![]() ![]() Moussorgsky)Īs in German, Russian voiced stops lose their voicing at ends of syllables, which means primarily that -ov becomes -off (or -ev becomes -eff). Oo, as in "root" (occurs mainly in French spellings, e.g. All other combinations are fairly self-explanatory.Īh-yeh, or iy-yeh, e.g. When e follows another vowel it usually means yeh, so the combination is actually two separate vowels, not a diphthong. Khrushchëv = khrush- choff (the umlaut is often ommited so that ë is written e see above) Gorbachev = Gorbachëv = gor-bah- choffĪw or yaw, e.g. Evgeny Onegin = yev- geh-nee oh- nyeh-gin or even aw, equivalent to ë, e.g. In their last syllables than they appear to: in fact they should be spelled GorbachëvĮh, e.g. This is whyįamiliar names like Gorbachev and Khrushchev sound like they have different vowels Omit the umlaut, thus causing it to be omitted in the transliteration as well. There's also the distinction between e and ë: these are actually two distinctĬyrillic letters with different sounds (written the same way in both alphabets), but just to make life interesting for us the Russians often More examples can be found in the list of names. One must learn to recognize certain names in which e means yeh, for instance, Evgeny = yehv- gehn-ee (it's usually yeh at the beginning of a word, and also often if the e is in a stressed syllable). ![]() This is a distinction that exists in Cyrillic spelling but is often (though not always) lost in transliteration. The biggest thing to watch out for is that e may be pronounced either eh or yeh depending on circumstances. For German and other transliterations, follow the normal pronunciation rules for the appropriate language, and the hints on stress given below. The following letter-sound correspondences are primarily for reading English/American transliterations of Russian. Other spellings are less common, but one comes across them occasionally on foreign record labels. DON'T EVER SAY chi- kow-skee, THAT'S NOT HIS NAME!). Usually you'll see the English spelling, though German spellings are also not uncommon, so don't be confused by them (i.e. That is why you'll sometimes come across alternate spellings of any well-known Russian name. Thus you may sometimes have to apply the rules for these languages instead. The problem is that speakers of German, French, Polish, Czech and Dutch do the same thing, for speakers of their own languages. In these cases you need only apply the normal rules of English pronunciation, bearing a few specific rules in mind (see below), and you'll be okay. When speakers of English transliterate Russian names into Latin letters, they usually try to produce the most logical spelling that will tell speakers of their own language how to pronounce the names correctly (or at least, passably). ![]() These conventions differ particularly according to the nationality of the people who are intended to read them. Unfortunately, different record labels sometimes follow different conventions for transliterating Russian. Always remember that when you read a Russian name on a CD or LP cover (unless it's the Melodiya label and you know how to read the original Cyrillic), you're reading a transliteration: the Latin letters are put together artificially to reproduce the sounds of the name. Russian is the only language frequently encountered in radio that is written originally in a different alphabet: Cyrillic. The intricacies of correct Russian pronunciation are often obscured in the transliteration from Cyrillic to Latin letters, nevertheless there is an accepted standard of "Americanized" Russian that is not at all difficult to grasp. ![]() The other currently supported transliteration systems for Russian are: BGN/PCGN, GOST (1983) / UN (1987), ISO 9, and scholarly.Very few people in the Western hemisphere pronounce Russian correctly, nor is it expected (or even appropriate) that radio announcers should do so. Other transliteration systems for Russian The latest version was published by the American Library Association & Library of Congress in 1997. This system is used to represent bibliographic names by North American libraries and the British Library, as well as in publications throughout the English-speaking world. This label includes the initials of the American Library Association (ALA) and the Library of Congress (LC). Transliteration system: ALA-LCĪLA-LC is a set of standards for the romanization, or representation of texts in other writing systems using the Latin alphabet. Russian can be written in Latin alphabet or in Cyrillic alphabet. Official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova, it also has the co-official status in other countries, and counts about 164 million speakers. Russian ( русский язык, transliterated as russkiy yazyk) belongs to the East Slavic group of the Indo-European family. ![]()
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