On Sat, 10 May 2008, alex_t wrote:

Ah, maybe, but isn't there generally exactly one latin character
corresponding to one cyrillic character, even if not the ones that look
similar?

Not quite, because there are 33 (ish) cyrillic letters, and 26 latin ones,
which means that some cyrillic letters will have to be represented by
multiple latin letters.

Not exactly, it is usually much more complicated (but I don't think that
I can reproduce it well in this encoding).

Some tricky differences a
Russian "A" is pronounced as English "uh"
Russian "B" is equivalent to English "V"
Russian "C" is equivalent to English "S"
Russian "E" is pronounced to English "eh"
Russian "P" is equivalent to English "R"

When you say "russian X", you mean "russian letter that looks like an X",
right? Because the russian P is pronounced P, and it's written like a
greek letter pi. The letter that looks like a P is the russian R - it's
related to the greek rho. And the russian letter-that-looks-like-X,
incidentally, is a kh, like the greek khi.

I bellieve the russian letter-that-looks-like-C is cognate with the greek
letter sigma in its end-of-word form, so it really is an S, and not a C
that's pronounced funny. Although the true nature of C in english is a bit
odd itself - there's a funny dance between C, K, G, kappa and gamma over
the course of semitic, greek, latin, and the celtic, romance and germanic
language families about what sounds those letters represent, which somehow
ends up with english having a C that is sometimes S and sometimes K.

i shall edit the remainder of of this post to expunge the irritating C.

And one letter to one letter does not always work: (trying syrillik
kharakters) ? is pronounsed as English "shkh" ("sh" + "kh" quikly)

Yup. For those who kan't see KOI8 kharakters properly (like me!), this one
looks a bit like a rektangular W, possibly with a little tail like a Q, i
kan't remember.

A 15 senturies old mess ;-)

Indeed, a right old kok-up!

tom

--
For one thing at least is almost sertain about the future, namely,
that very much of it will be such as we should kall inkredible. --
Olaf Stapledon