Mr Sharapova and Soviet historian NM Karamzin

[mart13.livejournal.com]

IN THE TIMES Maria Sharapova's father is once called Mr Sharapova. It's a very rude mistake because in Russian his name is Sharapov. We add "a" at the end in women's names. It's offensive to call a man Sharapova.
Nabokov said that in English we should call Анна Каренина "Anna Karenin" as "she is not a balerina". If Nabokov lived today, he would probably add: "and not a tennis player".
In the same issue of The Times I saw a funny misprint: "Sharpova" (they tried to make her name more English and turned a strange "sharap" into a well-known root "sharp").
A few weeks ago I found in The Times a quotation from a "Soviet historian N M Karamzin". Karamzin, a monarchist, died 90 years before the Revolution and can never be called a Soviet historian.

Comments

[thevoiceofnick.livejournal.com]

It's funny how bad the American media is with Russian names and words in general. I saw many mistakes and mispellings in USA Today articles about Russians around the time that Reagan died.

[mart13.livejournal.com]

Not only the American media. You see, in the British Times they make funny mistakes.

[vyacheslav.livejournal.com]

To be fair, the average English speaker doesn't understand the last name issue, but media outlets should know the difference.

I've seen people interchange Russian and Soviet all my life. I'm pretty used to it by now.

[mart13.livejournal.com]

It's a pity.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

>I've seen people interchange Russian and Soviet all my life

Yeah. About the same as if they'd interchange German and Nazi.

[ystrek.livejournal.com]

Exactly :(

Why I have time for learning Russian.

[bhv.livejournal.com]

I quit watching TV news, and quit reading newspapers a couple of years ago. There are some down sides to this, but the good part is that I have time to learn Russian.

Re: Why I have time for learning Russian.

[mart13.livejournal.com]

But you can read Russian newpapers and watch Russian TV (just to improve your Russian).