenth syllable be stressed. Here are eight lines from a poem by Antonio Machado to illustrate this:

Adoro la hermosura, y en la moderna estética
corté las viejas rosas del huerto de Ronsard;
mas no amo los afeites de la actual cosmética,
ni soy un ave de esas del nuevo gay-trinar.

Desdeño las romanzas de los tenores huecos
y el coro de los grillos que cantan a la luna.
A distinguir me paro las voces de los ecos,
y escucho solamente, entre las voces, una.

In each case (allowing for synalepha), the thirteenth syllable is stressed. The only places where there is no synalepha are in the third line between ‘no’ and ‘amo’, and in the last line, between ’solamente’ and ‘entre’. This makes a total of between 13 and 15 syllables for the individual lines.

If Spanish is syllable-timed, how do we achieve equal lengths for these lines?

And finally, the vowels.

Conveniently, the traditional five vowel letters, <a, e, i, o, u> correspond to the five Castilian Spanish vowel phonemes, /a, e, i, o, u/. <Y> can also represent /i/. The two mid vowels, /e/ and /o/, have two positionally determined allophones: [e, ɛ] and [o, ɔ].

/e/ is [ɛ] adjacent to /r/ (written either <rr>, or, in initial position, <r>), before /x/, as the first element of a falling diphthong /ei/ or /eu/, and in closed syllables except before /m, n, s, θ/. Otherwise [e].

/o/ is [ɔ] adjacent to /r/, before /x/, as the first element of a falling diphthong, and in all closed syllables. Otherwise [o].

In addition, the close vowels, /i, u/ usually form diphthongs with another adjacent vowel, as [j] or [w]: Palacio [pa'laθjo] (phonemically /pa’laθio/); Huelva ['welßa] (/’uelba/). /iu/ or /ui/ are usually rising diphthongs. Exceptions occur when the /i/ or /u/ are stressed, as in Paraíso /paɾa’iso/ or El Baúl /el ba’ul/. In these cases, there will always be an acute accent above the <i> or <u>.

Any other two consecutive vowels form separate syllables, e.g. Bilbao /bil’bao/ has three syllables.

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Now we come to the consonants.

Castilian Spanish is one of the few European languages to include a voiceless dental fricative /θ/ in its phoneme inventory. As this is a very common sound in English, it should present no problems whatsoever for the English speaker. Unfortunately, orthographically, it is either <c> or <z>. This leads non-Spanish-speaking native English speakers to associate it with a lisped /s/, and many will refuse to use it, on the grounds that “it sounds cissy”. Try telling a madrileño taxi driver that he sounds cissy, and see where it gets you! However, certain names seem to have beaten this: Olazábal for one. When the golfer of that name first became prominent, the mispronunciation used as an anglicization put the stress on the wrong syllable, but included the /θ/ correctly (despite the consistently correct stress in the BBC Pronunciation Unit’s recommendation from the day he hit the news, it was only when he insisted in a press conference that this was right that anyone took notice of it. So much for the influence of the Pronunciation Unit).

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It ought to be easy to establish anglicized versions of Spanish names – stress is as important in Spanish as in English, and there are far fewer phonemes in Spanish than in English, so we should be able to find equivalents without too much trouble.

A major difficulty is the assumption that many British people make that they already know how to pronounce Spanish, having spent the obligatory fortnight on one of the Costas. In deciding how to treat a particular name, this leads to preconceptions having to be overcome.

Dealing with stress first, the rules for placing the stress on Spanish words are simple:

1. Words that end in a vowel, or in <n> or <s> are stressed on the penultimate syllable. <i> and <u> next to another vowel do not count as a separate syllable, whereas any combination of <a>, <e> or <o> make two syllables.

2. Words that end in any other consonant are stressed on the final syllable.

3. There are exceptions, but these are all marked by an acute accent placed above the stressed vowel. So, if you know the correct Spanish spelling, then you know where the stress comes.

This is where the problems start: English-language printed material often ignores the accents. Consequently, such triples as cántara (water jug), cantara ((s)he would sing), and cantará ((s)he will sing) become confused. In the case of names, Mérida may be stressed wrongly on the second syllable, and Jaén and Cristóbal on the first.

There is one useful rule of thumb: family names that end in <ez> are stressed on the penultimate syllable, so González, Pérez, Martínez. Jerez, a place name not a family name, is stressed on the final syllable.

The name Esteban, which by all the rules is stressed on the second syllable, is mispronounced by many English speakers who stress the first syllable, even though a little thought would make them realise that it is equivalent to Stephen or Steven.

The Spelling Society is to hold its centenary conference at Coventry University, and ahead of this, an article in Tuesday’s Guardian quotes the Society’s Secretary, Dr John Gledhill, as saying “In other languages, like Italian and Spanish, if you learn the alphabet, you know how to spell”.

No one can doubt that learning to spell in either Italian or Spanish is easier than mastering the same task in English, but it isn’t as straightforward as Dr Gledhill claims. Take Spanish. Like English, it uses the same letter to represent more than one sound, and more than one letter for the same sound. There are also ’silent’ letters.

C is either a voiceless velar plosive /k/ or a voiceless dental fricative /Ɵ/ (or alveolar fricative, depending on the variety of Spanish being spoken). It depends on the following letter (plosive before consonant or a, o, u; fricative before e, i), e.g. cocina (’kitchen’) /ko’Ɵina/. The velar plosive is also written as QU (before e or i), querer (’to like, love’) /ke’rer/; and the dental/alveolar fricative is written Z before consonant or a, o, u: razón (’reason’) /rra’Ɵon/, bizcocho (’biscuit’) /biƟ’kotʃo/ . That seems clear-cut, but a very few words may be written with Z even before e or i, mostly scientific or borrowed, admittedly, but including zipizape (’row’, ‘rumpus’). There seems no reason for this not to be spelt with initial C other than the symmetry of the two halves of the word.

G is either a voiced velar plosive (or more often its voiced fricative allophone), before consonants or a, o, u; or a voiceless velar fricative /x/ before e or i. But, J is always a voiceless velar fricative, and occurs in some words before e or i: jefe (’chief’, ‘boss’) /’xefe/, and jinete (’horseman) /xi’nete/, to mention two reasonably common words.

H is always silent, except in the spelling -CH- which represents, as in English, a palato-alveolar affricate. So echo (’I throw’) and hecho (’done’) have identical pronunciations.

B and V are always interchangeable – they both represent a voiced bilabial plosive or its more frequent allophone a voiced bilabial fricative [β]

There are also problems with what is written as LL. Depending on the variety of Spanish, this can be a lateral, an approximant, a fricative or an affricate or even a plosive. In all cases apart from the lateral, it can coalesce with what is usually considered to be a semi-vowel: /j/, written either I or Y. Consequently it is not uncommon to see words misspelt here as well.

“Greengrocers’ spellings” are found in Spanish-speaking countries just as we have “greengrocers’ apostrophes” in the UK.