English Pronunciation

[thecooler]

With regard to the question below on American Pronuncation, and particularly bernado's answer, why do the English pronounce Maria Sharapova's name as SharapOva? (It's SharApova)

[Quizmonster]

My apologies for just cutting and pasting this from the earlier question you refer to, but my response seems to fit here, too.

Is it really so very different from our calling the capital of France Par-iss, when the French call it Par-ee? Anyone with an interest in horse-racing, for example, sees/hears this sort of thing on a daily basis. A large percentage of active racehorses are owned by Arabs and have Arab names, but British commentators make no effort whatever to discover how to say these correctly. Remember Afghanistan a year or two ago? ITV newsreaders called the capital cab-ool, whilst BBC ones - correctly - called it caa-bil. It just seems that hardly anyone from the English-speaking nations can be bothered to handle foreign words - or names - correctly...end of story.

[becks]

My dad says SharApova cos he lives in Russia and so says it the Russian way. IT's not where we would place the emphasis on any word in the english language so that's why we don't say it like that (apart from my dad, but he's a smartar$e).

[Quizmonster]

I'm not sure about how far your idea as to where we always place emphasis in English words relates to how we stress Russian names, Becks. I don't believe I ever heard a British person refer to the divine ballerina, Natalia Makarova, as anything other than Mak-AH-rova and never, ever, Maka-RO-va. (Of course, it may just be that balletomanes are rather more cultured than tennis fans!)

[thecooler]

There are lots of words in English stressed on the second sylable of four - publicity, biology and controversy to name but three. The last being a perfect example of the stress shifting from the beginning of the word to the second sylable, presumably because English speakers feel that it sounds better there. In my office we have Bartholomew, Cadwallader, and McAllister. All stressed in exactly the same place as the correct stress for Sharapova. Not that hard is it?

[IndieSinger]

Maybe it's by assimilation of "Navratilova"?