Comments on: Two names and a word

By: Petr Roesel

Petr Roesel — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:11:10 +0000

You can listen to Andrew Marr’s ‘Start the Week’ programme of 28 Dec 2009 (the one mentioned by blog respondent J.W. Lewis) at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pfp8j/Start_the_Week_28_12_2009/. But hurry up – it won’t be there for long!

By: Petr Roesel

Petr Roesel — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:27:30 +0000

According to an obituary for her mother (to be found here: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3131299), B.J. Sahakian evidently grew up in Massachusetts.

By: Petr Roesel

Petr Roesel — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:22:22 +0000

Prof. Barbara Jacqueline Sahakian seems to hold a B.A. degree from Mt. Holyoke College, Massachusetts. Her pronunciation thus must have undergone a transatlantic moulding process.

By: Jack Windsor Lewis

Jack Windsor Lewis — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:25:37 +0000

This morning, 28 Dec 09, also on Radio 4 but on Andrew Marr’s ‘Start the Week’ discussion programme, I he’rd Cambridge Professor of Neuroscience Barbara Sahakian, use the stressing ef`ficacy inste’d of the usual front stress which is the only one recorded in the three big pronouncing dictionaries and in M’Webster Online. Her speech sounds int’restingly slightly transatlantic. The Internet gives no info on her speech-formative years. I’ve no definite memory of hearing it so stressed before but I think I have he’rd the also unrecorded in`tricacy. I wonder what you make of these, Graham.

By: John Wells

John Wells — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 21:41:26 +0000

Yes, I noticed that repeated səˈdentəri in this morning’s programme too. Odd.

By: John Cowan

John Cowan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:46:14 +0000

Initial stress is the only pronunciation I ever hear in the U.S. for either fragmentary or sedentary. Note that the penultimate vowel of -ary remains an unreduced SQUARE or TRAP in AmE, not a schwa.