I can explain this from the position of a linguist (I don't speak Russian). There is stress on the "-pud" syllable in "Gozenpud", and in Russian spelling, the stressed syllable is pronounced exactly as said. This is transliterated literally because of that rule. However, in unstressed syllables the vowels are reduced, meaning that the "Goh-" is pronounced more like "gah", rather than "goh". Some of the other possible transliterations are a result of German (and possibly others) transliterations.alfor wrote:Thank you for these!
I know that there is no "H" in the russian language - so Horowitz is Gorowitz, Haydn is Gaydn, etc. But it obviously takes a linguist to explain why "Gazen" (Hasen) is identical with "Gozenpud" ("Gazen" = "Gozen", but what about the ending "pud")??!!
Also, I looked up as to why G and H seem to be interchangeable in transliterating Russian (Horowitz vs Gorowitz). Wikipedia describes a similar phenomenon when transliterating backward, and I am sure it has to do with transliterating from Russian to English. From Wikipedia:
"The Latin letter H at the beginning of a word is transliterated into Russian with Ge rather than Kha as one might expect, for historical reasons of phonology/orthography, e.g. hero → герой (geroi)."
it also might come from Ukranian, which pronounes the Russian G like the letter H in English.
There is an H sound in Russian (written as X), but it is closer to the "-ch" in "Bach" than the "-h" in "happy".
Yes, I am a linguistics nerd, in addition to a music nerd!
