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 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"
and so on

And one letter to one letter does not always work:
(trying cyrillic characters)
ý is pronounced as English "shch" ("sh" + "ch" quickly)

A 15 centuries old mess ;-)

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

When you say "russian X", you mean "russian letter that looks like an X",
right?

Yep, exactly. I was trying to be clever and avoid encoding
problems ;-)


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.

I don't think those were KOI8 characters, my Firefox is set to UTF-8
encoding... then again, I have no idea really.
Also, I have custom made Russian keyboard layout which only one person
in world uses (me) - and I have no idea whether this is mapped to
Unicode Russian, Windows Russian, or UNIX Russian (KOI-8).

On Sat, 10 May 2008, alex_t wrote:

When you say "russian X", you mean "russian letter that looks like an
X", right?

Yep, exactly. I was trying to be clever and avoid encoding
problems ;-)

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.

I don't think those were KOI8 characters, my Firefox is set to UTF-8
encoding... then again, I have no idea really.

Your content-type header said KOI8. It's possible that you sent it as
UTF-8 but that it got transcoded at some point along the way, i think.

Also, I have custom made Russian keyboard layout which only one person
in world uses (me) - and I have no idea whether this is mapped to
Unicode Russian, Windows Russian, or UNIX Russian (KOI-8).

Pass! I would imagine that your operating system, if it's modern, is using
unicode internally, that your newsreader is using unicode represented as
UTF-8 (as you said), but that before it goes to the network, it's getting
encoded as KOI8. BICBW.

tom

--
I DO IT WRONG!!!

Pass! I would imagine that your operating system, if it's modern, is using
unicode internally, that your newsreader is using unicode represented as
UTF-8 (as you said), but that before it goes to the network, it's getting
encoded as KOI8. BICBW.

My "newsreader" is actually Google Groups - who known what weird
things Google's doing "out there" ;-)

In article
,
alex_t writes

Pass! I would imagine that your operating system, if it's modern, is using
unicode internally, that your newsreader is using unicode represented as
UTF-8 (as you said), but that before it goes to the network, it's getting
encoded as KOI8. BICBW.

My "newsreader" is actually Google Groups - who known what weird
things Google's doing "out there" ;-)

Google handle KOI8 encoding properly - and UTF-8, too. Microsoft don't
(in Hotmail, at least).

Gives me no end of hassles in Mosocw.

(And to be within shouting distance of the topic, the worst thing on the
Moscow Metro is that the different lines in an interchange station will
all have their own station names, so Arbat is the same station as Lenin
Library (for instance))
--
Steve

On Tue, 13 May 2008, Steve wrote:

(And to be within shouting distance of the topic, the worst thing on the
Moscow Metro is that the different lines in an interchange station will
all have their own station names, so Arbat is the same station as Lenin
Library (for instance))

Same in New York, isn't it - 51st Street is also Lexington Avenue / 53rd
Street. Which is not to be confused with 5th Avenue / 53rd Street. Nor is
7th Avenue to be confused with 57th Street - 7th Avenue, nor that with
57th Street. It's okay to confuse 59th Street with Lexington Avenue / 59th
Street, though, since those *are* the same station. But not to confuse
50th Street with 50th Street, nor 23rd Street with any of 23rd Street,
23rd Street, 23rd Street, or 23rd Street.

Basically, pack of jokers.

Although i should confess that this kind of silliness does go on in London
- we've two each of Edgware Road, Paddington, Hammersmith and Shepherds
Bush. But only one case where a single station has two names.

tom

--
What's hit's history; what's missed's mystery.

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 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"
and so on

And one letter to one letter does not always work:
(trying cyrillic characters)
Щ is pronounced as English "shch" ("sh" + "ch" quickly)

A 15 centuries old mess ;-)

Not quite - Russian "E" is more equivalent to English "yeh". They have
two sets of vowels, one "unvoiced" (like ours) and one "voiced" (as if
preceded by a "y").

"A" = Russian "A"
"yah" = Russian "looks like an R backwards"
"E" = Russian "looks a bit like a 3"
"yeh" - Russian "E"
"I" = Russian "looks like an N backwards"
"yih" = Russian "I"
"O" = Russian "O"
"yoh" = Russian "Ë" (that's E with two dots on it, if it doesn't come
out properly)
"U" = Russian "Y"
"yuh" = Russian "looks a bit like 10"

All very approximate - and that's just the capitals! And I may have some
wrong - it's 55 years since I did "O" Level!

Peter Beale

On May 10, 6:45*pm, 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 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"
and so on

And one letter to one letter does not always work:
(trying cyrillic characters)
ý is pronounced as English "shch" ("sh" + "ch" quickly)

A 15 centuries old mess ;-)

Sorry I was out for a while, but it seems to me that the relationships
with English pronunciation are probably not the relevant ones.

Are the relationships with latin-using slavic languages simpler and
more one-to-one? (Eg slavic c being english ts and so on [I notice
that also being the case for Pinyin Chinese]).

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 04:26:01PM -0700, MIG wrote:

Sorry I was out for a while, but it seems to me that the relationships
with English pronunciation are probably not the relevant ones.

Indeed. For looking out of the window of a train and realising "oh, I
need to get off here", what matters is that Russian (or Greek)
characters are pretty easy to recognise if you're literate in a language
that uses the Latin alphabet, even if you have no idea how KPACHbIE
BOPOTA is pronounced. That's because even if the letters appear to make
no sense (and some might be unrecognisable) there will be at least
*some* that you can easily remember, and then when you see the same name
again the whole name will be recognisable.

This does assume that it's in the same case as it was the first time you
saw it of course :-)

Japanese is an entirely different matter. Not a single character is
recognisable.

--
David Cantrell | Nth greatest programmer in the world

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