🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr28.161358.22630@dg-rtp.dg.com>, goudreau@batman.rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) writes:
>In article <1992Apr21.111122.1659@lsl.co.uk> robin@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>> >
>> > Whiterussia  - BY     (Belarus, huh?)
>>
>> The Romanisation of the country name in (I think) Russian is something 
>> like `Byelorossia'.
>
>Close -- "Byelorossiya" would be more accurate, since the final letter
>is a "ya", not an "a".
And Belorussiya would be even more accurate...
         =
However, it's probably more important how the natives call their newly
independent country (Belarus).

>
>> (`Byelo' means `white' in Russian, that's for 
>> sure.)  Pretty silly code, if you ask me, but we can't use Cyrillic for
>> the code (in which the `bye' comes out as two letters, not three), which 
>> could make a more sensible code easily...
>
>Actually, there are several schemes used for transliterating the
>Cyrillic letter "yeh" (looks like Latin "E"/"e") into languages
>which use Latin alphabets:  "ye", "je", "ie", and just plain "e"
>are used, often very inconsistently.  What I find especially
>annoying is when two different conventions are used in the same
>article (or sentence, even).  I.e. "Boris Yeltsin and Egor Ligachev
>didn't get along well with each other" (vs. "Yegor").  (Note:  all
>of this applies only when the "e" lies in the stressed syllable;
>otherwise, it is pronounced differently and gets transliterated to
>just "e".  Not to mention the letter "yoh", which is usually written
>without the diaresis that distinguishes it from "yeh".)
It has nothing whatsoever to do with stress. In Russian 'e' is pronounced
'ye' (like in English 'yellow') in an initial position '('Yeltsin'), )after
another vowel (layet) or after a 'hard sign' (s"yezd). Otherwise (i.e.,
after a consonant) it palatalizes the consonant, as is the case in
'Belorussiya'. In 'Belarusian'(?), 'e' doesn't palatalize the preceeding
consonant.
>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Bob Goudreau			Data General Corporation
>goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com		62 Alexander Drive	
>+1 919 248 6231			Research Triangle Park, NC  27709, USA
(It's amazing how folks post misinformed articles on subjects Russian when
they obviously know very little about them... I mean, is it so hard to
look this up in, say, an encyclopedia? :)
Dimitri Vulis
CUNY GC Math
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET DLV@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU

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