Re: OT: Parlez vous Kazakh?

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"

> Republican languages (let alone the smaller
> languages) were hardly known among people other than specialists.
> For the same reason, the West-Ukrainian city of L'viv is almost always called
> "L'vov" in older atlases.
Mmm. I think I need to change "Kiev" to "Kyïv" in my profile then...

~~~~~~Yitzik,
who have recently resumed his work over a Turkic conlang.

P.S. Unfortunately, Joe, I don't know any Turkic natlang, and need to rely
heavily on various reference resources (most of which are available only in
Russian)

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