This may represent the height (or depth) of triviality, but something's been gnawing at me for years (perhaps illustrating the triviality of my mindset). During the movie
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the original Enterprise crew has gone back in time to late twentieth-century America in search of some humpback whales. The plan is to transport them back to their own 23rd century just in "time" to save the Earth from a destructive extraterrestrial probe. Yes, this is obviously some heavy fiction: who really thinks we'll even MAKE it to the 23rd century? But still, I'm in on the fantasy elements of Star Trek and I like their stories and characters. And
Star Trek IV may well have been their best feature-length movie, at least until the latest Star Trek flick came out and pushed the time travel paradox beyond the breaking point (but with a great story and compelling acting). One thing bothered me about one of the characters, though: Pavel Chekov.
Admittedly the character Chekov, a bridge officer on the Enterprise, although Russian in his upbringing, is played by a
non-Russian actor named Walter Koenig. According to William Shatner, Koenig was originally picked for the TV series because he looked a lot like the Monkees' Davy Jones and they wanted some teeny-bopper bounce in the ratings (it apparently didn't work, though). Still, Koenig was able to make Chekov into a distinct, popular character on the series and in the movies. One thing he did that brought many smiles to the faces of viewers (including mine) was his thick Russian accent and difficulty pronouncing certain English words. And now we come to what is gnawing at me...
During a scene in
Star Trek IV, Chekov and Uhura are walking the streets of San Francisco in "our" time. Knowing that it is a navy harbor, they are looking for a ship with a nuclear reactor. Chekov walks up to a cop doing his beat and point-blank asks him where the nuclear "wessels" are. The cop looks at him puzzled. Chekov repeats himself, carefully enunciating the words: nu-cle-ar wes-sels. Finally, after some moments of this confusion they do get some information (I believe from someone else). Trust me, everything eventually turns out all right. But "wessels"?
Chekov's difficulty in pronouncing the "v" sound implies that it is nonexistent in Russian. But that isn't so: it is actually very common. Ironically, it is the "w" sound that Chekov keeps saying in its place that is relatively rare in Russian. But still, if you didn't know anything about Russian you wouldn't have any reason to suspect this. Walter Koenig pulled a fast one on us, I think, and got away with it.
But then again, maybe I'm missing something here. If so, will someone qualified with a Russian background explain a native speaker's tendency to substitute a sound rare in his own language for one that is common?
I had a German friend from Augsburg. I understand very well that this is not Russia and his native language was not Russian. He spoke close to fluent English, but usually only on his business trips to America. Germans generally don't pronounce W as the English W, but indistinguishable from the shared German and English V sound. He knew this language difference, and correctly pronounced most English words with a W (like "water" instead of the German Wasser pronounced vassa). But some English words tricked him into trying to sound English just a little too hard. He would say "Nowember" with an English W. I think Walter Koenig (a Russian but with TWO German names) may have copied this not uncommon over-correction.
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