"Jim Oberg" writes:

Vozduhk? Probably merely a type and not a misspelling of Vozdukh -- but it
does grate my ears
when I hear the NASA PAOs persistently pronounce Korolyov as

koh ROLL ee yeff
instead of
ka rall YOFF

NASA officials continue to accent simple names like Ivan and Igor and
Vladimir
on the first syllable, they seem to just relish the chance to mispronounce
their partners names in public, sometimes to their faces. What IS it about
Americans in general, and those at NASA in particular?

Oh, this is a British habit of very long standing.

As you know, the last vowel (if you want to call it that) in
Korolyov is the e with dots over it, and that throws 'em. I
could have sworn that the tour guides at the Energia museum
called him Korolyev, but not distinctly. I think that was what
they thought we expected.

My counterparts (including several Igors) pronounce Igor almost
exactly like the English word "eager," which is accented on
the first syllable. One of them was particularly amused at my
pronunciation of the word "dom" (apartment house), which I could
never quite get right. So I probably got nothing else right,
either.

--
J. Porter Clark