… just found “Гавр” for Le Havre (city in France). Russian drops the French article, per Russian’s own grammatical scheme, and transliterates the now-silent French “h” as “Г”. That name is likely centuries old in Russian – a faithful modern tranlisteration could be “Лавр”.
Looking at “Саутгемптон” for “Southampton, England”, too.
Only in fiction, right?
Not in the least bit bizarre, Irish fishing folk went to Newfoundland seasonally for many years to fish.
Supposedly it is the only Irish placename outside Ireland that isn’t derived from its English counterpart.
Bulgarian is similar to Russian, but they’re more likely to use the X instead of the Г. In fact, I’ve never seen the Г used in this way before and it looks really weird to me. X doesn’t have that guttural sound in Bulgarian than it does in Russian, though, it’s just equivalent to an English H. For instance, Harry Potter transliterated into Bulgarian is just “Хари Потер”. (Bulgarian also doesn’t see the need to repeat letters.) New Hampshire is Ню Хампшър. (I C&Ped that from Bulgarian Wikipedia, because I actually wasn’t sure how you’d spell that. Russian speakers will probably realize that ъ doesn’t make the same sound in Bulgarian that it does in Russian.)
The one state name that’s actually different in Bulgarian is Alaska. They use the Russian. Now, the English word comes from the Russian word (which I expect comes in turn from a Native word), so it’s not that different: Аляска (Alyaska).
BTW, in other languages I’ve studied, the word for the US is just a translation of United States of America, but in Hebrew, it’s Artzot haBrit, or Lands of the Covenant. I always think that sounds pretty awesome.
Not AFAIK; I understand it really was the official name while Louisiana was under Spanish control. I can’t find sources for it on a quick search, though, and it’s perfectly likely that the name never took hold locally… there are streets in Spain whose “old name” was still in use more than 100 years after the official name change. My source is my history teacher, uh, circa 1985.
Wait, actually I think it’s “Хари Потър”. Ugh, transliterating vowels is not always obvious. (I’ve actually read a few Harry Potter books in Bulgarian, so you’d think I’d get this one straight, though.)
I’d translate it as “Lands of the Alliance”, but yeah. It’s pretty cool (and in abbreviated form: ARHB)
Outside Europe, maybe. Several places outside Ireland have names that are unlike the English version. For example Sualainn = Sweden, Albain = Scotland, Lochlann = Norway, Sasana = England.
Bulgarian transliteration seems to favor mapping “ъ” onto English words where schwas (or close) are present in English pronunciation (e.g. Джордж Харисън, Джон Ленън for “George Harrison, John Lennon”). Compare Russsian “Джордж Харрисон, Джон Леннон” (though those Cyrillic "o"s are still pronounced like schwas in Russian).
I used to think Bulgarian “ъ” was almost identical, phonetically, to Russian “ы”. Now, I’m less sure.
Russian Г usually but not always transliterates English hard G. It sometimes represents other sounds, including /v/ in the Genitive ending -oгo and a brief velar stop or fricative like nothing in English but most closely resembling a ‘rough breathing’ /h/. X is nearly always the unvoiced glottal fricative of loch or psyche, or chutzpah. It seems to be used in transliterating ‘strong’ /h/ sounds like that in Oklahoma. (Compare the difference in how the average English speaker sounds the H’s in Oklahoma and Henry to see the distinction.
Ah yeah I must be misremembering, maybe it was in North America.
My favorite one is Furorida.
I notice that although Japanese clearly has an S sound, they’ve mysteriously picked SH as the form to use in some of these transliterations — e.g. Mishishippi. Any particular reason for that? Or is the Romaji “sh” not what I think of as “sh” anyway?
No, they aren’t the same. I…don’t know how to describe the difference, though. If anyone knows a website that will record a phone call, I could make a voice recording. The Bulgarian ъ is the same as the “oo” in “book” or “look” or the “u” in “bush”. (Weirdly, George Bush’s last name is written as Буш, though. I don’t get it. Also weirdly, it’s usually transliterated as “a”, and I can’t think of ANY words in English where “a” sounds like ъ.)
FWIW, I do not actually speak Russian. I took Russian 101 last semester and found it ridiculously easy. It’s possible that being able to speak Bulgarian gave me a slight advantage.
The Japanese sort-of think of s and sh as the same letter: which one you use for pronunciation depends on the next vowel. Here are the possible syllables with “s” or “sh” in Hiragana:
さ - sa
し - shi
す - su
せ - se
そ - so
There are two-character combinations for some other possibilities:
しゃ - sha
しゅ - shu
しょ - sho
However, there’s no way to write “si” or “she” in Japanese.
Sorry – that’s not quite true. You can write “she” in katakana, シェ – e.g., Sheffield シェフィールド. However, you can’t write “she” in hiragana, and you still can’t write “si” any way in Japanese script.
The “s-line” of sounds in Japanese is sa-shi-su-se-so (contrast to, e.g., the k-line, which is ka-ki-ku-ke-ko). Note, too, that the “t-line” is ta-chi-tsu-te-to: no ti or tu. These are phonemes that Japanese doesn’t have natively. (There’s also no native v, and the Japanese “r” is kind of midway between an English l and r.)
No worries – I can parse the IPA symbols given in the respective Wiki articles on the Bulgarian and Russian languages. The major difference between the two sounds is that the Russian “ы” has a smaller aperture than the Bulgarian “ъ” (which is also, very generally, the way to describe the difference between vowels in English “bet” and “beet”).
The Wikipedia article and the IPA symbols given suggest that the Bulgarian “ъ” , for all intents and purposes, is so close to a schwa that it might as well be considered one from the vantage point of an English speaker. Of course, in Bulgarian “ъ” can carry stress … English schwa occurs invariably in unstressed syllables.
Thanks again for the info.
Now that brings up another oddity. Or so I think.
They’ve chosen to approximate the V sound with a B (Bājinia for Virginia, Nebada for Nevada), and yet they have in their repertoire a perfectly good F — just sitting there, ready to deploy — which would be a closer match. The V is the voiced version of the consonant; F is the unvoiced.
I’m not criticizing. (I’m glad they’ve gone with B here. It’s funnier.) But maybe that means the voiced/unvoiced quality of a foreign language’s sound is more important to match than its underlying “shape”, when approximating it?
Just a guess.
:rolleyes:
Same choice as Spanish… where Nevada (“snowy”) is pronounced Nebada and Virginia is pronounced Birjinia (“hard j”). So for Nevada, Japanese is actually closer to the original pronunciation than English is.