Re: Questions and Impressions of Basque

Tamás Racskó wrote:

> On 05 Sep 2004 Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@MEL...> wrote:
>
> > That would also agree with how Ukrainians transcribe English, but then
> > OTOH I guess Russians use their _y_ for English /I/ too.
>
>   According to Google, |safety car| is definitely spelt with front
> {i} not with back {y} as {sejfeti-kar}, just as {veri gud} for
> |very good|.
I was lazy enough to reply immediately, but indeed I should have mentionned
that _y_ is never used in Russian transcription of English - it is always
_i_. As for Ukrainian, the situation is more complicated due to different
*official* spelling for proper names and other types of words borrowed from
European languages, including the ill-famous exceptions from "the Rule of
the Nine" (pravylo dev"yatky): after d, t, z, s, ts, zh, ch, sh, r before a
consonant write _y_, otherwise _i_, BUT this rule is NOT applied to proper
names, that is why you get: _Inzhener Dizel' vynajshov dyzel' motor._
'Engineer Diesel invented diesel motor'. I hope one day we'll have
uniformity to avoid this stupidity. As a non-conformist, I always write and
say ["dIzel;] in both cases.

-- Yitzik