Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/111

 9 th S. II. AUG. 6, '98.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

103

Vereschagin Smith again has the consonant wrong. 10. Smith accents Tolst6i on the first syllable, which is absurd to any one knowing that adjectives only take the termination oi when that termination is accented ; when an- other syllable is accented the termination is shortened to y, so that if Smith were right the name would be Tolsty ; compare Polev6i, Smirn6i, Trubetzk6i. 11. Turgenieff is credited by Smith with two pronunciations : the first is right, the second is a coinage of his own. It is also noteworthy that while he preserves the original trisyllabic pronuncia- tion of this name, he turns Muravieff into four syllables ; he also ignores the fact that, being accented on the final, the latter name, like the parallel Solovieff, must be pro- nounced with final -off, not -eff. 12. I have frequently been asked which is correct, Kropotkin or Krapotkin ; I reply that the former represents the Kussian spelling, the latter the Russian sound, the vowel o when unaccented becoming a (as Smith might have told his readers, but does not).

This will probably be enough about Rus- sian ; but if we turn to other languages we still find mistakes in our author. Take Italian, for example. Many of the sdruc- cioli (words with antepenultimate accent) so common in that musical speech are handled by him as if regular ; tnat is, instead of Cagliari, M6dena, Spalatro, Tanaro, Vigevano, he would have us say Cagliari, Moclena, Spalatro, Tanaro, Vigevano. This remark applies also to Prevesa, the correct rhythm of which is preserved in ' Childe Harold ': Remember the moment when Prevesa fell.

The Greek Larissa and Tripolitza are anglicized by Smith without a word of warning that throughout the Levant they are called Larissa and Tripolitza. Turn to the Scandinavian languages. When we find Sir W. Besant this year in the Pall Mall Magazine speaking of Snorro Thirlesen, we recognize the need of a work of reference which will vouchsafe exact information about proper names, as opposed to a farrago of good and bad English and foreign forms without discrimination. No wonder a lay- man gets muddled when bis authority reads "Snorre, Snorri, or Snorro Sturleson or Sturluson," without stating (what Smith could easily have discovered) that Snorri Sturluson is the original Icelandic, Snorre Sturleson the Dano-Norwegian, and Snorro Sturlonides the Latin name of the writer of that 'Heimskringla' from which Carlyle took the groundwork of his 'Early Kings of Norway,' and Longfellow his ' Saga of King Olaf/ Huimskringla, by the way, is another

of the names Smith is unable to pronounce, and the surname of King Olaf he cannot spell. It should be Tryggvason ; Smith with his customary lavishness gives twospellings, both wrong.

It will be perceived that none of these languages are very recondite. Welsh, again, should be fairly easy to obtain news of ; yet the bardic names Aneurin and Taliessin are incorrectly accented by Smith upon their first syllables. Going further afield, we find, on the contrary, Perak and Sarawak marked as accented upon the final, which is not the practice of our Colonial Office. I have not had time to check any Portuguese names, but I see the capital of Cambodia, Pnom Penh, is given with the second element as the English pen, whereas (since the nh, which the Portuguese introduced into the ortho- graphy of the Annamite language, represents the sound of ny in the English word mini/on) it should be pronounced as the French peigne. Among Spanish names I notice Fuenterrabia and Fontarabia side by side, with no indi- cation that the former is the local, and the latter the Miltonian spelling, as in the famous line in 'Paradise Lost':

When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell By Fontarabia.

The Arabian termination seems unblest so far as Smith is concerned, for he errs in another word which contains it, giving Mocarabian as if "Mock-Arabian," appa- rently not perceiving that he was dealing with a variant spelling of Mozarabian, which he classes under a different heading ; supply a cedilla (Mo9arabian) and their identity be- comes clear. Rabbinical and other modern Jewish proper names can be pronounced in four different ways : 1, anglicized, as we do Bible names ; 2, in the way affected by English students of Hebrew ; 3, as by the Spanish Jews ; 4, as by the Jews of Northern Europe. Smith follows none of these, but from his fatally fertile imagination evolves mispronunciations alike horrid to English ears and unrecognizable by any sect of Jews. As examples of his method, or want of method, I may quote Saadia Gaon and Sabbatai Zevi. In the latter he has also the spelling wrong, though it must be confessed that here at least he sins in good company : Mr. Zangwill in ' Dreamers of the Ghetto ' also writes Sabbatai ; nevertheless it should be Shabbethai, as in the Authorized Version, JAMES PLATT, Jun.

WILD HORSES. (See 8 th S. ii. 4G, 113 ; iii, 172,214). At the above references there were some notes on wild horses (the subject was