Re: OT: Parlez vous Kazakh?

Quoting Isaac Penzev <isaacp@...>:

> Jan van Steenbergen cazdy:
>
>
> > --- Joe Fatula skrzypszy:
> >
> > > I've seen the same sort of thing as well.  Lake Balkhash is always
> spelled
> > > with a KH in English (for those who spell it at all), and Kazakh
> is
> > > variously spelled with a K or a KH.  And yes, it's "qazaq" in
> Kazakh.  So
> > > no, I don't know what's going on.
> >
> > Simple: before 1991 it was common practice to follow the Russian
> version of a
> > place name rather than the local version, even when the former was
> nothing but
> > a Cyrillic transliteration.
>
> And the trasliteration often was not too precise. In this case, the
> problem was
> with absense of [q] sound in Russian. So it was rendered as [k] or [x],
> at
> random :) Examples:
> [qaraqum] > _Karakum_, [qazaq] > _Kazax_, [qMrGMz] > _Kirgiz_ (with soft
> [k_j]!
> because [ki\] sequence is impossible in Russian), and even an early
> borrowing
> from Tatar [qomMt] > _xomut_ "horse's collar"
Cool. I'm going to have some similar loaning going on in some conlang or other.

While at it, I'm told that the Czarist practice of calling the Kazakhs "Kirgiz"
was due to a feeling that _Kazax_ sounded to much like "Cossack" (the Russian
version of which I can't for the moment recall - "kozak" [k6'zak]?). Is this
true?

                                                            Andreas

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