How to pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?

[liana...@gmail.com]

Hello everybody, I was hoping somebody could please tell me how to pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?

For content (from Wikipedia):

"In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: Ежовщина; literally, Time of Yezhov), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD."

Any help would be appreciated. :)

[Peter Moylan]

[jE 'ZOv stSi nA]

I'm guessing about where the stress goes.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2015-03-30 06:28:31 +0000, Peter Moylan said:

On 30/03/15 17:03, liana...@gmail.com wrote:

Hello everybody, I was hoping somebody could please tell me how to pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?

For content (from Wikipedia):

"In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: Ежовщина; literally, Time of Yezhov), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, NKVD."

Any help would be appreciated. :)

[jE 'ZOv stSi nA]

I'm guessing about where the stress goes.

That's also what I would guess, except that I think that щ is more StS than stS (according to what the textbooks said WIWAL), or maybe S.S (according to what people say the usual modern pronunciation is). Anyway, Anton will know.

-- 

athel

[Peter Moylan]

I agree that [StS] is the textbook answer; but I think we established in
the last lianatexas thread that he/she was posting from Australia, and
I'm pretty certain that most Australians can't pronounce [StS]. You only
have to look at the common mispronunciation of borshch to know that.

On top of that, I vaguely recall another thread where it was stated that
Russians no longer pronounce щ the textbook way.

[liana...@gmail.com]

Thanks for replying, but is there any chance you can write that in a more basic way? Like maybe break it into syllables and tell me what each syllable rhymes with?

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Please don't top-post. I've moved your reply to where it belongs.

>
>
>
> On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 5:25:45 PM UTC+11, Peter Moylan wrote:
>> On 30/03/15 17:03, liana...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> Hello everybody, I was hoping somebody could please tell me how to
>>> pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?
>>>
>>> For content (from Wikipedia):
>>>
>>> "In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge,
>>> 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: Ежовщина; literally, Time
>>> of Yezhov), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police,
>>> NKVD."
>>>
>>> Any help would be appreciated. :)
>>
>> [jE 'ZOv stSi nA]
>>
>> I'm guessing about where the stress goes.

On 2015-03-30 07:53:22 +0000, liana...@gmail.com said:

> Thanks for replying, but is there any chance you can write that in a
> more basic way? Like maybe break it into syllables and tell me what
> each syllable rhymes with?

Peter's reply could be written

"ye" as in "yes"
"zhov", with "zh" like the s in "pleasure", "ov" as in "hover"
"schi" with "s" as in most English words, "chi" like "chea" in "cheat"
"na" as in "nasty" or "Nadia" if you're British. If you're American
it's more difficult, but something like "knot" without the t.

He's guessing that the stress is on the second syllable, which would be
my guess as well, but although getting the right stress is just as
important in Russian as it is in English it's even more difficult to
guess where it is.

My StSi meant sh-chi, with sh as in "shout" and "chi" like "chea" in
"cheat". That's the textbook pronunciation of щ, but people who speak
Russian have said here in recent months that in modern speech it's more
like "sh-sh" as when you're telling the persion next to you in the
theatre to stop talking.

Anyway, we have a native Russian speaker here (Anton Shepelev), and I
hope he'll be along soon to set us all straight.

--
athel

[Peter Moylan]

[Please read the above upside down to see what I'm responding to.]

The spaces in the ASCII IPA notation are the syllable breaks, and the
apostrophe comes before the syllable with primary stress. It is a
long-standing tradition in this newsgroup to use ASCII IPA (where the
meanings of the symbols is easily found with a web search) to indicate
pronunciation.

The reason we do this is because we know from long experience that a
"rhymes with" description only causes confusion, especially when we
don't know what dialect of English you speak.

[Iain Archer]

liana...@gmail.com wrote on Sun, 29 Mar 2015 at 23:03:28:
>Hello everybody, I was hoping somebody could please tell me how to
>pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?
>
>For content (from Wikipedia):
>
>"In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge,

>1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: ????????; literally,

>Time of Yezhov), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret
>police, NKVD."
>
>Any help would be appreciated. :)

You could ask a Russian:
<http://www.forvo.com/word/%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%89%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%
B0/#ru>
--
Iain Archer

[Joe Fineman]

Peter Moylan <pe...@pmoylan.dropthispart.org> writes:

> On 30/03/15 17:03, liana...@gmail.com wrote:
>> Hello everybody, I was hoping somebody could please tell me how to
>> pronounce "Yezhovshchina"?
>>
>> For content (from Wikipedia):
>>
>> "In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge,
>> 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (Russian: Ежовщина; literally,
>> Time of Yezhov), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret
>> police, NKVD."
>>
>> Any help would be appreciated. :)
>
> [jE 'ZOv stSi nA]
>
> I'm guessing about where the stress goes.

I believe that the v would be pronounced like f (because an unvoiced
consonant follows). And as to the stress, in Russian that's anyone's
guess (and don't expect it to stay put when you change the case);
Wiktionary agrees with yours.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D0%B5%D0%B6%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%89%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net

||: Decency is not news; it is buried in the obituaries. :||

[liana...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the replies, everybody. I appreciate it. :)