# Medvedev - stress and pronouncation



## Piotr_WRF

How do you spell Medvedev in Russian? On which syllable does the stress fall and what is the exact pronouncation? In Polish it's spelt Miedwiediew but I somehow doubt that this reflects the correct pronouncation.


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## se16teddy

Wikipedia gives an IPA transcription of the name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Medvedev

I guess that the Polish and Russian pronunciations are rather similar (though as far as I remember from my university days Polish doesn't tend to pronounce unstressed e like i).


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## Piotr_WRF

Thanks for the link. And no, Polish is pronounced like it's spelt (except for the digraphs).


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

On Sunday I watched CNN channel what I rarely do. There was an almost a whole evening report on Russian elections. I listened to the American reporters who constantly pronounced Medvedev with a stress on the first E and all E had the same openess - wide as a sea. It sounded terrible. They had a few interviews with native Russian speakers and there it was where I learned the right pronounciation. For my Slovene ears it's a bit difficult because Russians tend to soften words inserting to-my-ears-unnecessary J sounds into them. 
And that -ev suffix, what is pronounced -eff. In Slovene you will hear -ew. 
A bit unnatural suffix for Slovene. I can imagine he will be called Medvedov unofficially down here, (the one) of a bear.

I see a big mess in spelling his surname. It looks like two biggest newspapers have started to use Medvedjev, but TV still uses Medvedev. The same problems are with his name. There are three versions: Dmitri, Dmitrij, Dimitrij.


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## palomnik

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> On Sunday I watched CNN channel what I rarely do. There was an almost a whole evening report on Russian elections. I listened to the American reporters who constantly pronounced Medvedev with a stress on the first E and all E had the same openess - wide as a sea. It sounded terrible. They had a few interviews with native Russian speakers and there it was where I learned the right pronounciation. For my Slovene ears it's a bit difficult because Russians tend to soften words inserting to-my-ears-unnecessary J sounds into them.
> And that -ev suffix, what is pronounced -eff. In Slovene you will hear -ew.
> A bit unnatural suffix for Slovene. I can imagine he will be called Medvedov unofficially down here, (the one) of a bear.
> 
> I see a big mess in spelling his surname. It looks like two biggest newspapers have started to use Medvedjev, but TV still uses Medvedev. The same problems are with his name. There are three versions: Dmitri, Dmitrij, Dimitrij.


 
At least the Western media won't murder his name quite as badly as they did Хрущёв - they routinely pronounced his name CRUISE-jev.  The only public figure who made an attempt to pronounce it correctly was President Kennedy, which was treated by the American media as an eccentricity.


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## Outsider

According to Wikipedia, it's pronounced "mid-vyed-if", more or less. Where does the stress fall?


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## Kolan

Outsider said:


> According to Wikipedia, it's pronounced "mid-vy*e*d-if", more or less. Where does the stress fall?


The stress is on "e", however, you rather skip "y" and split the word like "mid-v*eh*-dif". Then it would sound more or less clear. Things written in Wikipedia are not necessarily exact.


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## Outsider

My "y" was meant to represent the palatalization of the "v". I realize that what I wrote is merely an approximation to the actual pronunciation, but I think it may be useful to those unfamiliar with the IPA.


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## Kolan

Outsider said:


> My "y" was meant to represent the palatalization of the "v". I realize that what I wrote is merely an approximation to the actual pronunciation, but I think it may be useful to those unfamiliar with the IPA.


I wouldn't even exagerate the pronunciation with "i". "e" is correct, as well:

"med-v*e*h-dev".


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## Duya

Kolan said:


> The stress is on "e", however, you rather skip "y" and split the word like "mid-v*eh*-dif". Then it would sound more or less clear. Things written in Wikipedia are not necessarily exact.



Well, right, but in this case Wikipedia's IPA transcription in question ([ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ mʲɪˈdvʲedʲɪf]) seems accurate, if a bit overly pedant. However, transliteration/romanizaton is, in general, quite different beast than a phonetic transcription: while "midvyeedif" might sound closer to the original, the actual (English) Romanization (according to most systems in use) "Medvedev" aims to present a reasonable compromise between correct etymology *and *pronunciation.


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## Outsider

And spelling. 

Which, by the way, is probably the main reason why "Khrushchev" was spelled with an "e" in the west, leading to the incorrect pronunciation.


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## Xopxe

I would say it is better to pronounce [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ɐnɐˈtolʲjɪvʲɪtɕ mʲɪˈdvʲedʲef]) ... I changed the the second sound from the end (i for e).


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## Kolan

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> In Slovene you will hear -ew.
> A bit unnatural suffix for Slovene. I can imagine he will be called *Medvedov* unofficially down here, (the one) of a bear.


The same is in Russian, *bear*, however, the noun is *медведь *, not _*медвед*_ . That's why we say *-ев*, not _*-ов*_.


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Kolan said:


> The same is in Russian, *bear*, however, the noun is *медведь *, not _*медвед*_ . That's why we say *-ев*, not _*-ов*_.


Thank you. Perfectly understood. 

We have the same logic in a modification of vowels. This is why _medved_ generates _medvedov_ and _Dmitrij Dmitrijev_.



Edit: I've just found this in BBC blogs: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2008/03/how_to_say_medvedev.shtml.


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## Kolan

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> Edit: I've just found this in BBC blogs: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/magazinemonitor/2008/03/how_to_say_medvedev.shtml.


 The two things I can't understand is that why the English speakers insist on "*y*" in "-VYED-" and why do they cut syllables this way?

First of all, the correct breakdown is *мед-ве-дев* , not *мед-вед-ев*, which is an important issue, especially, if one wants to pronounce it slowly. That's why _-vyed-_ just does not exist.

Secondly, this famous "y" makes it sound _-вье-_, not _-ве_, although it is a closed vowel. But even the open "-veh-" ("-вэ") sounds much better and is less mistaken (easier to understand) that a ridiculous _-вье-._


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## Athaulf

Kolan said:


> The two things I can't understand is that why the English speakers insist on "*y*" in "-VYED-" and why do they cut syllables this way?
> 
> First of all, the correct breakdown is *мед-ве-дев* , not *мед-вед-ев*, which is an important issue, especially, if one wants to pronounce it slowly. That's why _-vyed-_ just does not exist.
> 
> Secondly, this famous "y" makes it sound _-вье-_, not _-ве_, although it is a closed vowel. But even the open "-veh-" ("-вэ") sounds much better and is less mistaken (easier to understand) that a ridiculous _-вье-._



The problem is that if your native language doesn't have palatalized consonants similar to the Russian ones, you will hardly hear any difference between -_ве_-, -_вье_-, and -_въе_-, and the same holds for any other similar trio. In fact, you'll likely hear all of these as -_въе_-, although you might also hear it as _-вэ-_ (this usually depends on the concrete consonant and vowel in question).  Hence the transcriptions such as English Medv*y*edev or Croatian Medv*j*edev. In Croatia we have a particularly rich tradition of mutilating Russian names this way; the only ones that are spared are those that palatalize only _ль_ and _нь_, which have palatal versions in Croatian.


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## Outsider

As for the syllable breakdown, I wrote "*mid*-vyed-*if*" to make an easy connection with known English words. I was obviously not trying to reproduce Russian syllabification, of which I know nothing, and which seems irrelevant to the issue of how to pronounce "Medvedev".


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## Tolovaj_Mataj

Outsider said:


> As for the syllable breakdown, I wrote "*mid*-vyed-*if*" to make an easy connection with known English words.


 
I'm wondering why do you wrote *i* at all? I heard Russian speakers saying 3 different kinds of *e*: the first open and short, the second narow and long and the third narrow and short. This is what _I_ heard.


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## Outsider

Tolovaj_Mataj said:


> I'm wondering why do you wrote *i* at all?


I followed the phonetic transcription in Wikipedia. In standard Russian, an unstressed "e" usually represents a different sound than a stressed "e".


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## Piotr_WRF

From what I hear in the audio sample at Wikipedia I'd write it Midwiediw in Polish. The "е" in the stressed second syllable is clearly pronounced differently than the other two in the first and last syllable.


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## Istriano

In Croatian it's _Medvjedev _(jekavian), and in Serbian is _Medvedev _(ekavian).
Apparently there are many transliteration systems of Russian, some of them
include yods and some not. _Снег _in Russian sounds exactly like _snijeg _in Croatian (jekavian). It does not sound ekavian as the spelling might suggest: _sneg_.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Istriano said:


> In Croatian it's _Medvjedev _(jekavian), and in Serbian is _Medvedev _(ekavian).
> Apparently there are many transliteration systems of Russian, some of them
> include yods and some not. _Снег _in Russian sounds exactly like _snijeg _in Croatian (jekavian). It does not sound ekavian as the spelling might suggest: _sneg_.



How many syllables does "snijeg" have?


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## Natalisha

Angelo di fuoco said:


> How many syllables does "snijeg" have?


There's one vowel in the word "снег", hence there's one syllable.


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## Angelo di fuoco

Natalisha said:


> There's one vowel in the word "снег", hence there's one syllable.



I'd like to hear it from a Croat.


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## Sobakus

Angelo di fuoco said:


> How many syllables does "snijeg" have?



I can only guess that as it's jekavian, the Jatj is pronounced the same as in Russian - [je], while the spelling is ijekavian (ije) for some reason(or maybe it's just a mistake, each of them have their own spellings I think).


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## VelikiMag

_Snijeg_ is ijekavian and it has two syllables. In my dialect the stress is on _i _while in Croatian dialects it is on _e_. In ekavian speech it would be _sneg_ (pronounced as снэг) and obviously it has only one syllable. Similar ekavian-ijekavian pairs are: _reka-rijeka_, _dete-dijete_, _vek-vijek,_ _stena-stijena_, _beli-bijeli_, etc.
Russian pronounciation could be considered ijekavian, while Russian writing would be ekavian. However, Russian pronounciation of words цена or целый correspond to ekavian _cena_ and _celi_. Ijekavian equivalents are _cijena_ and _cijeli_.

As far as Serbian language is concerned, Медведев would be _Medvedev_ (pronounced мэдвэдэв) in both ekavian and ijekavian speech.


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## Istriano

VelikiMag said:


> _Snijeg_ is ijekavian and it has two syllables.


In Croatian it has only 1 syllable because it's treated as a diphthong. 
So, the syllabification is: _snijeg_, and the pronunciation is [snje:g].
But the pronunciation varies between  [snje:g] (Stokavski) and [sñek] (Kajkavian) (ñ as in Espa_ñ_a).

Two syllable pronunciation ['sni.je:g] is Bosnian (or to be more precise: Hercegovinian), and
the syllabification there is: sni-jeg.

Oh, if you have the opportunity, listen to the song _Снег _by _Алсу_.
It's beautiful.

(Russian is very close to Croatian dialects: Kajkavian and Čakavian, but it's
distant from the standard dialect: Štokavian, because many Slavic words were replaced with nonSlavic words,
so for _rain _we have _dažd _in Čakavian and Kajkavian, but _kiša _(from Turkish) in Štokavian.
Here where I live everyone speaks Čakavian).


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## Angelo di fuoco

Istriano said:


> In Croatian it's _Medvjedev _(jekavian), and in Serbian is _Medvedev _(ekavian).
> Apparently there are many transliteration systems of Russian, some of them
> include yods and some not. _Снег _in Russian sounds exactly like _snijeg _in Croatian (jekavian). It does not sound ekavian as the spelling might suggest: _sneg_.





Istriano said:


> In Croatian it has only 1 syllable because it's treated as a diphthong.
> So, the syllabification is: _snijeg_, and the pronunciation is [snje:g].
> But the pronunciation varies between  [snje:g] (Stokavski) and [sñek] (Kajkavian) (ñ as in Espa_ñ_a).
> 
> Two syllable pronunciation ['sni.je:g] is Bosnian (or to be more precise: Hercegovinian), and
> the syllabification there is: sni-jeg.
> 
> Oh, if you have the opportunity, listen to the song _Снег _by _Алсу_.
> It's beautiful.
> 
> (Russian is very close to Croatian dialects: Kajkavian and Čakavian, but it's
> distant from the standard dialect: Štokavian, because many Slavic words were replaced with nonSlavic words,
> so for _rain _we have _dažd _in Čakavian and Kajkavian, but _kiša _(from Turkish) in Štokavian.
> Here where I live everyone speaks Čakavian).



From how you describe it, I'd say that the Croatian dialect which is closest in pronunciation to Russian is Kajkavian, and that [sñek] is the one we have in Russian.


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## poetpenpassion

Hello! How are you?
It`s Myedvyedyev! I always write like this! Yelena.


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