Vocaboly.com

[halcombe]

I read

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1361237,00.html

the following:

'What did you need to understand about Azerbaijan (to pick one at
random) when it was part of that big place ruled over by Brezhnev or
Khrushchev?'

Why, when the last syllable of the name of each of the former Soviet
leaders is transliterated into English with the same letters, is the
pronunciation different? The first is '-eff'; the second '-off'.

The latter name-ending is usually rendered in English either '-ov'
(Pavlov) or '-off' (Rachmaninoff).

Is the final vowel in Russian (a language I do not speak) capable of
either pronunciation, depending on circumstances?

[Alec McKenzie]

halcombe@subdimension.com (halcombe) wrote:

[Vladimir Ermakoff]

--
From Russia with love,
Vladimir AKA SoNO

Alec McKenzie <mckenzie@despammed.com> ÐÉÛÅÔ ×
ÓÏÏÂÝÅÎÉÉ:mckenzie-CEC05C.17154628112004@news.aaisp.net.uk...

[Captain!]

"Hugo S. Cunningham" <checkwebsite@cyberussr.com> wrote in message
news:41aa567a.282681578@news.newsguy.com...

[Hugo S. Cunningham]

On Sun, 28 Nov 2004 17:15:46 +0000, Alec McKenzie
<mckenzie@despammed.com> wrote:

[Raymond S. Wise]

While researching the subject of transliteration from Russian into English,
I came across the term "Volapuk encoding":


From
http://www.thebestlinks.com/Volapuk_encoding.html


[quote]

*Volapuk encoding* [...] is a slang term for rendering the letters of
Cyrillic alphabet by the Latin ones.

It has been in use since the early days of Internet to write e-mail messages
and other texts in Russian in the cases when the support of Cyrillic fonts
was limited: either the sender didn't have a keyboard with Cyrillic letters
or the receiver was not necessarily expected to have Cyrillic screen
fonts.[...]

The name comes from the Volapuk constructed language, for two reasons. A
Cyrillic text written in this way looks strange and often funny, just as a
Volapuk text may appear. At the same time, the word "volapuk" itself sounds
funny to Russian speakers, so the name stuck. It is worth pointing out here
that Volapuk is based on an English vocabulary, but the resulting language
is nothing like English.

Volapuk [encoding] is not exactly a transliteration. There are no
"standardized" rules.[...]

[end quote]


--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

[Reinhold (Rey) Aman]

[Deleted <soc.culture.russian>]

Raymond S. Wise wrote:

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

"Raymond S. Wise" <mplsrayNOSPAM@gbronline.com> wrote in message news:<YPOdnYKCdMPFJTfcRVn-tQ@gbronline.com>...

[Wayne Brown]

halcombe wrote:
[...]

Others have already answered, but I would like to add a few words of
clarification. The pronunciation problem has been caused by sloppy
transliteration of the names into English. They are spelled in the last
syllable in Cyrillic with the letter 'e,' which can be pronounced either yeh
or yo, depending on convention. In books for Russian children, for foreigner
learners of Russian and in cases where there might be ambiguity, Russians
put two dots over the letter when it's to be pronounced yo and not yeh, but
normally Russian adults don't bother with the dots because they know the
correct pronunciation. The missing dots, however, cause the poor foreigner
inside and outside Russia endless headaches because the problem is not just
confined to the pronunciation of Russian surnames but includes just ordinary
Russian words as well.

Foreigners transliterating Russian surnames into Latin letters have
traditionally made no effort to show the exact pronunciation of the letter
because that would entail knowing the correct pronunciation, which also must
be known in order to stress the right syllable in a multisyllabic word.
There are precious few aides to help, like the rule that a syllable with a
yo must be the stressed one. Or the rule that a final -sky can never be
stressed. But how is the name Musorgsky stressed? On the first syllable,
Músorgsky. Most Russian surnames should actually be written with a stress
mark in Latin letters to help a foreigner aspiring to pronounce them.
Russians themselves have a large personal repertoire of correctly pronounced
surnames just as English speakers do. But on occasion even Russians have to
ask a person how to pronounce his surname if more than one pronunciation is
in use, and they do occasionally make a mistake in the stress of rare
surnames.

For years there was no separate surname reference work. Ambitious foreigners
usually went through Russian encyclopedias and other such reference books,
where surname stress is indicated, in hopes of finding the one they were
looking for. In 1979, a *Japanese* university for the first time published a
Russian surname reference book with about 40,000 entries. The book had been
compiled by a Japanese man who had meticulously collected Russian surnames
with their correct pronunciation for more than 50 years.

The different appearances of Russian surnames in Latin letters are a result
of the various transliteration systems, none of which has ever achieved
general international recognition. When French was still the dominant
foreign language of the educated classes in Russia, Russian surnames were
transliterated into Latin letters for international situations according to
French pronunciation. Tchaikovsky is an example of this as are surnames
ending in 'ff'. The final 'v' in a Russian surname is never voiced; its
actual pronunciation is 'f.' French was long the most important language of
international diplomacy and has influenced Russian surname transliteration
up to the present, although English seems mostly to dominate nowadays.

Regards, ----- WB.

[Joe Fineman]

checkwebsite@cyberussr.com (Hugo S. Cunningham) writes:

[Raymond S. Wise]

"Reinhold (Rey) Aman" <aman@sonic.net> wrote in message
news:41AAD9C8.5B225EC@sonic.net...

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Joe Fineman <joe_f@verizon.net> wrote in message news:<wkzn10m66i.fsf@verizon.net>...

[Ross Howard]

On 30 Nov 2004 06:38:56 -0800, athel@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr (Athel
Cornish-Bowden) wrought:

[Bill Bonde ( ``And the La]

Joe Fineman wrote:

[Wayne Brown]

Hugo S. Cunningham wrote:

[...]