# Transliteration of a russian word **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 7, 2004, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726 "2004-04-07T12:42:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/1 "2004-04-07T12:42:55Z")
Could someone tell me how the russian word : рыцарь should be written in latin alphabet, and what it means? ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/2 "2004-04-07T14:14:32Z")
ritsarv or ritsarf. The “i” is a sound that doesn’t exist in English as far as I know and is sort of between “ee” and the short “i”. It meand “knight.” ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/3 "2004-04-07T14:18:23Z")
It means “knight”. I’d transliterate it as “rytsar” or “rutsar”, but I am not a Russian speaker. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/4 "2004-04-07T14:20:51Z")
Beaten to it by four minutes. **David** , where do you get that final “v” or “f” from? That’s a ь, a soft sign, not a B. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/5 "2004-04-07T14:23:45Z")
> [@r\_k](#): > > Beaten to it by four minutes. > > **David** , where do you get that final “v” or “f” from? That’s a ь, a soft sign, not a B. You’re right. My Russian was never very good and it has accumulated a lot of rust. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/6 "2004-04-07T14:37:00Z")
Podvin’tes’, pozhaluista. Zdes’ nuzhno russkogovoriashchii. The most commonly accepted transliteration, based on my own experience, would be _rytsar’_. The letter ‘i’ is usually used to translate the letter и - and since the soft sign ь changes the pronunciation of the precedint consonant, it needs to be marked in the transliteration, generally with an apostrophe. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/7 "2004-04-07T14:52:32Z")
Thank you all… ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/8 "2004-04-07T14:55:45Z")
Не за что. Don’t mention it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 3:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/9 "2004-04-07T15:59:23Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > The letter ‘i’ is usually used to translate the letter и - And I’ve never understood why. The “i” in English is **never** pronounced like that backward “N” in Russian which is “ee.” Just because “i” is pronounced “ee” in many Latin based languages is no reason at all to use it for the Russian “ee” in transliterating to English. ---
**Author:** ![KP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a9adbd/32.png) [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/10 "2004-04-07T16:34:06Z")
Well, maybe I have a regional accent [What do you get when you mix a very faint Georgia accent with almost 30 years in New England?], but I pronounce the “i” in many English words with a fairly similar vowel sound to “и”, e.g.: [li] the final “i” in “riverine”, “poutine”, “tourmaline”, etc.[/li][li] the final “i” in “receipt”, “conceive”, etc.[/li] Don’t ask me where I got those examples. They were just the first to pop into my head. I’m sure there are better once ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/11 "2004-04-07T18:34:31Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > The “i” in English is **never** pronounced like that backward “N” in Russian which is “ee.” I’m sure the Marines would beg to differ. Or do you want a piece of them? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2004, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/12 "2004-04-07T20:44:43Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > I’m sure the Marines would beg to differ. Or do you want a piece of them? 😉 Oops! Well then, hardly ever. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2004, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/13 "2004-04-08T13:20:48Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Podvin’tes’, pozhaluista. Zdes’ nuzhno russkogovoriashchii. > > The most commonly accepted transliteration, based on my own experience, would be _rytsar’_. The letter ‘i’ is usually used to translate the letter и - and since the soft sign ь changes the pronunciation of the precedint consonant, it needs to be marked in the transliteration, generally with an apostrophe. A genuine question : aren’t transliteration from one _alphabet_ to another (cyrillic to latin in this case) rather than from one _language_ to another (russian to english)? Hence, aren’t there rules to transliterate which apply to all languages using the same alphabet (Beijing, for instance, would be written the same in all countries using the latin alphabet, regardless how it is actually pronounced in each country)? ---
**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/14 "2004-04-09T16:54:38Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > A genuine question : aren’t transliteration from one _alphabet_ to another (cyrillic to latin in this case) rather than from one _language_ to another (russian to english)? > > Hence, aren’t there rules to transliterate which apply to all languages using the same alphabet (Beijing, for instance, would be written the same in all countries using the latin alphabet, regardless how it is actually pronounced in each country)? It’s true that transliteration is from one alphabet to another, but it’s also true that speakers of language A will generally mangle language B’s words into a form better befitting their own repertoire of sounds. Compare English “London” to Spanish “Londres” or English “Munich” to German “München”. People of both cultures are referring to the same place, but they use their own name for it, and it would seem silly for them to do otherwise. Now let’s take the Russian word Москва (_Moskva_). In English we say _Moscow_ and spell it accordingly. Spanish-speakers say and spell it _Moscú_. It would seem strange to say “Moscow” but write “Moskva”, or say “Moscú” but write “Moscow”. Not sure how effective that presentation was, but the point is that there really can’t be an international (or inter-alphabetal) standard for transliteration because spelling follows pronunciation. ---
**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/15 "2004-04-09T17:13:23Z")
In an unprecedented follow-up to my own post, I will address the Chinese issue. Because we Westerners had relatively little historical contact with China before a couple hundred years ago, there was less time to develop our own equivalents of their words and names. That, coupled with the fact that the Chinese writing system is so different from ours (which is to say, non-alphabetic), means that we were more willing to just call things whatever the Chinese called them. There are several transliteration systems for writing Chinese in the Latin alphabet. The earlier ones were fairly imprecise, mostly amounting to “listening to that guy speak and writing down what I think I heard”. The revolutionary Chinese government, as part of its campaign to increase literacy, released its own transliteration system (callied pinyin) which is much more regular and allows for a pretty accurate representation of Chinese sounds in the Latin alphabet. This also explains why there are two or more spellings of many imported Chinese words (e.g. Mao Tse Tung (old system) vs. Mao Zedong (new system)). And I don’t even want to count all the days I’ve seen Lao Zi’s (or Lao Tse, Lao Tzu, etc…)'s classic text spelled: Dao De Jing, Tao Te Ching, Tao Te King, Tao Te Ch’ing, Tao Te Qing, and on and on… ---
**Author:** ![Daver914](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@Daver914](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daver914)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2004, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/transliteration-of-a-russian-word/238726/16 "2004-04-09T17:19:39Z")
And in a follow-up to my own follow-up, “days” in the last paragraph should be “ways”. That is all.