Comments on: Anglicizing Spanish names

By: Graham

Graham — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 10:29:06 +0000

I was surprised that Melvyn Bragg - who has presented programmes on language, and written books on English - should have gone on with Bólivar, against all the evidence of his ears (or are his ears not as good as they should be?) Either he or his producer should have checked with the Pronunciation Unit, which is not difficult as it is online on their desktop computers, and would have learned from that to say Bolívar. A few years ago, when a monument to S.B. was unveiled in London, Prince Michael of Kent (I think it was) clearly said the name with its Spanish stress, so there is an awareness in Britain of the original pronunciation.
Perhaps Melvyn Bragg’s producer, like Russell Brand’s and Jonathan Ross’s, is in too much awe of the Great Man to make any objections.

By: Nigel Greenwood

Nigel Greenwood — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:54:55 +0000

At what point does an anglicized stress become acceptable? This question was prompted by this morning’s In Our Time on BBC R4, in which the subject was Simón Bolívar. In the face of 3 Hispanists who all stressed the surname correctly, Melvyn Bragg doggedly persisted in saying Bólivar throughout the programme. Is the analogy with Oliver simply too strong to overcome, I wonder?

By: Nigel Greenwood

Nigel Greenwood — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 20:04:26 +0000

Sorry, part of my posting was wrongly interpreted as markup! Let’s try once more:

The rules for stress in Portuguese are rather more complicated & slightly — but perhaps annoyingly — different from the Spanish rules. The treatment of & , for example is different in Pt: seria “it would be” in Pt, but sería in Es (conversely, séria “serious (f)” in Pt, but seria in Es).

But the admirable basic principle of writing accents only on words stressed “exceptionally” is common to both languages. In some ways it’s a pity that the Italians haven’t followed suit.

By: Nigel Greenwood

Nigel Greenwood — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 19:49:19 +0000

The rules for stress in Portuguese are rather more complicated & slightly — but perhaps annoyingly — different from the Spanish rules. The treatment of & , for example is different in Pt: seria “it would be” in Pt, but sería in Es (conversely, séria “serious (f)” in Pt, but seria in Es).

But the admirable basic principle of writing accents only on words stressed “exceptionally” is common to both languages. In some ways it’s a pity that the Italians haven’t followed suit.