🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr21.111122.1659@lsl.co.uk>, robin@lsl.co.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.211339.12883@enea.se>, sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>>[...]
>> Whiterussia  - BY     (Belarus, huh?)
>
>The Romanisation of the country name in (I think) Russian is something 
>like `Byelorossia'.  (`Byelo' means `white' in Russian, that's for 
>sure.)
Remark 1. 'Bela' in 'Belarus' actually stands for 'free'. (Has to do with
serfdom, Lithuanian domination, etc).

Remark 2. In almost all transliteration schemes, Russian 'e' after a consonant
is transliterated as Latin 'e' without 'y'. A conventional _transliteration_
of the Russian name would be 'Belorussiya'. Now, Byelorussians (Belarusians? :)
_don't_ palatalize the B, which makes the Romanization with the Y highly
inappropriate. :)

Remark 3. 'BY' and 'UA' (for Ukraina) have been in the ISO ... since the
beginning because those 2 republics were U.N. members since 1946 or so.
(Gee, does Erland ever get embarassed when he exposes his ignorance to
thousands of Usenet readers? :)

Disclaimer: The above facts are probably not known to most people at CUNY.

Dimitri Vulis
CUNY GC Math
DLV@CUNYVMS1.BITNET DLV@CUNYVMS1.GC.CUNY.EDU

Disclaimer: my Usenet postings don't necessarily represent anyone's views,
especially my own and/or CUNY's.