Talk:Russian alphabet

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Transliteration

Please! Lets talk at Talk:Transliteration of Russian into English! Mikkalai 22:34, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Images for characters?

Is there a reason that images are being used for certain characters? Are they not found in Unicode? Thanks. --ChrisRuvolo 14:46, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The Yat

is easily represented: Ѣѣ. The Fita

also: Ѳѳ. Ksi: Ѯѯ Psi: Ѱѱ Omega: Ѡ ѡ Yus: Ѧѧ big yus: Ѫѫ and variants: Ѩѩ Ѭѭ .. So whats the deal? --ChrisRuvolo 15:33, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

-- they are not present in all fonts, including the default font in the default skin as shown under MS-win and IE. A. Shetsen 03:32, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

That is pretty bogus of MS to not have a properly implemented font. So the lowest common denominator is used? I don't like that.. but I guess that is how things go. --ChrisRuvolo 04:11, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Does anybody know how I could get those fonts so they will show up on my computer? Is there somewhere I could download the Unicode stuff? Devahn58 00:44, 5 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In Glagolitic

The mnemonic recitation of the letter names is similar to something I heard about the Glagolitic alphabet. Was the recitation retrofitted to Glagolitic or was it carried on to Cyrillic? -- Error 01:30, 12 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Vowels

It is said that vowels е, ё, ю, я are ioted when initial, but they also are ioted then they come after another vowel or after ъ - hard sign and ь - soft sign. --DimaY2K 07:56, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Some questions:

1) Should the IPA symbol for "o" not be the "open o" rather than just "o"? Cambridge Advanced Learners uses the "open o" for "chalk".

2) Should the IPA symbol for "э" not be the "epsilon" rather than just "e"? Listening to speech sample by natives, I think this sounds more similar.

--[dpk] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.186.105.130 (talk) 00:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

ia and я

Was ia only used at the beginning of words or was it retained inside them, too? Where, if so? And what about words such as языкъ, which is ięzyk in polish and thus derives from small yus? 80.146.103.239 (talk) 15:43, 11 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Moved: New-York in the examples for the use of Decimal I

[Нью-Іоркъ] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) /nʲju jork/ "New York" was given in Russian alphabet#Letters eliminated in 1918 as an example for the use of і. However, this is not a good example for two reasons:

the spelling of this kind of words was considered controversial (see note 92 from section called "iо, йо, ьо?" in Я.К. Грот "Русское правописаніе", 1885),
(related to first) it is not an example of pronunciation being identical to и (rather, it is identical to й in this case).

So, I'm changing the example.--Imz 21:28, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Cyrillic s

The current description of the archaic (in Russian) cyrillic letter 's' says that: The ѕ corresponded to a primitive /dz/ pronunciation, already absent in East Slavic at the start of the historical period, but kept by tradition in certain words until the eighteenth century in secular writing, and in Church Slavonic to the present day.

It would seem worthwile to add that the Macedonian language is the last remaining (living) Slavic language to have retained the 's' to this day.

That X consonant

I believe the consonant which sound is marked as "h as in huge" is actually a gutural R sound, not so much like the softer h sound in English.

You believe wrong. Delicates 14:12, 6 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You write "like in Bach", but the IPA symbol in Bach would be "ç", not "x". So what *is* the correct pronunciation of X in Russian, please?

Cyrillic in Wikipedia

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

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

—Michael Z. 2005-12-9 20:43 Z

If I want to write a Russian word in a Wikipedia article, using Cyrillic orthography, how do I go about it? I know Russian and I know how to spell the word, but I don't know how to access Cyrillic in this system. JackofOz 09:41, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you are working under Windows, try using the Character Map program under Accessories / System Tools. About three pages down for the Arial font you run into Cyrillic characters. Double click on the ones you want to build the word and then copy and paste it from Character Map over to the Wikipedia editor box. You'll get something like this: "АБВГДЕЖЗИЙКЛМНОПРСТУФХЦЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ" and "абвгдежзийклмнопрстуфхцчшщъыьэюя". Good luck! --StuffOfInterest 12:35, 22 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Э оборотное vs. э

In my experience, the letter Э is merely called by its sound (eh)- I have never heard of calling it Э оборотное. It is called by this name in non-Muscovite Russian? Schnabeltier Angriff 19:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, i kratkoe is also often just called y. -Iopq 14:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

How would you say that then? The same as и? BirdValiant 02:03, 20 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No. Say "yeast", and then say it again without "-east". It wouldn't make sense to pronounce it as 'i'; would you pronounce a lone english 'w' as 'u'?67.186.247.125 19:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean to say that when pronouncing either j or w by themselves, you would basically move your tongue from the schwa position to the i or u positions, respectively? Or maybe from j or w to a schwa. I'm no expert in linguistics, but aren't j and w just movements toward i and u? That's why I thought that j by itself would just be i, since by itself, the tongue wouldn't be moving anywhere to get to its destination, i. I think another way of saying j or w would actually be the movement from a schwa to those consonants, or those consonants to a schwa. In the above example, with the Y in the word yeast, the sound I hear is the movement from a schwa, since that's where my tongue starts from, toward j, then if the rest of the word is pronounced, the tongue is moved down a little towards i. BirdValiant 03:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Missing cursive versions

I'm trying to decipher a text written in cursive Russian, but the current article was no help. The Cyrillic alphabet page was more helpful with that, but then it documents only the cursive version of basic Cyrillic letters, not the cursive version of special Russian letters such as " Ы ". I suggest someone knowledgable would add the cursive version of each upper/lower case letter, right below each regular version (there's already room for it anyway). -- 62.147.87.26 07:18, 17 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Encoding

The article should have a section describing the encoding of Russian characters. Historically, tens of different encoding schemes were implemented, and several are still in use. How about a table with various encodings of azbuka? dima 13:18, 10 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Э

Why is the IPA for Э given in brackets rather than slashes? Is [ɛ] not a phonemic sound?--YellowLeftHand 19:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

which variant should be used for the pronunciation of the "old name"

For example, there is ща [ɕtɕa] in the list (not matching the modern standard pronunciation). The case I'm worried about is твердо [ˈtvʲɛ.rdə]: first of all, it doesn't show the regular ё (so, it might be a Church Slavonic tradition or an error of a Wikipedia editor; I do not know how this name was commonly pronounced at the times when it was used in Russia). And another issue is tvʲ/tʲvʲ: since it's a more automatic process than the "е to ё", it was probably pronounced the same way the speaker would pronounce it in his normal Russian (without caring about Church Slavonic); and the Moscow pronunciation of the beginning of 20th century would probably be [tʲvʲ]. I do not know what should be written there, I just want to raise this issue.--Imz (talk) 21:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The way I've been transcribing them phonetically is with modern standard Russian (AFAIK) even for the older terms. A hefty amount of research would need to be done to figure out the older pronunciations, but it's possible to do. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 21:16, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Are there reasons to keep ща [ɕtɕa] then?--Imz (talk) 22:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I guess not. [ɕɕ] is the better alternative. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 22:54, 8 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some rephrasing suggestions

In the alphabet section: "Ъ - a sign which, placed after a consonant, indicates it is not palatalized" "Ь - a sign which, placed after a consonant, indicates a softened pronunciation"

If my understanding that this two letters play more or less opposite roles, maybe it'd look less confusing and more consistent to use the same way to describe them, for example "it is not palatalized/it is palatalized" or "a hard pronunciation/a soft pronunciation".

In the vowels section: "4. The vowels <е, ё, и, ю, я> indicate a preceding palatal consonant" I believe what it's trying to say is "palatalized" instead of "palatal", as not that many consonants appear to be purely palatal.

Keith Galveston (talk) 07:28, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 07:39, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]