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February 23, 2005
holiday greetings, brief cyrillic lesson
Happy Defenders of the Fatherland Day! (Formerly Soviet Army Day, which was formerly known as Red Army Day.) I think the US should have more holidays in the middle of the week.
Since I keep dropping in names and terms in Russian, I figure my non-Russian-speaking blog readers might be interested in the Moscow Times Guide to Cyrillic Pronunciation. Note that there's no one system of transliteration, and I transliterate inconsistently depending on the circumstances. Also, it really should be called a "guide to Russian pronunciation" since certain letters are pronounced slightly differently in other languages using the Cyrillic alphabet, but anyway ...
The English examples are pretty good, except for "future" for Cyrillic "у". First of all, it's not clear which "u" they're talking about, and second, neither "u" is pronounced like Cyrillic "у" in any English dialect I'm aware of. So I recommend thinking of "у" as the "oo" in "school". Just round your lips some more.
I also have a two better examples than those given:
- For "щ", instead of "posh chap" (or "borsht", which is the usually example), think of "shiiiiiiiit".
- For "и", instead of "invest", think of "beet".
Thanks to those leaving comments! If only I had gotten them set up earlier.
Posted by kshawkin at February 23, 2005 10:18 AM