Because of the current hoo-ha over Trumpus’s attempts to undermine Biden in next year’s presidential election, the word “Ukraine” has been uttered ad nauseam in all the media reports on the situation. More often than not, the various reporters and hosts cannot seem to decide which vowel gets the stress in this word, to the point where both initial and medial stress can occur in the same sentence. Little do the utterers of the word realize that the variant with initial stress is non-standard, even dialectal. It follows the pattern established by such items as guitar and insurance in Southern American English.

In this era of universal media saturation, one cannot but be gobsmacked by the fact that speakers of Standard American English falter when it comes to uttering Ukraine. What homunculus possesses them to mispronounce it thus [NOT “thusly”!]?

MICHAEL SHAPIRO