Duino.

This ancient post got revived, and I enjoyed rereading it, but this time I wondered how you say “Duino Elegies” in Russian, so I looked it up in my formerly invaluable copy of Adrian Room’s Dictionary of Translated Names and Titles (now largely replaced by the internet, but still fun to use) and found Ду́инские эле́гии, which made me suspect that Duino might have the stress on the first syllable, an idea which had never occurred to me. So of course I googled, but the Wikipedia article didn’t indicate stress. It did add (Slovene: Devin, archaic German: Tybein), which didn’t help but was certainly intriguing. I learned that Duino is a frazione of Duino-Aurisina, and that article has the parenthetical (Slovene: Devin-Nabrežina, German: Thübein-Nabreschin, also Tybein; Triestine: Duin-Aurisina). The Italian article on Aurisina adds the following overwhelming mass of variants:

Nelle registrazioni tergestine, riferite a vigne e oliveti sulla costiera, sotto il ciglione dell’altopiano carsico, compare tra, il 1308 ed il 1349, come Lebrosina, Lebresina, Lobrosina, Labresina, Liurisina ed Aurisin, Aurisins, Auresinis, Auresinum, Aurexinum, Aurixinum, Aurisinum; le menzioni riferibili al villaggio danno Laurisina, Liusirina, Liurixina, Luirisinum.

L’utilizzazione ufficiale del toponimo italiano, attuale, è del 1927 (fino a tale data veniva utilizzato un toponimo italiano ricalcato da quello sloveno, ovvero Nabresina).

In sloveno le forme in uso ufficiale Nabrežina, affiancata dalla forma dialettale Nabržin, pur derivando dal medesimo antico toponimo, risultano modificate per influenza dell’espressione linguistica na bregu (ovvero sul ciglio).

All of which seemed worth a post, but I’m still wondering whether it’s /ˈduino/ or (as I’ve always said) /duˈino/. Do we know?

Comments

  1. Italian Wikipedia gives the Triestine as Duìn, which seems to resolve the stress in your direction.

    (Although I can think of four possible pronunciations, two with three syllables and two with two, and I don’t have enough intuition for Italian to rule any out except maybe [‘du.i.no].)

  2. Italian Wikipedia gives the Triestine as Duìn, which seems to resolve the stress in your direction.

    Thanks, I’ll continue in my paroxytonic ways!

  3. marie-lucie says

    un toponimo italiano ricalcato da quello sloveno, ovvero Nabrežina

    If the word is of Slavic origin, I wonder if it could be related to the name of the Russian river known in French as la Bérézina, known for an episode of Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign, when his army had to cross this river in the middle of the winter, with great loss of people and horses.

  4. Nabrežina as the end of Italian text explains is Slavic for “on the coast”. Berezina takes its name from the word for birch, but, as Wiki explains, not in Slavic, but in some Baltic language. Or there are some fanciful theories about name’s origin from Borisphen, an ancient word for Dnieper. There is no connection between bereg/coast and bereza/birch as far as I can see.

  5. I pronounce it with a long “i” which results in primary stress on “i”. But that could very well be influenced by the song “De Trieste fin Duino” aka “De Trieste fin a Zara”.

  6. marie-lucie says

    Thanks D.O.

  7. D.O, Nabrežina means “on the hills”, from SLO breg=hill, not from breza (birch).

    From the wiki: “The settlement lies on top of the Karst Plateau, where the cliffs descend to the sea. Its elevation is 143 m. Around the village there are four rises named Ojstri vrh, Gradec, Mount Babiza (Monte Babiza, Slovene: Babica, 197 m), and Mount Berciza (Monte Berciza, Slovene: Brščice, 219 m). “

  8. David Marjanović says

    Or there are some fanciful theories about name’s origin from Borisphen, an ancient word for Dnieper.

    That would be Borysthenes, and yeah, definitely fanciful.

  9. norman gage, I don’t know Slovenian, but the Italian text suggests translation “on the edge” not “on the hill”. And “breg”, which in Germanic does mean “hill” turned into “coast, bank” in Slavic languages as quick perusal of Wiktionary shows. And certainly, it is not related to “bereza”, that was the point.

  10. That’s strange, I always read it as ‘DU-ino’, probably more from ignorance than anything else.

  11. Or you may have heard somebody say it that way; apparently people do (see the Russian example above).

  12. David Marjanović says

    From just looking at the Italian word, I automatically stress the i. Spanish can deal with huy as a diphthong, Italian doesn’t seem to like that.

  13. But I’ve never heard them called other than duínskie in Russian. In fact, I learned about them from a poet who had translated them into Russian. She said duínskie, although I can’t recall if she was perfectly certain it was the right stress position.

  14. Giacomo Ponzetto says

    /du’ino/ and though I’m late to report it, I can add for future reference that the natural place to look for these answers is the RAI Dizionario d’Ortografia e di Pronunzia, conveniently online though I won’t link to it befause the last time I wrote a comment with hyperlinks it disappeared forever.

  15. But I’ve never heard them called other than duínskie in Russian.

    Ah, so it was simply an error in the Room book. I’ll correct it — thanks!

  16. the natural place to look for these answers is the RAI Dizionario d’Ortografia e di Pronunzia, conveniently online

    Online here; many thanks for that very useful resource!

  17. “Spanish can deal with huy as a diphthong, Italian doesn’t seem to like that.”

    Russian likes it.

  18. In Slovenian, “breg” has two senses: slope/hillside and bank/shore (esp. of a river/lake).

  19. A friend currently there said that the stressed syllable was i

  20. A friend currently there said that the stressed syllable was i

  21. John Cowan says

    My mother said /duˈino/ in both English and German: she gave me a bilingual edition for one of my late-teens birthdays.

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