Transliteration of "ы"

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

I'm not familiar with any transliteration schemes for Russian; whenever I write down how to pronounce something for a friend who isn't taking Russian, I just pick the closest latin letter. But this creates problems.

For example, unstressed "o." Should I write it as "o" even though it's reduced and sounds more like "a"? And what about "й"? I usually write it as "y", but this makes names like "Nikolay" appear to rhyme with "hay." But the most troublesome letter is "ы" - there's just no equivalent.

So, do any of you have any favorite transliteration schemes? What sort of transliteration schemes are out there?

Comments

[corriel.livejournal.com]

There are many kind of transliterations going! I could try to explain them all but I don't feel like doing it *lazy* so I'll just write here mine:

а a
б b
в v
г g
д d
е e
ё jo
ж zh
з z
и i
й j
к k
л l
м m
н n
о o
п p
р r
с d
т t
у u
ф f
х h
ц c
ч ch
ш sh
щ sch
ъ (I use nothing, but u can use " or -)
ы y
ь '
э e (can be complex cos it's just like for е)
ю ju
я ja

This transliteration is far from being perfect, but I like it best. It's the closest to the "official" one (I'm not sure there's an official one but I made a wild guess it is), and to the Latin way of spelling "Serbo-Croatian" or other Slavic languages spelt in Latin (except instead of sh ch zh u'd have s c z with a hacek sign on the top).

Oops, typo!

[corriel.livejournal.com]

с = s (not с = d). :-/

addendum

[sunirk.livejournal.com]

One is more likely to see the following variants:
ё - yo, io, or it can be abandoned completely and "e" is used instead.
ц - ts
ы - bI, i.

Re: addendum

[corriel.livejournal.com]

Yes. And there are so many more... If I ever get round to I may list them here sometimes.

Re: addendum

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

"ё" as "e"? That's really misleading!

Re: addendum

[langwidere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's incredibly misleading but even in some Russian texts I've seen they don't use the "ё" replacing it with "e" instead and letting the reader rely on context.

Re: addendum

[sunirk.livejournal.com]

Not really, One can figure out the implied "ё", provided his vocabulary is large enough.
There were times when books and newspapers were printed with "е" instead of "ё".
Even nowadays it's not that rare to occur.

By the way, here is the tip:
if the word has "ё", the accent will be always on it :)

Re: addendum

[kutsuwamushi.livejournal.com]

Yes, "ё" is always stressed, but that still doesn't help you unless you have a large vocabulary or a dictionary and a lot of patience, because "e" can also be stressed (there's simply no way to tell if it's supposed to be "e" or "ё"). Not to mention that stress marks aren't normally used.

It's just really, well, stupid.

Re: addendum

[yers.livejournal.com]

There's been a "save the letter ё" movement in Russia. But I don't think it's going to be extinct anytime soon.

Personally, I never use it except where a plain "e" would create ambiguity, as in все "everyone" vs. всё "everything". Otherwise, my mother taught me that it's more cultured not to use "ё".

On the other hand, I found out some time ago that I'd been mispronouncing the word никчемный ("good for nothing") all my life, because its proper pronounciation is никчёмный.

It's much the same as with -ough in "tough", "though" and "thought" and "through", but you can more or less understand the reasons why some e's become ё under stress and some don't if you study Czech or Croatian, or find out about the letter ять in pre-Soviet Russian orthography.

I'll write a post about it sometime.

Re: addendum

[irkin.livejournal.com]

There were times when books and newspapers were printed with "е" instead of "ё".
Even nowadays it's not that rare to occur.
Even nowadays? :) I'd say it's rather rare to see a book or newspaper where е is written instead of ё :)

Re: addendum

[irkin.livejournal.com]

Sorry, of course I meant "е isn't written instead of ё" 8)
Need to sleep more..

[bugtilaheh.livejournal.com]

I go by this post I made:
http://www.livejournal.com/talkpost.bml?journal=bugtilaheh&itemid=164645
I don't remember where I got that; it was a site off the Internet. :-/

ы

[yers.livejournal.com]

Vladimir Nabokov transliterated ы as ï.

I use y for ы, and j for й.

If I were a politician, I'd campaign for an official transliteration scheme to be endorsed. I had a lot of trouble because of my name being Romanised differently in different documents.

[irkin.livejournal.com]

I use "y" for "ы" as well as for "й". It seems it's understandable by context.
As for ё, writing in Russian I don't put the points. And if I write on Russian with latin letters, I use "yo" when I speak with foreigners (and that's easy to forget because the hands write automatically :) and "e" when I speak with Russians.

Actually, everyone writes in latinitsa (латиница, as we call it :) the way its left heel wants :)

BTW, you can meet the strange kind of transliteration many native speakers use :) Instead of corresponding latin letters they use letter and numbers that look like Russians. Letter з can be written as the number 3, ч like 4, Russian х like English X instead of h/kh, н like H, ш like w instead of sh, etc :) For example "хорошо" = "xopowo", "что" = "4to", and so on :)

There are one Russian Fido-based newsgroup that's called Странное место (Strange place) but since the name of newsgroups can be written only with latin letters, it was called CTPAHHOE MECTO (ctpahhoe mecto, if in lowercase :) It happens when people feel too lazy or when writing an short message on mobile phone when you need to save the simbols :)