I'm looking for a good pronunciation guide for the Russian names in The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

I tried the two links under the Loom / Supporting Links / Literature (found with week 36 topics instead of week 28 for some reason), but neither of the two links was operating correctly - they both gave error messages.

I tried doing my own on-line search, but the various results all gave different pronunciations for the same names (each web site's pronunciation guide gave a different suggestion for vowel sounds, stressed syllables, etc). They even gave differing suggestions on how to pronounce the name of Leo Tolstoy.

I was wondering if anyone with knowledge of the correct pronunciation could recommend a specific web site?

Sincerely,

Beth Ann

Hi Beth! I can give you a few tips... and I think a guide to Russian names and pronunciation is something we hope to include in your lit helps in the future; I'm sorry we couldn't do it this time around!

General Tip: The Russian alphabet is different from ours, so when they translate names, they do it phonetically. In other words, they spell Russian names in English exactly the way they would sound in English. Thus, if you know which syllables to stress, you can literally sound out each word and be pretty confident that it sounds right.

Here are a couple examples:

Tolstoy: TOLL-stoy

Ivan Ilyich: Eee-vahn ILL-yich

I hope this helps you!

I think CJ has given you the best answer, but something happened to me at an art exhibit recently. It was an exhibit of Spanish Renaissance art and we listened to the audio tour.

I noticed they said Italian painter Caravaggio's name very different from how I struggle to say it. Fortunately I asked an art historian friend who had also been about this. She told me they pronounced it the way the Spanish would have.

So my piece of advice is to get the obvious names right (Ivan and Tolstoy) and not worry about the others. If your children grow up to be Russian literature experts, they'll pick up the others along the way.

I speak Russian...my email is: majorchange@gmail.com

I can give you my tel. # and read them to you...

found this: (click on the audio to hear)

Tolstoy:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tolstoy

the title pronounced correctly:
http://dictionary.reference.co...+of+ivan+ilyich,+the

As cjsomerville said, not many people are familiar with the real phonetical signs, so they use the easiest possible way of explaining how to read the words in not known languages. In case of Russian, the tricky part is always the accented syllable, for example the above example of the title could be written as:
The death of Ee-VAHN Eel-EECH, where the last syllables are stressed

Cool! A real Russian-speaker! Definitely listen to her rather than me. :-D

Iwona, I want to pick your brains when we get around to doing our supplement on pronunciation of Russian names. ;-)

I would be happy to help...