Re: Lukashenka (jara: Country names still needed)

Quoting Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>:

>  --- Andreas Johansson skrzypszy:
>
> > It's him. The modern, "official" Swedish transliteration would be
> "Zjukov".
> >
> > But surely the German transliteration must be "Schukow"?
>
> No, "Shukow" (IIRC). "Schukow" would be a transliteration of "S^ukov".
> The
> problem with German is that it doesn't have the /Z/ phoneme, and that is
> why
> "sh" was chosen as some sort of compromise.
Well, who am I to doubt your sagely words? However, I've seen "sch" for
both /S/ and /Z/ in old - WWII era - German spellings of Russian names. These
spellings may, of course, have been entirely ad hoc and "unscientific". In
older Swedish transliterations, the /s/~/z/ and /S/~/Z/ distinctions was
sometimes entierly ignored.

> Another problem with German is that it pronounces _z_ like [ts]. Hence
> for
> example "Jelzin". On the other hand, initial _s_ before a vowel is
> pronounced
> [z], hence "Selkin" instead of "Zelkin". But what to do with initial
> [s], then?
> How to distinguish between "Sacharov" and "Zacharov"? Well, sometimes
> German
> uses double _s_ for [s]: Ssacharow.
That's be just beautiful in words with a double "CC" ...

                                                         Andreas

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