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This is, perhaps, the stupidest question ever posted here. But it's something I've been wondering about for a while.

Okay, so, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home? Chekhov keeps saying "nuclear wessels" instead of vessels, and as I'm studying Russian now, I'm confused, because it doesn't look like there is a "w" sound in the language. (Unless I am completely stupid.) So what I'm wondering is if this is just absolutely horrid writing on their part or if there is a valid reason why a native Russian speaker would say "wessels" instead of "vessels".

I know, I know, I need a life.

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I don't think that a native Russian speaker would do that; however this might be the producers' idea of funny Russian accent. On the other hand, there is a similar moment in the movie "Lost in translation" where a Japanese woman says "Lip my stocking" instead of "rip", the idea possibly being that she is so proud of her ability of pronouncing the "l" sound that is not in the Japanese language that she now puts it everywhere, where it should and where it should not be; possibly the creators of "Stat Trek" were reasoning along similar lines. But this is only a guess.

My advisor is a native Russian and he says "wessels" not "vessels." The first time he did it, I nearly shot soda out my nose as I wasn't expecting it.

Also the actor who plays Chekhov based the character's accent on his father's Russian accent.

the idea possibly being that she is so proud of her ability of pronouncing the "l" sound that is not in the Japanese language that she now puts it everywhere

Actually, a lot of Japanese speakers tend to confuse l's and r's, not because they're "proud" but because the Japanese ra/la sound isn't a clear consonant - it really is a hybrid of r and l (just most often transcribed as r). It goes both ways; while Japanese speakers will often confuse the two sounds in their speech, English speakers attempting Japanese will often turn the mora into either a hard r or l sound, which is understandable to Japanese, but not correct (For instance, "arigatou" should be a flipped r/l sound, not an arr arr sound, though many English speakers pronounce it as such).

Heh, I was about to explain that phenomenon too. It's so weird, because it's not as if English speakers can't say the flap [ɾ], they use it all the time in words like butter [bʌɾɚ] and ladder [læɾɚ], yet when they see the r written somewhere else like arigatou [aɾigatoː], they read the r like a retroflex English r [ɑɹigɑtoː] (not to mention they also usually don't pronounce the [a] correctly...)

Yeah, that, or they hypercorrect and use the l (had a guy in my Japanese class that'd do that, and he drove me NUTS with all the "aligatou" and "kala"s XD)

I work as a dialect coach with a lot of actors to help them sound like Russian speakers. My explanation of why actors say (or writers write) w's instead of v's on some words is this: there is no "w" sound in Russian, but when rendering English words into Russian, one might replace "w" with a "v" (as in Vashington). It might then be difficult for a native Russian speaker to determine when the "v" is really a "v" or when it's standing in for a "w." Does that make sense?

seconded.

there's a word for it...

which is not coming to me right now. it's a term used a lot in describing BE

That does make sense, thanks. :)

It's true that in the Russian language there's no "w" sound. However, Russian learners of English often confuse "w" and "v" sounds in oral speech (maybe, because Russian "в" ("v") sound is something between these two ones and it's difficult for us to distinguish). So, I believe, it's normal for a Russian-speaking person to say "wessels".

I think that

oryx_and_crake’s explanation of the substitution is more reasonable: words using the “w” sound in English like “linguistics” and “Washington” use a “v” sound in Russian, like лингвистика (lingvistika) and Вашингтон (Vashington). After one realizes this pattern, it’s easy to see how one would hypercorrect.

Er, sorry, I meant

brighteyed_jill’s comment.

I second all people saying it's a hypercorrection. I'm teaching English in Russia currently to Russian college students and I sometimes here them do this with words starting with "v"-- they say "w" instead. I think they just get confused.

It’s called “hypercorrection”, and Wikipedia has an article about it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection). The idea is that if you don’t understand the difference between “v” and “w” (there being no “w” in your native language), you might overcompensate and use “w” in places where “v” should be.

Chekov is comically hypercorrecting though, since he also says “naval veapons”.

If I were him, I would most probably say 'nawal veapons' instead :)
Hypercorrection is one of my "favourite" mistakes. I tend to always hypercorrect both ways - saying 'v' instead of 'w' or vice versa.

I wasn't aware of this phenomenon. Thanks for the link! :)

My Russian culture teacher over the summer always said "dewelopment". We could never figure out why, but we heard plenty of other Russians (always men though) doing the same...

When I speak very quickly (and I normally speak faster than New Yorkers, let alone your average Midwesterner) I often will substitute w for v because it is faster - takes a couple milliseconds less of muscle movements to produce.

It has already been discussed above about the hypercorrection. I just wanted to add that my 4th year Russian professor, when describing the word зря, "in vain," made a big deal about how useful an expression it was, and kept on saying consistantly how it meant "in wain," which I had a very hard time not laughing at. I felt really bad, too--he was the sweetest man alive, but "in wain" was very comical, especially when he kept repeating it for emphasis.

So, yes, what Chekhov does is possible, although his accent is not by any means really Russian. (He is one of my favorite characters, however. Classic trek represent!)

I agree that it may be hypercorrection. Or it could be he's secretly Ukrainian. lol.

About the hypercorrection.. Many Philippine languages don't have F in their phonemic inventory; it's usually substituted by P. But still, the F sound is taught in schools as part of learning English. Anyway, my aunt and grandmother tend to hypercorrect. Saying stuff like FARTY instead of PARTY. Lots of laps. I mean laughs. hehe.

By the way, in Russian there also was no such a sound as 'F'. And there are no Russian words with that sound. All the words in Russian that have that sound are borrowed from other languages. There were even two letters to designate that sound. Actually, Ф was to designate 'ph' and the theta letter (there is no such instance in modern cyrillic alphabet) was to designate 'th'. Just like 60 years ago it was a common thing in villages to still say 'П' instead of 'Ф'. The most well known mistake was to say 'шкап' instead of 'шкаф'.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ф
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Фита

Sorry, шкап instead of шкаф was not a mistake but a norm at the time. See, for example, "Дядя Степа", a well-known poem by Mihalkov:

Сидя книги брал со шкапа,
И не раз ему в кино
Говорили: "Сядьте на пол!
Вам, товарищ, все равно!"
(1935)

I guess that later the norm was changed and шкаф became the accepted spelling. However it is wrong to say that 60 years ago it was a mistake. It was not. It would be a mistake now but I think no one pronounces шкаф as шкап any more anyway.

Agreed. My mistake. The original german word 'schapp' had 'p', not 'f' at the end. :)

Hollywood,
I'm worried that the small world of Hollywood has such a large influence in world opinion.
They make images amercain accept as truth with out question.
It (Hollywood)depicts Russians as the villain and 300 million people believe it....scary.

Damn Americains!

There's no such reason. They're the gits. :))
Seriously, I had to listen to a special lecture from my English teacher to finally understand the difference between the two.

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