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

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.