Talk:Romanization of Russian

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[edit] Transliteration of soft sign (from Talk:Siberia#Transliteration)

This discussion was moved from User talk:Cantus:

Hi, Cantus! I am a little stumped with what "Sibír'" means. It surely isn't a transliteration, and you do not mention what language this is in. Can you satisfy my curiosity, please? Also, why did you remove the accent mark from the Russian version?--Ëzhiki 15:42, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

Hi. Yes, it is a transliteration. It is not in any particular language. I removed the accent from the cyrillic text and placed it in the transliteration instead, as the Russian original does not carry such accent mark. --Cantus 19:17, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
Russian original spelling never includes an accent mark, with three notable exceptions: dictionaries, encyclopedia definitions, and texts for little kids or learners of the language. As for putting an accent mark on transliterated version of the word, it is quite a novelty to me. May I ask which system of transliteration uses this convention?
The variant I originally put into the article conforms to the rules of transliteration from Russian into English, which have been used throughout the English part of Wikipedia. If you need links to the articles that use this particular system, I will gladly provide them to you.--Ëzhiki 19:49, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)

OK, now please tell me what was wrong with the Transliteration of Russian into English link that you kindly removed from the article's intro?--Ëzhiki 22:33, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Dear Cantus—I will have to revert you change unless you explain what the reason for removal was. So far it looks like minor vandalism (removing info without explanation). If you have a reason—I am more than willing to hear what it is. Thanks.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:34, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

Will you please stop removing bits and pieces from this article? Or at least try to explain why you are doing it.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 22:15, Aug 10, 2004 (UTC)

The manual of style you are referring to has nothing on transliteration placement. The Naming conventions guidelines indicate the following:
Convention: Name your pages in English and place the native transliteration on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English than the English form.
As you see, it says nothing about not needing a clarification that the variant given is a transliteration and it says nothing about Cyrillic(comma)(space)Transliteration layout. Plus, the transliteration variant of Sibir' instead of Sibir can technically be used, but it does contradict with the transliteration guidelines used across the vast majority of other Russia-related articles. I would assume you would understand that contradiction since you are so zealous in following the guidelines. Now, would you please revert your changes or further explain why I am wrong. Thank you.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:47, Aug 11, 2004 (UTC)
Would you please reply?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 13:43, Aug 16, 2004 (UTC)

I'm aiming for consistency here. You would have to change ALL pages with cyrilic text in it. They're all in this same format. Stop this, Ëzhiki. --Cantus 02:59, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)

Consistensy, eh? Well, how about consistenly explaining people what the heck "Sibir" stand for? Unless one knows Russian, it is impossible to figure out that it is a transliteration. Plus, I am more than willing to change ALL pages with cyrillic text in it. That has been exactly my goal, as a matter of fact, and that's what I am working on most of the time. Could actually use a little help there, not just blatant meaningless opposition I've encountered so far from your side. So please, please, please, do not just ignore this discussion again. Deal?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 04:10, Aug 21, 2004 (UTC)
It is pretty OBVIOUS a text in ITALICS following a different alphabet is going to be a transliteration. People have more common sense than you do. --Cantus 21:04, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
How's that OBVIOUS? I am not going to go into the weird "Sibír'" notation you used to insist on, but since you are so much into consistency, would you at least mind to remove the trailing apostrophe to bring the transliteration in accordance to the standards which are most commonly used around here? Then, we can discuss the matters of OBVIOUS, hopefully through more civilized ways than reverting each other (surveys and mediation are two options we still have not tried; then, there is arbitration, which you already have experience with). And, while we are at it, do you mind not starting throwing personal insults around?--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 22:15, Aug 23, 2004 (UTC)
The apostrophe is necessary because this is a proper transliteration, and not an anglicized transliteration, which is what is used normally across an article. The proper transliteration is only given once. --Cantus 00:04, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)
The proper transliteration would be a transliteration of a Russian word into a generic format using the Latin alphabet; it would not be specific to the English language at all. That kind of transliteration, unsurprisingly, is used on the Russian Wikipedia. This, however, is an English Wikipedia, so the standards of transliteration of Russian into English (and NOT to a generic form, and NOT to some other language) must be followed. While systems that use apostrophe for a soft sign do indeed exist (for Russian-English transliteration), they are not widely used across this particular fine encyclopedia. If you are aiming for consistency (and I sure hope you do), then the most commonly used standards should be used. I hope this clarifies matters a little bit. Please, respond.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 02:14, Aug 24, 2004 (UTC)

I second the position of User:Ezhiki on this issue.

  • If you have a chance to look into the Apostrophe article, you will note that its usage depends on the language, and it is already confusing with latin-alphabetic non-English words. Not to say that in a closely related Belarussian language the meaning of apostrophe is exactly opposite: removal of palatalization. To my memories, the usage of apostrophe for russian words started from the word "Rus" introduced by "fighters against Russian imperialism".
  • Let's recall the purpose of transliteration here: (1) to show an idea of Russian spelling (not pronounciation) for users without Cyrillic fonts (2) to enable searches. Usage of apostrophe is useless for web searches: <Sibir> and <Sibir'> gives exactly the same numer of hits in google.

There is no way to imitate Russian palatalization in English. Similar problems exist in opposite direction. E.g., in Russian, both 'v' and 'w' are rendered by Ve (Cyrillic), but no one tears his hairs off his head to invent a way to distinguish them despite the fact that 'v' and 'w' sometimes bring semantic diference not less important than "Р" vs. "РЬ" (e.g., cover<-> cower).

My suggestion is to forget the apostrophe but for certain "special" cases, such as Rus' goremychnaya. Mikkalai 03:16, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

On the other hand, there is Library of Congress Slavic Transliteration and three other commonly used ones. I am wondering why no one took troubles to report these here.

My brief search shows it is common to use prime for soft sign and double prime for hard sign.

Mikkalai 21:45, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I am wondering why this discussion is here and not at the Transliteration of Russian into English page. I am copying it there. Mikkalai 21:56, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Library of congress for soft sign

IMO LOC did not very good job for Cyrillic. E.g., they suggest to use prime for soft sign in Belarussian language, obviously oblivious to the fact that it is already in use. Furthermore, we cannot use their way for hard sign, because two primes are of special meaning in wikipedia (we could have used the double quote mark, but this way lead to the same objections that were taken by LOC into an account). Not to say that LOC makes use of diacritics two letter wide. I guess, the initial design was for pencil marks on books bought for the library abroad. Mikkalai 22:30, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Personally I prefer ISO 9, but that is obviously not a choice for cultural and historical reasons. So, I've been using BGN/PCGN across Wikipedia, which I believe it is a fair compromise. To see this and other systems, click here. --Cantus 02:28, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
This particular article describes pretty much the same system, with the exceptions of the soft/hard signs, "-ый/-ий" endings, and the letter "ё" (I personally believe that "yo" would be more intuitive than what BGN/PCGN proposes, despite what my signature shows :)). See more on this below.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:24, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Deficiencies of the current proposal

First of all, thanks to Mikkalai for his initial proposal to compile this article and for his eventual return to its discussion. I also believe that this article should cover all of the existing transliteration systems, and give arecommendation as to which one of them should preferrably be used across the Wikipedia. I just never got to adding that information as I keep being distracted by other projects. Or well, no one ever said it's gonna be easy...

I agree, especially that it should cover ISO 5:95. Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now, to the point. Here are the problems with the existing system that are pretty much obvious:

  1. Hard sign/soft sign dillema
  2. "-Ый/-ий" endings
  3. Letter ё
  4. "Ы" vs. "й" (apart from the endings)

I'll try to go through them one by one.

Hard/soft signs. I tend to agree with Mikkalai that these signs should not be included in the transliterated variant (and, Cantus, yes, I do of course know the apostrophes are used in several systems, you just needed to look at this article more closely—you would see they are there), except when they are absolutely crucial for the meaning of the word (I can't think of any example, though), or when they have conventionally been used (no example, again), or when they help clarify an issue (e.g., Rus'). The article currently suggests using letter "y" when soft/hard sign is followed by a letter other than "е", but that definitely needs reworking ("Podyyarsky" for "Подъярский" looks pretty unwieldy and counter-intuitive, even though "Ilyinsky" for "Ильинский" is probably fine). This is one area where suggestions are very welcome.

I found that Ehglish speakers tend to remove ', and therefore I suppose that we shouldn't use them. (As for Rus, it's a proper name in English and it doesn't contain '.) Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There are few cases when soft and hard signs are used before 'double' vowels in names, which is the primary concern; however, doblle y looks really weird. See the proposal below. DmitryKo 21:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"-Ый/-ий" endings.
More thought should be put into this entry. Let me start from the remark that 'siny' for 'синий' is baaad. I suggest ий -> iy and ый -> yi unless it is in proper names with a tradition of spelling. Mikkalai 22:19, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I still am curious why "siny" for "синий" looks bad (even though I don't necessarily disagree with this notion). Maybe it's because the word is too short? "Sinenky" for "синенький" doesn't look as bad, does it? Anyway, this can be improved, but I am strongly against using "-iy" for "-ий" and "-yi" for "-ый". This, to me, would overly complicate an already convoluted system—you would have to explain why "й" should be transliterated as "y" in one case and as "i" in another. My counterproposal would be to leave "-ый" alone (i.e., use "y"), and use simple "i" for "-ий" (i.e, "синий" will become "sini"). This will at least add more consistency to the system, although it is still not as simple as I'd like it to be. It is also worth mentioning that not all "-ий" endings are created equal. Adjectives are one thing (here goes "siny/sini/siniy" again), but nouns can also have this ending (e.g., "Vo dvore on posadil paru akatsiy"). I'd think this one has to be an "-iy", no matter what we decide on the adjectives, but if I am overlooking something, please let me know.

I found that the most used transliterations are "-y" for "-ий" and "-yj" for "-ый". I find them also most natural for English speaker. Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Y is fine for substituting ий/ый because it's phonetic enough, even in the middle of words (altough cases like Чарторыйский are unusual). DmitryKo 21:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Letter ё. Russian Wikipedia made the use of this letter mandatory in Russian texts (so no more "полет"s where a "полёт" should be). One can argue about it a lot (and they do), but to me this is a very good practice which clarifies a lot of proper names, when it is entirely non-obvious which of the two letters should be used (Краснозна́менск or Краснознамёнск? I still don't know!). From the transliteration standpoint, using "yo" for "ё" makes more sense than using either "ë" or "yë", because "yo" would be in the same row as "ya" and "yu".

I agree that we should use "yo" for "ё". Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Yo is perfect. However, we need to provide a correct transliteration even in common cases such as Gorbachev, because ordinary people are unaware of Reforms of Russian orthography. DmitryKo 21:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Ы" vs. "й". Currently the article proposes using "y" for both of these letters. Not good. But as far as the alternatives go, they are not any better. "J" for "й" seems good until people start pronouncing it as "j" in "jam"—this is a good variant for languages that don't use "j" as a dyphthong, though. Not true for English. Using "y" for the soft/hard signs in some cases does not help getting rid of the confusion either. I've been thinking of this problem quite a lot, but I still don't seem to come up with a good solution, so any comments would be very welcome. Otherwise, we'd have to go with the flow, which is a shame for intelligent people who contribute to this fine encyclopedia. --Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:24, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)

It's not exactly so. "J" is used in English only in the start of syllables (as far as I remember). Therefore, an English speaker doesn't pronounce "J" as diftong if it is not followed by a vowel. However, the most natural way to denote syllable ending "Й" for an English speaker is "I" (for example, "Baikonur"). In the start of a syllable, there's definitely "Y" to be used (for example, "Yoshkar-Ola"). It's my experience only, however. Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
There's no syllable that sounds like Ы in English; Y is as close as possible and should be kept. DmitryKo 21:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Any chance the article could be enhanced with more examples of "sounds like/doesn't sound like" to help explain these? Augmenting these with audio files (would multiple variations be needed/useful?) would be pretty nice too. Chaizzilla 12:26 PDT, 10 Nov 2005
IPA transcriptions, when present, do the trick pretty well. --DmitryKo 22:02, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A bowout

I would have suggested keeping the SAMPA. However, do what you like, it makes no difference. Just stay away from the international-slavicist transliteration with the haceks and what not: it's more phonemic, rather than phonetic. But it makes no real difference. Just one last suggestion: if a rabid nationalist appears, RUN. A. Shetsen 06:23, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

SAMPA is a transcription system, which helps a reader understand how a word is pronounced. This article describes transliteration, which is used to show how a word is written in the original language using the letters of a different alphabet. These are two separate topics. As for the nationalists, I agree ... to a point.--Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:24, Aug 26, 2004 (UTC)
SAMPA has one real problem: its symbol are defined to work for a particular language only, i.e., they are not universal (but for universal sounds of course). Therefore SAMPA is of little utility for an average reader of Wikipedia. Of course, SAMPA recordings are of encyclopedic importance, but it is not a tool to help a common guy. Mikkalai 21:10, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
Absolutely agree - SAMPA should be specified in articles, but it's not a primary tool for describing a pronunciation, it's a tool for advance users :-). Dr Bug  (Volodymyr V. Medeiko) 07:48, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I think SAMPA should be axed, becase current transliteration proposal is as good at providing correct phonetics. For borderline cases like ЫЙ/ИЙ and hard/soft signs before vowels, a much better way is to use IPA and/or sound files. DmitryKo 21:21, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Soft/hard signs

Just FUI: in Unicode

Apostrophe ( ' ) is not the same as prime ( ′ )
and double quote ( " ) is not the same as double prime ( ″ )

Mikkalai 03:31, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] PHP Rus2Asc function based on this page

Thought someone might find this useful:

static function Russ2Asc ($str) {
        $str = preg_replace('/(?<!Б|б|В|в|Г|г|Д|д|Ж|ж|З|з|Й|й|К|к|Л|л|М|м|Н|н|П|п|Р|р|С|с|Т|т|Ф|ф|Х|х|Ц|ц|Ч|ч|Ш|ш|Щ|щ)(Е|е)/','ye',$str);
        $str = preg_replace('/(ъ|ь)(?=(А|а|О|о|У|у|Ы|ы|Э|э|Я|я|Ё|ё|Ю|ю|И|и))/','y',$str);
        $str = preg_replace('/(И|и|Ы|ы)(Й|й)(?=\s|\.|;|:|!|\?|\Z)/','y',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('А','а'),'a',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Б','б'),'b',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('В','в'),'v',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Г','г'),'g',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Д','д'),'d',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Е','е'),'e',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ё','ё'),'yo',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ж','ж'),'zh',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('З','з'),'z',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('И','и'),'i',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Й','й'),'y',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('К','к'),'k',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Л','л'),'l',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Э','э'),'e',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ю','ю'),'yu',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Я','я'),'ya',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('М','м'),'m',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Н','н'),'n',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('О','о'),'o',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('П','п'),'p',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Р','р'),'r',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('С','с'),'s',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Т','т'),'t',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('У','у'),'u',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ф','ф'),'f',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Х','х'),'kh',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ц','ц'),'ts',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ч','ч'),'ch',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ш','ш'),'sh',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Щ','щ'),'shch',$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('ъ','ь'),"",$str);
        $str = str_replace(array('Ы','ы'),'y',$str);
        return $str;
}

Note that it doesn't take into account any special cases, names etc. porge 06:51, Dec 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia conventional transliteration → Conventional transcription of Russian names

I'm rewriting the heading and intro of this section to comply with Wikipedia:Avoid self-references. What's described here isn't really transliteration. It's an attempt to codify the gamut of informal phonetic transcriptions; that's why so many exceptions and special cases are required.

It may be possible to simplify the rules if it's treated as a phonetic or phonemic transcription system. For example, Cyrillic Е is represented with a semiconsonant when it starts a syllable (ye), and with a vowel when it merely indicates iotation (ie).

—Michael Z. 06:25, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

[edit] Reverted soft sign examples

The examples given ("Krestyansky" & "Vyuga") do not fall under "commonly accepted convention". An example of what's commonly accepted would be Gorbachev, which, if one is to follow the rules outlined in the article, would be spelled Gorbachyov. As the former, not latter, variant is in widespread usage, it is a good example of what's commonly accepted. "Krestyansky" and "vyuga" are definitely not on the same level.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 14:51, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Gorbachev definitely pronounced Gorbachov in Russian, not Gorbachyov.--Nixer 21:26, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
The article is not about pronunciation (although it contains elements dealing with it), it's about how the word is written.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 04:07, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
And if you see anywhere "Gorbachyov" it is not right. --Nixer 22:18, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
I am not sure why you are so convinced that "Gorbachyov" is incorrect. Uncommon, perhaps, but definitely not incorrect. The only reason why "Gorbachev" is used more often is because of the Russian tradition to replace "ё" with "е" in pretty much all printed texts ("ё" is still always pronounced). From your arguments it very much looks that you are confusing transcription with transliteration.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 02:55, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Why do you insist Gorbachyov is correct? There is no such tradition and this does not indicate the pronounciation. With Gorbachov English-speaker will face no troubles.--Nixer 08:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
Because "yo" is how "ё" is transliterated, if you want to both convey the original spelling and not to confuse the reader with conventions such as "yë" (this was discussed at length on this very page—please see above). Again, we are talking about transliteration (how words are written), not transcription (not how they are pronounced). The only reason "e" is used in "Gorbachev" is because in Russian texts "ё" is usually replaced with (but not pronounced as) "е". I am sure if it was not for that, "Gorbachyov" would have been more common now. It's the same thing with Khruschev, by the way. And please note, that I am not proposing to replace "Gorbachev" with "Gorbachyov" in the articles (the latter is not common in English, and its use will be against Wikipedia policy), but merely state that it is an exception because of the traditional use (which is exactly your point).—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
I definitely don't like v'yuga over vyuga or viyuga; as a matter of fact, the convention to use ' in place of Ь/Ъ is best to be axed. DmitryKo 21:21, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hard and soft signs

Proposal to get rid of yy:

  • soft sign before 'double' vowels is substituted with i; y continues to be used before all other vowels (drawback: equivalency to ие, ия, иё, ию)
  • hard sign is always substituted with '-'; it's the only way to properly indicate a stop.

Let me know what you think. DmitryKo 21:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry, it's the end of the day, and I am a bit dense after extensive editing of Tyva/Temp; to the point of being dizzy :) Would you, please, provide us with a few examples how this is going to look in practice? Or, I'll take a fresh look at it myself tomorrow morning. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 22:03, Mar 17, 2005 (UTC)


I knew you would ask for examples, but it was 00:02 MSC so dizzeness wasn't stranger to me either. :( OK.

I've included some Russian geographical/personal names as well as ordinary words:

Russian Transliteration
Existing Proposal Commonly accepted
Мари́я Mariya Mariya Maria, Marya
ья
Ма́рья Maryya Mariya Mar'ya
Воробьянинов Vorobyyaninov Vorobiyaninov Vorobyaninov
Ульяновск Ulyyanovsk Uliyanovsk Ulyanovsk
Татьяна Tatyyana Tatiyana Tatiana, Tatyana
Илья Ilyya Iliya Ilya
братья bratyya bratiya
перья peryya periya
ье
Ставрополье Stavropolye Stavropoliye
третье tretye tretiye
воскресенье voskresenye voskreseniye
12 стульев 12 stulyyev 12 stuliyev 12 stulyev
ью
вьюга vyyuga viyuga vyuga
пятью пять pyatyyu pyat pyatiyu pyat
ьё
ворьё voryyo voriyo
Соловьёв Solovyyov Soloviyov Solovyov

Sounds like Church Slavonic, isn't it? :)

There seems to be very few cases for hard sign, it's being avoided in names. Maybe it's better left where it is now.

Russian Current Proposal
подъезд podyezd pod-yezd
съёжиться syyozhitsya s-yozhitsya
съедать syedat s-yedat
съюлить syyulit s-yulit

DmitryKo 08:12, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I suggest:
  • Simplify every double y to a single one. Anglophones are confused by yy.
  • Ignore the hard sign. It only exists to prevent palatalization, which anglophones don't use anyway.
The result is how an anglophone would read it anyway, and what they'd expect to see. It would correspond pretty closely with the "conventional" phonetic rendering, which I think is the precise intention of this scheme.
  • Mariya
  • Marya, Vorobyaninov, Ulyanovsk, Tatyana, Ilya, bratya, perya
  • Stavropolye, tretye, voskresenye, 12 stulyev
  • vyuga, pyatyu pyat
  • voryo, solovyov
  • Podyezd, syozhitsya, syedat, syulit
—Michael Z. 2005-03-18 18:19 Z
Do you know you've just suggested to effectively ignore hard/soft signs altogether?
FYI, Church Slavonic and Ukrainian words sometimes retain Cyrillic і just where modern Russian language uses soft sign (братія instead of братья etc.) DmitryKo 20:28, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for the examples, Dmitry; they helped much. However, I tend to agree with Michael. Omitting apostrophe (used for a soft sign) in words like pyat (пять), bezhat (бежать), and seld (сельдь) (all right, this last one is kind of extreme), as we are already doing, is already pretty much the same as ignoring the soft signs altogether. Your proposal is much better than mine (with weird "yy"'s), but I think omitting the soft and hard signs altogether, as Michael is suggesting, should not be a problem. Ulyanovsk, for example, is universally known as such, not as "Ulyyanovsk" or "Uliyanovsk" ("Ulianovsk", while somewhat common, is just an example of using a slightly different transliteration system, which ignores soft signs just the same). It does give a pretty good idea as to how the word is pronounced without (much) distorting the word in writing. Another thing with your proposal is that it is not in common use. When originally compiling the list of transliteration rules, I was trying to stick with what's already in use, avoiding inventing new rules when possible. The "yy" rule is one I artificially introduced, and look what's happening to it—everybody (including me now) hates it :)—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 20:53, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
Ignoring the hard/soft signs would be the most easy way of transcription, indeed. Maybe we should just cancel the transliteration attempts and stick to phonetics (see below). DmitryKo 12:52, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Dmitry, keep in mind that although this system is labelled "transliteration", it is not; it is a systematic method of deriving the 'conventional' phonetic romanization, as used in English, especially in modern surnames. If you need a more disciplined transliteration for a particular application, I think it's best to use the scholarly system or ISO 9 in linguistics articles, perhaps ALA or BGN/PCGN in other areas. See Romanization#Russian. Perhaps the main part of this article ought to be moved to Romanization of Russian, or Anglicization of Russian (sounds politicaly-incorrect). Phonetic spelling of Russian? English spelling of Russian? Spelling Russian names? Hm...
'Phonetical spelling' is what transcription is exactly about, and both transcription and transliteration are the essential methods of Romanization. I agree that there's no real need to preserve every symbol of Cyrillic alphabet using Roman script and diacritical marks anymore, because we can just provide accented Russian words along with IPA transcription, thanks to Unicode support.
Hence, I support renaming the article to Romanisation of Russian names, Anglicisation of Russian names or maybe specific Transcription of Russian into English, if the term is applicable here, and moving the intro part to the Transliteration article. DmitryKo 12:52, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I always though that anglicization describes the cases like "Москва", which in English is "Moscow"; i.e. anglicization is a process with no defined rules. The Anglicization article seems to say just the same.
Transcription is, strictly speaking, is a system of writing the sounds of a word as opposed to its graphical representation. "Москва" thus would be transcribed as "Maskva" (I realize the inaccuracy, but I am just using this as a crude example). This is not what the system in described in this article does.
"Romanization" seems to be the best name. However, considering how subtle the difference between romanization and transliteration is, as well as the number of changes that will need to be done to convert all transliteration references into romanization references, I do not think I can support such a renaming. I do, of course, realize that the "Transliteration" title is not entirely accurate, but the degree of inaccuracy does not really bother me much. Perhaps, if you look at the article's title as a whole ("Transliteration into English), you would be able to make peace with it as well.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 16:53, Mar 21, 2005 (UTC)
Well, both transcription and tranliteration are the means of Romanization, and the BGN/PCGN system is neither one, in the strict sense. I think we need more actual examples to decide if BGN/PCGN needs modifications and which exactly (see below). DmitryKo 13:47, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I always thought it was браття in Ukrainian. Am I wrong? But what you are referring to sounds familiar, although I can't think of an example. —Michael Z. 2005-03-19 00:34 Z
I believe the writing I mentioned was inherited from Church Slavonic; it seems extinct in modern usage. DmitryKo 12:52, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A list of common Russian names

Maybe it is a good idea to compile a list of common Russian names (like List of Arabic names and List of Japanese given names) that includes accepted transliterations and make if official. I'm just tired of debates of what is a common rendition of a name and what is not. DmitryKo 12:16, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Don't know about separate lists, but adding a section with accepted transliterations of Russian names, strategically placed somewhere in this very article (i.e, Transliteration of Russian into English), would probably be quite useful. Separate lists may make more sense for other languages (like Japanese and Arabic, which you mentioned), but I don't really see the benefit with Russian.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus europeaus) 20:53, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)
There are too many conventional transliterations that are not consistent with Russian orthography or BGN/PCGN rules. The use of E instead of YO in writing but maintaining YO spelling; it's one big confusing drawback of post-WWII conventions. Y/I for ИЙ/ЫЙ engings is another issue, thanks to the long-absent transliteration rules and less than adequate GOST.
We need a clear list of names that covers the issues discussed above and provides clear naming rules for most cases; the transliteration article should provide clear guidelines but no conventions. I created a first draft on the temporary page (Transliteration of Russian into English/Harmonization, based on the topics outlined in Russian names. Maybe it will evolve into a project, something like Harmonization of Russian names... DmitryKo 13:47, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Overly complicated

The special case rules for е say that after ъ and ь it should be transliterated "ye". The rules for ъ and ь say that they should be transliterated "y" before all vowels except for е. Wouldn't it be simpler to say that ъ and ь should become "y" before ALL vowels, and then leave out the special case rules for е? It amounts to the same thing. - BeavisSanchez 09:56, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The confusion you point to is actually due to the "yy" rule. The "ъ/ь" rules also had redundancies. I took all that stuff out.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 17:17, Apr 27, 2005 (UTC)
The established convention is to use I instead of Ь (Прокофьев => Prokofiev, Артемьев => Artemiev etc.) and I'm leaning to opinion it is the best, considering the origins of most Russian names. That said, I'm going to look into this proposal more closely now that I have some free time... DmitryKo 17:34, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I am sorry, Dmitry, but I do not think this convention is "established" in any way, at least not in Wikipedia. It was my understanding that it had been only your proposition, which was to be voted upon. Could you, please, clarify? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 17:47, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
Prokofiev didn't began as my proposition, it was used before the Wikipedia and even BGN/PCGN were established. But like I said, Y is a very possible substitution for the soft sign as well, and I do find YY/YI/IY/II combinations very unnatural for English language.
To elaborate a little further, "ie" in Prokofiev and Artemiev actually stands for "е" (using a convention that uses "i" (instead of "y", as it would be in Prokofyev and Artemyev) to show iotation. Soft sign is omitted in those examples.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 18:02, Apr 29, 2005 (UTC)
And why the first "ye" isn't iotated in Artemiev then? In most names, soft sign in place of И is a modern simplification of Old Slavonic, apparent in names like Артемий and Дмитрий (Artemiy and Dmitriy) - the latter has a patronimic оf Дмитриев (Dmitriyev), but the former uses Артемьев (Artem'yev) which is a simplification of an older Артемиев (Artemiyev).
Anyway, my point is there's little difference in received pronunciation between iotation and palatalization in these cases, so using a transliteration variant that reads as (a little archaic) ИЕ (IYE) instead of ЬЕ ('YE) etc. is better than ignore the soft sign completely or to educate foreingers in phonetics of the Russian language. 09:38, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The first "ye" in Artemiev isn't iotated because it follows a consonant—while it is possible to have that "ye" iotated (Artyemiev), it would be quite redundant.
The second "ye" also follows a consonant, because soft sign is technically neither vowel nor consonant.
As for utilizing "i" to indicate soft sign instead of omitting it altogether, I respectfully disagree. While I fully realize that the system currently outlined in the article is not purely a tranliteration system, it is by no means a system of transcription.
Any system that doesn't stricly map each letter of the alphabet to a predefined letter or symbol in another alphabet (as Romaji and Pinyin do) , exceeds the scope of transliteration and becomes transcription. The current proposals already define a transcripton system, and I don't have any problem with it.
Plus, its intent is to show the reader how the words are rendered in modern Russian. References to Old Slavonic, while interesting and educational, are really outside the scope of transliteration system.
Furthermore, while the system used in the article (even being based on BGN/PCGN) is modified to the extent that it does not exactly match any of the Russian transliteration systems out there, it does not introduce any elements which are not present in at least one other, more or less commonly used transliteration system (especially now when the "yy" rule—the only rule I artificially and quite unsuccessfully introduced—is finally nixed). Using an "i" for a "ь" is logical and efficient, but, unfortunately, is not common (I, for one, never heard of this arrangement before). I think it would be of greater benefit to this community to stick with the established ways of doing things (and, as usual, I expect any disagreements to be voiced here).—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 14:48, May 2, 2005 (UTC)
It's not about references to Old Russian or linguistic usage of transliterations, it's about modern rules of anglicization in regard to Russian names. While BGN/PCGN is the most popular system as of now, it's not officially adopted in Russia (а как ОВИРы-то имена коверкают... даже ГОСТ отдыхает), and it doesn't stop people from inserting "i" as a substitute, on a case-by-case basis, instead of using apostrophe or just ignoring the soft sign.
Apart from Prokofiev and Artemiev, there are other examples - Uliana Lopatkina is more common use than Ulyana or Ul'yana (and is closely resembling Juliana which is the source of this name), and people often prefer Tatiana over Tatyana or Tat'yana, Daria over Darya or Dar'ya (not a soft sign examples, but nevertheless Maria over Mariya, Natalia over Nataliya) for anglicizations of their names, even though they continue to use modern Russian rendering in everyday Russian speach. That's all about the names listed on harmonization page (still in early stage), but I believe there are many other examples for surnames based on unconventional personal names, places, professions etc. DmitryKo 13:46, 7 May 2005 (UTC)
P.S. Not to illustrate any point, just FYI [1].
"Mariya" is not a pure example; "Maria" is preferable because anglophones are accustomed to seeing the Spanish name spelled that way.
When transcribing Ukrainian, I've found that what appears to be the most intuitive method, for anglophone readers, is to use a diphthongal vowel formed with "i" (ie, ia, etc.) to indicate simple iotated vowels, with or without a hard or soft sign (as in Prokofiev or Tatiana), and the semi-consonant "y" to indicate a syllable-forming vowel (as in Sergeyevich). Similarly, the non-syllabic "i" works in Sergei. (When modifying BGN/PCGN, sources also change BGN's transcription of "-ий" from -yy to -iy , because double "y" isn't a diphthong used in English.)
I think Russian iotification works a little differently from Ukrainian, but the two seem to merge when transcribed for English, since anglophones and English spelling don't generally recognize palatalized consonants at all.
I don't think any formal transliteration system uses this convention, although many sources modify BGN/PCGN in this way because it is intuitive. Many proper names are transcribed using this method. And the Ukrainian National system for place names also uses "y" to form a syllable at the beginning of a word, but only uses "i" in the middle. —Michael Z. 2005-05-7 17:34 Z

should be merged with romanization

[edit] Undecodable Gibberish

I had trouble understanding this article. Thanks for teaching us alliteration, but don't use lllaaarrrgggeee words. They complicate my brain. Thanks.

[edit] Cyrillic in Wikipedia

Please see the new page at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic), aimed at

  1. Documenting the use of Cyrillic and its transliteration in Wikipedia
  2. Discussing potential revision of current practices

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:43 Z

[edit] What is this article?

In the past, I've tried to rewrite the intro as an encyclopedia article, but I think I've failed. I respect the work that has been put into this, but:

This article is:

  • Several transliteration methods, mixed together
  • English spelling of Russian proper names, mixed in too
  • A prescriptive guide for Wikipedia
  • Almost as many exceptions as rules

This article is not:

  • A clear description of any of the established standards for transliterating Russian
  • Supported by cited sources

This should be turned into a description of transliteration standards, with a simple table. It can also describe English spelling of Russian proper names (which is not the same as transliteration; please see the example at Romanization of Ukrainian#Conventional romanization of proper names). —Michael Z. 2005-12-14 08:14 Z

Actually, Michael, based on the heated discussion I had yesterday, I'll be splitting this article into the actual encyclopedia article and into the status quo policy page (it is a huge problem that an article in the main name space is referenced by an internal Wikipedia policy). The policy page then will be a sole subject of the discussion at Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Cyrillic) (in the Russian section), and the article can finally be properly re-written (to cover all major existing translit systems and cite sources). If you or anyone else have other suggestions, please post them here.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 13:16, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DONT REVERT MY WORK!

--Nixer 14:01, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

No need to shout, really. Also, I challenged every single line of your "work", providing explanations of my corrections along the way. You, so far, failed to respond to most of them, and the arguments you provided to the ones you responded to were far from convincing. You revert of my edit also broke a great number of fixes, so I won't be surprised if your "work" will continue to be reverted by outside editors.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 17:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Prime and double-prime

"Unicode suggests special characters for this kind of transliteration of soft and hard signs..."

Unicode doesn't suggest any transliteration standards, it merely documents the characters' usage. In this case, it is indicating that primes (not apostrophes or typewriter ticks) are correctly used in the Scholarly, ALA-LC, and ISO 9 transliteration systems, and possibly others. —Michael Z. 2005-12-14 20:08 Z

Indeed. Thanks for the comment.--Imz 21:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I see that the issue Michael outlined has been corrected. I am, however, wondering if a detailed explanation about Unicode practices (which now comprises most of the footnote text) belongs in this article at all. It can probably be mentioned in the article about Unicode, but here transliteration is the subject, not Unicode. Can it at least be shortened? Thanks.—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 21:28, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that transliteration and Unicode practices are different subjects. I'd like to link this article to the relevant information on Unicode practices, but have no strong opinion on where such information should be situated. At least, now, I'll add an initial title to the note to make clear to the reader that the note is about Unicode exclusively (so he can skip it).--Imz 21:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
Being short may cause ambiguities in such "subtle" question. Anyway, I don't pretend to express things in the best manner, improvements are welcome.--Imz 22:13, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
"Note that unlike the mentioned alternatives (U+02B9, U+0027), using specialized punctuation marks like ’ U+2019 RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK (and ” U+201D RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK) for the purpose of transliterating Cyrillic soft (and hard) signs is semantically incorrect (they break words, whereas the Cyrillic letters are parts of words)."

Actually, some transliteration systems use quotation marks and not primes (at least BGN/PCGN does). I'm being pedantically correct here—I don't think it's critically important, but it's nice to do things correctly and consistently in a good encyclopedia.

The typewriter tick-mark U+0027 ( ' ) is not a real apostrophe, just a typist's convenience character. Punctuation quotes are semantically acceptable, but Unicode offers a way to do it right. The following are semantically equivalent to their normal punctuation-mark cousins, but software is supposed to treat them like letters, so words do not break in these places. These are mentioned in the article "apostrophe".

  • U+02B9 modifier letter prime ( ʹ )
  • U+02BA modifier letter double prime ( ʺ )
  • U+02BC modifier letter apostrophe ( ʼ )
  • U+02EE modifier letter double apostrophe ( ˮ )

I think the main content of this article should just refer to the correct character for a transliteration system (eg, "prime", or "double apostrophe"), and a technical appendix at the end can briefly discuss technology-dependent issues, like Unicode encoding and modifier letters vs punctuation marks. Remember, if you're using just a typewriter, then transliterating with a typewriter apostrophe isn't semantically incorrect, but in a typeset book it would be considered a poor visual substitute for a real typographic prime mark or apostrophe. Likewise, in a web page, a typewriter apostrophe is not incorrect, but a typographic prime or apostrophe is a better representation, and a non-breaking one is better still. —Michael Z. 2005-12-15 01:10 Z

Thank you for the comment. I mostly agree. I don't understand the opposition you make: semantically equivalent to their normal punctuation-mark cousins, but software is supposed to treat them like letters. I understand semantics w.r.t. codes/characters as comprising of the properties of the characters (how humans and software would "understand" it), thus the semantics includes the way the codes are supposed to be processed by software. As long as specification-adhering software would treat the codes not the way we wanted I'd say the codes are used semantically incorrect (although, as in this case, they might be visually equivalent).
I agree that there might exist practices using the punctuation marks for the transliteration purposes we talk about (and they have their right to be documented). But I don't agree on your placement of such practices on the scale of "betterness" for this purpose; as I see it: the semantics of the "typewriter tick" is a superset of the semantics of all mentioned characters, and the semantics of the punctuation mark and of the modifier letters are non-intersetcing specialized subsets. So, I would order them on the scale (the way I have already done it):
  1. using the punctuation marks is the worst (a specialized character used for a wrong purpose)
  2. using the typewriter tick is ok (a character with wide semantics used correspondingly to one of the possible ways of usage)
  3. using a modifier letter (like the prime) is even better (since the semantics is narrowed, so we express more by using it, and software could treat it better, and it looks better).
--Imz 21:56, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
I did mean the semantic meaning of character, when it's read by someone. The character might be considered technically incorrectly-used, but when someone sees it they have no way of knowing this, and it still conveys the exact same meaning to the reader (although it might cause an ugly word-break). More meaning than the tick mark, because you can't tell whether that is supposed to represent a prime or an apostrophe—eg, the punctuation characters would be better than the tick mark in this table: "Romanization of Ukrainian#Table of romanization systems".
But in technical terms, the situation isn't too different. I don't have a reference at hand, but I remember some official Unicode documentation suggesting not to assume that a document adheres strictly to using only modifier letter characters in the places they were intended (I suspect most documents don't; certainly most Wikipedia pages don't; and that would be a bad assumption for software to make). Also, the modifier letters may imply a particular semantics, but software isn't guaranteed to respect it. This implies that the punctuation marks do, or at least always may intersect the same semantic meaning as transliterating Cyrillic letters.
Also, under "02BC MODIFIER LETTER APOSTROPHE", the Unicode standard explicitly lists "→ 2019 ’ right single quotation mark" as a related character. —Michael Z. 2005-12-15 22:49 Z

[edit] Emphasis markers in transliterations

Hello. I keep discovering acute accents placed systematically above the letter immediately after the stressed vowel in cyrillic script, and not that vowel itself. Often, the letter following the stressed vowel is actually a consonant, which surely leads to some confusion or amusement with the readers. Please participate in this discussion — as yet, only my humble opinion has been voiced). //Big Adamsky 17:33, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New article: Scientific transliteration

New article: scientific transliteration. —Michael Z. 2006-02-07 06:04 Z

[edit] UN & GOST differences

Is the UN system based on GOST but modified, or did the UN adopt the GOST system verbatim? Is there any reason to add a UN column to the summary table? —Michael Z. 2006-02-14 20:28 Z

Good question. The UNGEGN 2003 report states that the UN recommended system was approved based on the GOST, but it makes no mention of any modifications (I reckon there weren't any). Problem is, GOST actually offers two tables, which slightly differ from one another. I've been working hard trying to find the official text of the original GOST, but so far it eludes me. There are plenty of knock-offs around the net, but none of what I've found so far looks trustworthy, and different versions don't always match. Until we have the text of the original GOST on our hands, it's difficult to say which variation UN adopted and if there were any modifications. I'll continue with my research, however, and will post here when/if I find anything.
On the UN side, we can try locating the publication titled Fifth United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names (Montreal, 18-31 August 1987. Vol. I. Report of the Conference, pp. 40-41). I never tried finding it; but it may be readily available on the net and may provide insights as to whether the GOST system was modified or not.—Ëzhiki (ërinacëus amurënsis) 20:54, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GOST and ISO 9 .... different?!

I refer to the version of the article as edited on June 2006 There seems to be some confusion in the article about GOST 7.79 (2002) .... which is(?) non-existent, but GOST 7.79 (2000), as stated in the paragraph text exists. Contrary to the wiki statement, this is not an adoption of the ISO 9 - 1995. ISO 9 transliteration is a 1:1 mapping of Cyrillic characters to the Latin letters of the Unicode set + some combinations with diacrtitcs. I refrain from editing, as there may be some further fine points I am unaware of. MGTom 13:24, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] About GOST

GOST standarts can be found at GOST 7.79-2000 (in russian). Its purpose is an unambiguous transliteration of Cyrillic script by Latin alphabet and a possibility of reconstruction original cyrillic text, particularly for transmission via computer networks. This rules do not apply to a phonetic romanization. I'm going to bring to accordance this article. GreLI 10:09, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It's look like there are some errors in ISO representation in table. GreLI 10:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Romanization (Russian)

  • Would anyone object if I were to move this article to the above?
Yours truly, Ludvikus 04:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Why? The current title in plain English is better than the construct of punctuation —Michael Z. 2006-09-09 05:05 Z

[edit] Romanization (Russian to English)

Eventually, Wikipedia will need to make allowances for all the possible permutations of the pairs of languages--in view of the global.
In the mean time, I'll hold off on this greater specificity.

Yours truly, Ludvikus 04:26, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Cyrillic text can be translated into the English language, but it is romanized into the Latin alphabet. —Michael Z. 2006-09-09 05:04 Z

[edit] Conventional transcription of Russian names

(from Švitrigaila's talk page)

Please don't edit-war over major changes to articles when other editors disagree with you. The previous version of the table had the support of editors' consensus, since it has been stable for a long time. What you are proposing is a major change, so please describe and justify it on the talk page. —Michael Z. 2006-11-01 16:55 Z

I was going to. But first of all, I needed to finish the changes I wanted to make in order to have a completed version. You reverted my changes so quickly I'm nearly sure you've not even read what I wrote. Now there are two versions: yours and mine. I think we can begin a vote to decide which one is better than the other. For myself, for example, I can't see why ё should be transcribed by o. I've never seen that anywhere. Or why transcribing г by a h is better explained by "When it is a commonly accepted convention" than by "Optionally, when it's the transcription of a h from a germanic language." (we can replace "germanic" by foreign if you want.) Švitrigaila 17:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I didn't come up with the table in the article, although I have contributed to it a bit, so I can't defend individual items in it. But as Ëzhiki writes, individual changes made should be shown to be an improvement, otherwise we're merely shuffling around different options which might be equally acceptable, as far as anyone can know. But really, I think the whole table needs some higher-level rethinking (see my comments below). —Michael Z. 2006-11-01 18:52 Z
There really is no point in replacing of one unsourced and unreferenced system with another. If you are going to introduce changes, then at least reference them (and yes, propose them at the talk before making changes), otherwise there is no guarantee that yet another "improver" comes tomorrow and starts claiming that his "conventional" system is superior to the previous two. In my view, it's best to remove this section altogether—all it does is mirror WP:RUS (where consensus is more important because it's a guideline, not an article) and contain a good deal of undocumented original research. What you are planning to do is to add more original research, which is really not helpful.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
But why then do two different pages exist with the same purpose and a different content? Why is Озёрск transcribed Ozorsk on Romanization of Russian and Ozyorsk on Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian? I prefer the second version, of course, but I think my explications are more detailed and explained than those given on Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian. Švitrigaila 17:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Wow, the "Ozorsk" case has been there a while. Of course, it makes no sense, it's just that nobody caught it before.
Now, to answer your first question, the purpose of this article is to provide an encyclopedic review of all existing systems of romanizing Russian. The purpose of WP:RUS is to provide guidelines as to how Russian names should be romanized for Wikipedia purposes. You might also want to take a look at WP:CYR and its talk page—that should answer many of your other questions.
I will remove "Ozorsk" (pozorsk!) for now, and, if no one else objects, will take down the whole section later.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not only for ё, but for ю and я too. We can erase completely the Conventional transcription of Russian names section, and replace it by a mere link to Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian. But after that, Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian can be improved, for example by using all the work I did today here. Švitrigaila 18:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
About those improvements—what was your work based on? Can it be documented? Can you provide proof (at least empirical) that this is how romanization of Russian is done elsewhere (and where exactly)? Since it would affect the existing guideline, what are the benefits to Wikipedia comparing with existing version? Is it your original research or is it not? Can it be implemented as a part of WP:CYR? If so, would you be willing to make a proposal at WP:CYR for everyone to review?
Sorry for too many questions, but I just don't see your addition as valuable. Your г→h addition, for example, misses the point in that "Peterhof" is not a transliteration, but a conventional name of the town in English, much like "Moscow" is for "Moskva". The (correct) fact that it came to English through German still does not make it a transliteration. Alternatively, for ь→y: since when "pochtalyon" is a foreign word in Russian? How is this addition different from and better than the broader one it replaced (ь=y when followed by a non-iotated vowel)? So on, so forth.
I am sorry if I am sounding too harsh, but you are not the first person to jump in with "improvements" without being able to answer most of the questions above or being able to explain why such improvements are better than what's already there.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 18:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
As you say, much of the content of this table is undocumented and speculative—it's hard to argue that it is not original research. Its form implies some kind of prescriptive rules, but there is nothing supporting such a view of this information. If you ask me, it ought to be reduced to a paragraph or two and a selection of examples, perhaps demonstrating the range of romanizations from different systems, and they way they are typically simplified for "conventional" names in use. —Michael Z. 2006-11-01 18:52 Z
That, however, would again require references. From my personal experience, there is no documentation out there dealing with such modifications. It very much looks like editors outside Wikipedia take BGN/PCGN (usually) and modify it to fit their particular needs. At the same time, hardly anyone is consistent. Britannica, for example, uses modified and unmodified BGN/PCGN interchangeably, often using different spellings of the same word in different articles.
With that in mind, I once again propose taking this section down, reducing it to maybe a sentence or two specifying that modifications exist but without specifying what they are. As for any possible improvements of WP:RUS, I suggest they are proposed through WP:CYR.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:04, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I'd support that. —Michael Z. 2006-11-01 23:51 Z

I'm sorry to have not found the time to read that before. Finally I think you're right and maybe... maybe... I was wrong. All I wanted was to improve the table on Romanization of Russian. I had no intention to improve that on Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian. I even didn't know this page did exist. But I still think little improvements can be done on Wikipedia:Romanization of Russian. First of all, I think my formulation :

Russian
spelling		 English
transliteration		 Special provision Examples
–ый endings -yy None Красный = Krasnyy
-y Most commonly in transcriptions of proper names. Новотный = Novotny
–ий endings -iy None Синий = Siniy
-i Most commonly in transcriptions of proper names. Юрий = Yuri
-y Most commonly in transcriptions of family names or adjectives ending in -кий. Михайловский = Mikhaylovsky

is better than the present one:

Russian
spelling		 English
transliteration		 Special provision Examples
–ый endings -y Красный = Krasny
–ий endings -iy or -y Синий = Siniy, Siny; Великий = Velikiy, Veliky

As for what I wrote about ё after a ж, ш, щ or ч. I simply watched the article Shcholkovskaya. Švitrigaila 13:43, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, Švitrigaila. I just wanted to point out once again that there really isn't a need to improve WP:RUS directly. We are trying to get rid of it anyway by eventually adopting WP:CYR instead. You are welcome to review WP:CYR and make any suggestions/proposals there. Amending WP:RUS now according to your table above (even if there were a consensus to do so), would mean having to rename literally thousands of already existing pages and links for no apparent benefit, and then it will very likely need to be done again when WP:CYR goes through. I just want you to understand the scale of this thing—this is no minor change. Thanks again for your interest, and see you at WP:CYR discussions!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
All right. I will follow your opinion. And that's a very very rare thing for me to change my stubborn mind about a wikipedian controversy! Švitrigaila 21:29, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russian online transliteration

Adding a link to Russian transliteration service at http://www.latkey.com/translit to the main article. It matches wiki guidelines as it's free and dosen't contain any advertising content. Some of the links do contain Google AdSense advertising content however, so review of those links suggested. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DanIssa (talk • contribs) .

Sure there are other inappropriate links, people just keep adding them, you know. Those need to be removed too, you can help. It does not matter if it's "free" or "useful". Linking to download sites for Microsoft Office plugins to use the online service of a company is not appropriate. There is no encyclopedic content on the site, and it does promote other products of that comany. If you reference Linksearch: *.latkey.com and the corresponding user contributions, you'll see that there were repeated attempts to place links in several articles, despite all warnings not to re-add them (including the ignored warning on your own talk page). Not only to the transliteration service but also to the company main page, with link descriptions promoting the keyboard stickers. You will not add any more links to latkey.com, i-keyboard.com, or related domains. Femto 13:19, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My Own System of Romanisation

I'd like to propose my own system of romanisation. First of all, I've noticed that everybody uses 'y' for both 'ы' and 'й'. The easiest solution is to use 'j' for 'й'. It preserves the correct orthography, and clears up confusion. Example: русский = russkij. It makes everything 100 times easier. Plural adjectives for example: большые - bol'shyje. Otherwise it'd be bol'shye or bol'shyye, which is a complete mess. Here's how I always do it:

  • А = A
  • Б = B
  • В = V
  • Г = G
  • Д = D
  • Е = JE (Even though everybody uses just 'E', it would clear up any confusion with 'Э')
  • Ё = JE ('JO' is okay, just to clear it up for those who don't know when 'Ё' occurs. Just as long as you don't Turn Нью Йорк into Нью Ёрк.)
  • Ж = ZH (I've never liked 'J' for this letter: Жана = Jana? Yech. Zhana is so much better.)
  • З = Z
  • И = I
  • Ї = JI (Ukrainian)
  • Й = J
  • К = K
  • Л = L
  • М = M
  • Н = N
  • О = O
  • П = P
  • Р = R
  • С = S
  • Т = T
  • У = U
  • Ў = W (Belorussian)
  • Ф = F
  • Х = X (The H is already used to define the postalveolar fricatives. Besides, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Пасха and Паша.)
  • Ц = TS
  • Ч = CH
  • Ш = SH
  • Щ = SHCH (I think this is the best option; the other option, 'SCH', could be confused for 'СЧ'. Even thought they're pronounced exactly the same, it would lose the correct orthography.)
  • Ъ = - (Dash)
  • Ы = Y
  • Ь - ' (Apostrophe)
  • Э - E
  • Ю - JU
  • Я - JA (Never drop the 'J', even if it looks prettier when romanised: Мария - Maria; because'И' can occur before 'А': социализм.)

I've noticed some people arguing that transliteration doesn't mean preservation of orthography and that we should transliterate phonetically, but that argument is utterly pointless, in my opinion. If you want phoneticism, we have the IPA. A good transliteration should be able to transliterate back to the original script correctly.

Here's the difference between romanised Russian (my way) and anglicised Russian (the common way): Moskva - Moscow; Russkij - Russky; bliny - blinis; tsar' - czar; Tat'jana - Tatiana; do svidanija - dasvidanya; Rossija - Russia; Smirnov - Smirnoff.

Ladno, tovarishchi, ja poshjel spat'. Zhjena zlaja. 67.186.247.125 22:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest, an anonymous contributor. However, please note that Wikipedia has no place for original research. The article discusses only Russian romanization systems that have recognition and are verifiable. While there is no doubt that individuals like you, me, and every other Russian Wikipedian can come up with dozens more "better" and "improved" systems, it does not mean there is place for them in Wikipedia. I hope this was a sufficient explanation. Please let me know if you have further questions.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 23:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
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