From: Sergey Kharlamov <kharlamov (at) porsche.ru>
Subject: How to pronounce "Dmitry Sklyarov"
Hello! I'm Russian. In order to help you with pronouncing "Dmitry Sklyarov", I recorded a wave file
(MP3 conversion by Jonathan Weesner)

28Kb MP3file, sklyarov.mp3

 

From: Nick Moffitt

I don't have appropriate recording equipment, but it is pronounced sklee-YA-rohv

sklee as in "ski" with an L thrown in.

YA as in the German word for "yes" (spelled "ja").

rov with the o as in "offer".

Proper Russians will not pronounce the "ee" in the "sklee" syllable, but will instead soften the l in a manner that is difficult to describe in English e-mail. However, it is good enough for Americans to pronounce it as three syllables.

The softening of consonants is one of those things about Russian pronunciation that takes weeks of practice by most Americans. Don't fret over it.

 

From: Alex Fabrikant

I stuck up a couple of sound clips of the exact russian pronounciations at http://csua.berkeley.edu/~alexf/sklyarov/. See my comments on Nick's recommendations for simplified pronounciation below:

Nick Moffitt wrote:
> Proper Russians will not pronounce the "ee" in the "sklee" syllable, but will instead soften the l in a manner that is difficult to describe in English e-mail. However, it is good enough for Americans to pronounce it as three syllables.

If you use the three-syllable approximation as Nick [reasonably] suggests, don't pronounce the "y"/"j" in "ya" -- just sklee-A-rohff (the same A sound as you find in german "Ja" [for "yes"]), otherwise it sounds virtually unrecognizable. Also, note "-ff" instead of "-v" ending -- native pronounciation would almost definitely put a voiceless sound there. To follow Nick's example, it's just "off" as in "offer"...

 

 

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