Would Pinyin 'ci' be represented as 'цы'? And how does Cyrillic romanization deal with Pinyin 'cu' and 'qu' if the same letter 'ц' is used for both 'c' and 'q'? I guess I could look at the Wikipedia article that JSG suggested. But very often in non-specialist texts the apostrophe or acute accent mark is dropped, especially in proper names, to make the transliteration more "reader-friendly" hence we get Gogol, Yeltsin, and Lvov. Gogol', L'vov, Yel'tsin or Jel'cin or Iel'tsin or El'tsin, and bez bel'ya ) in all these cases this represents the Cyrillic spelling ль (l + "soft sign"): Гоголь, Львов, Ельцин, без белья. September 17, 12:42 F – Virtually all romanizations of Russian use l' for palatalized l when it comes at the end of a word or before a consonant or an iotized vowel (e.g. September 17, 12:03 – Apparently (with usual caveats re: Wikipedia), "сы". Wait, if си is used for Pinyin xi, how do they write the sound of Pinyin "si"? Which romanization is it that uses l' for a palatalized l sound? I see that used often for surnames. Filed by Victor Mair under Writing systems.(A tip of the hat to Rostislav Berezkin for help with the Cyrillic also to Zev Handel, David Branner, and Mark Swofford for assistance with the IPA.) Here are a couple of typical examples, with the Russian hovering somewhere between a transcription from Chinese and a transliteration from Uyghur: Romanization The challenges are even greater when one is striving to recover, for example, an original Uyghur or other non-Sinitic name that was transcribed into Chinese characters and then transcribed from characters into Cyrillic.Īttempting to go backward in that chain of transcriptions - Cyrill(ic)ized Chinese → Chinese characters → Uyghur has caused me much hair-whitening grief. Trying to navigate between Cyrill(ic)ized Mandarin and pinyin or other Romanization so that one can figure out what the original characters were is often enormously perplexing. Note that Wade-Giles is closer to IPA than either pinyin or Cyrillized Mandarin.) (IPA specialists may have some suggestions for improvement. Here I shall give just a few examples of how different Cyrill(ic)ization of Mandarin is from pinyin Romanization: Russian Cyrill(ic)ization Although it apparently works well enough for Russian Sinologists who grow up with it and receive their training exclusively through this system, Russian Cyrill(ic)ization constitutes a bit of a nightmare for those who are not accustomed to its special features. More of a headache than the lack of an official romanization for Russian itself, however, are the idiosyncrasies of the Russian Cyrill(ic)ization of Mandarin. Many people do use the Library of Congress system, but more by default than by choice. Two things plague such work more than anything else, and both have to do with transliteration.įirst of all, unlike pinyin for Chinese, there is no governmentally sanctioned, officially recognized, widely accepted system of romanization for Russian Cyrillic script. It has often been my duty to translate or edit Russian archeological and Sinological works in English.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |