The title refers to Ántonia, a young woman immigrant to the western prairies of the US. The story is told by her friend Jim, who arrives there at age ten to live with his grandparents. Jim thinks of her as his close friend, my Ántonia.
The name Ántonia is pronounced in an approximation of the Czech. Cather writes, "The Bohemian name Ántonia is strongly accented on the first syllable, like the English name Anthony, and the i is given the sound of long e. The name is pronounced An'-ton-ee-ah." (a footnote in the text, at the start of Book I, "The Shimerdas").[1] The acute accent in Czech does not represent a stressed syllable but a long vowel; all Czech words are stressed on the first syllable by default. Note that the English short a sound, /æ/, is qualitatively different from the Czech á, which is pronounced /aː/. The Czech pronunciation can be heard at this sound file.[2]
