zashtsheeshtshayoushtsheekhsya

[avva]

Путешествуя по России, Льюис Кэрролл записал себе в дневник пример особенно сложного русского слова: "защищающихся". В английской транскрипции у него это вышло так: zashtsheeshtshayoushtsheekhsya.

Или, говоря словами японского автора,

ロシア語の驚くほど長い単語の例として、彼は次のような言葉を 書いてくれた----
３АЩИЩАЮЩИХСЯ

これをローマ字で書くとZashtsheeshtshayoushtsheekhsyaとなる。こ の驚嘆すべき単語は分詞の複数生格で、「自分を護る人たちの」と いう意味だそうだ(35)。

Понятия не имею, что это значит, но это (ссылка) одна из двух страниц в сети, упоминающих искомое слово zashtsheeshtshayoushtsheekhsya; вторая рассказывает об этом эпизоде по-русски.

---

Ясно, по крайней мере, что слово ему диктовал кто-то, произнося его в старом питерском произношении, т.е. буква щ произносится [шч].

Мне сразу вспомнилось, что Набоков приводил слово "выкарабкивающиеся" (точнее, фразу "выкарабкивающиеся коты") в качестве очень сложно слова для иностранцев. Я испытывал знакомых, не знающих русский язык - ни один не смог повторить его правильно даже после нескольких попыток.

Comments

Re: Я сказал себе: "ны-ны".

[avva.livejournal.com]

Yes, that sounds about right to me. The typical American pronunciation of the closed [e] in French words or words of French origin as -ay (for example in one of the pronunciations of 'forte') is so clearly different from the "real" French pronunciation of this sound -- the glide is very real there. Of course, in some American dialects glides do go away pretty often (cf. the Southern "mah" for "my", etc.), but that's a different matter.

It's one thing to say that the glide is there as a result of the tensity of the vowel (which is what I recall the standard approach of Chomsky&Hale to be, for example), and quite another to assert that there's no "real" glide there. I might agree with the former, but certainly not with the latter.

Re: Я сказал себе: "ны-ны".

[dyak.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I meant to say that the glide in "go" is in some way "unavoidable" due to the tenseness of the vowel as opposed to a "deliberate" glide in "cow". In relaxed/careless speech the tensness often diappears leaving us with "glideless" "go".
"Forte" pronounced with "ej" (minor diphthong) IMO is not as much due to its French origin as to phonemic limitations in AmEng (or Eng. in general?) where "e" of "pen" cannot exist in an open syllable. As in "Las Vegas" (vej-).
This limitation seems to be "phomemic", not "phonetic", breakable but unbroken (I definitely use improper terms here and I'd gladly learn what the right terms are). In other words, an AmEng speaker can easily say "for-teh" but does not. Like a Russian speaker can pronounce a multisyllabic word with "jo" placing the stress on syllable other than "jo" but does not.

Re: Я сказал себе: "ны-ны".

[avva.livejournal.com]

Like a Russian speaker can pronounce a multisyllabic word with "jo" placing the stress on syllable other than "jo" but does not.

Except in the word "трёхлетие", of course ;)

Hmm, I think a different example would work better here -- for example, consider the mandatory rule of voiced consonants becoming voiceless at the end of a word in Russian. Thus a native Russian speaker could pronounce the word "ёж" as [йож] if we asked him to (and if he possessed the necessary minimum of linguistic awareness to even understand what it is we want him to do); normally, however, he'd always pronounce it [йош].

That seems to better match the situation with [e]/[ei] as you describe it.