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ArchivesRe: Stress on different syllables in different accents
in reply to a message by Anneza
Clarice is a great example. Two male names where this difference exists between the USA and England are Maurice and Bernard. In the UK these are accented on the first syllable, but the American pronunciation seems to have been influenced by French, and so in the USA we say "maw-REESE" and "bur-NARD". :)
Which way are Maurice and Bernard said in South Africa?
Which way are Maurice and Bernard said in South Africa?
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Replies
The English way! Jewish South Africans (used to) prefer the spelling Morris, and this has led some people to overcorrect and use the French pronunciation when they see Maurice and the English one for Morris. And Bernard gets the stress on the second syllable only in the rare cases when it is used by Afrikaans-speakers, who follow European rules and/or use the Bernardus version, which naturally gets middle-syllable stress; or Berndt, which solves the whole problem!
I remember a very good news anchor/reporter on US television (CNN, probably) called BerNARD Shaw. South Africans giggled; what the Irish playwright would have done is anyone's guess.
Kiddies' stories: Freaky Friday and its sequel, which I forget the title of. But the second book contains a character with severe nasal congestion who is thought to be Boris and to specialise in cooking beet loaf ... it turns out when he recovers that his name is either Morris or Maurice and he cooks meat loaf. So, we say BOR-is for Boris, including Russian politicians ... do you guys say bo-REESE? Or is that version just part of the fantasy genre?
I remember a very good news anchor/reporter on US television (CNN, probably) called BerNARD Shaw. South Africans giggled; what the Irish playwright would have done is anyone's guess.
Kiddies' stories: Freaky Friday and its sequel, which I forget the title of. But the second book contains a character with severe nasal congestion who is thought to be Boris and to specialise in cooking beet loaf ... it turns out when he recovers that his name is either Morris or Maurice and he cooks meat loaf. So, we say BOR-is for Boris, including Russian politicians ... do you guys say bo-REESE? Or is that version just part of the fantasy genre?
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