Spelling: Kyiv, not Kiev. Pronunciation?...

[Silent3]

Not Key-EV. That's much too Russian. But not KEEV either, even though that seems to be the go-to pronunciation for Americans trying to demonstrate Ukranian solidarity.

Sounds kind of like KIH-you to me, but, well... that's not quite right either.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/13/us/politics/kiev-pronunciation.html

[Lithos]

1. Here

Link to tweet

Closer to "Kyeev" (Steve) than not...

[Silent3]

2. Still a bit hard for me to do, but that sounds better than the audio in the NYT article.

Thanks.

[Igel]

3. It doesn't help that how you pronounce the final "v" differs by location.

West versus east.

Or that Russian speakers (at least the ones I've known) tend to try to make the "y" too much like a Russian sound. I do the same thing. I think she pharyngealizes it a bit too much. Should be front, not as high as i but certainly not as low as e, and a little farther back--but not high central like she has it.

And the final v should be labialized--and depending where you are, possibly a fricative. That's the reason the clear i sounds more like "you", but it's really more like i + w.

[abqtommy]

4. When I was in high school and college orchestras we played a selection titled "The Great Gate

Of Kiev". I never thought it necessary to learn the "proper" pronunciation of the name since the music spoke for itself. In my life I've learned how Constantinople was changed to Istanbul, Peking to Beijing
and Bombay to Mumbai. Obviously language is a fluid thing so I'm not going to worry about it much.

[Silent3]

5. Well, if you're going to bring Istanbul into this...