Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Latinized Ukrainian orthography (was: Missing Words)

From:Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...>
Date:Friday, March 15, 2002, 14:48
 --- John Cowan <jcowan@...> wrote:
> Johannes de Saximontis scripsit:
I like that one!!!
> That is the purpose of a *transliteration* standard: > mapping > between scripts independent of specific language or > orthography. > If you have a bunch of cyrillic, you can apply ISO 9 > to romanize > it and be 100% sure that whoever receives the Latin > form will be > able to reconstruct the original exactly, even a > dumb computer.
I know, but it looks terrible. They even created one character for the "shcha" (something like "W" with a little tail underneath), that completely misguides the innocent reader.
> *Transcription* standards map between orthographies, > and are > language-specific. A Russian-to-German > transcription sensibly > produces "Gorbatchow", but in English we would take > that to > rhyme with cow! Sometimes transcriptions get > borrowed, though, > which is why we have Tschaikowski (or Tschaikovski, > or -sky) in > English instead of a fairly sensible Chaikovsky.
The transcriptions you are referring to are the popular ones. They are language-related, which often produces funny results. I still prefer C^ajkovskij.
> I remember a self-appointed "English usage" guy, not > Safire but > one of the others, fussing about the use of > transliterations > (in the sense defined above) in English, claiming > that they were > ugly and unreadable (true), and asking for > transcription instead. > Unfortunately, he went overboard and applied the > same rule to > Polish, too!
What shall we do with the guy? Jan ===== "You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J. Michael Straczynski __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com

Reply

John Cowan <jcowan@...>