As regular readers of this blog know, one of Y-H-B’s salient bêtes noires is the mispronunciation of the names of classical music composers and of the titles of their compositions. This morning, on VPR Classical, the entirely incompetent announcer (nomen ist odiosus) mispronounced not only Mikhail Glinka’s forename but the second item in the piece’s title, Glinka’s Overture to Ruslan and Lyudmila. He pronounced Mikhail as [mikáyl], to rhyme with derail––a not unheard of distortion in American English of the Russian Mixail—but (more direly) Ljudmila as [ludmíja], as if it were a Mexican version of Spanish double ll! No latitude of aesthethic tolerance will allow for such a colossal error. An ignoramus of this monumental diapason has no business being a classical music announcer/host.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
I agree. It would seem like a minimum basic requirement for a classical music radio program host/announcer to speak the names of composers and compositions as they are pronounced by educated English speakers. Listeners are educated (or not) through their comments (from my experience, all too often inane), and the very first thing that they ought imagine that they’re learning is the correct pronunciation of the names of composers and compositions.