[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] POLISH DIACRITIC " L" EQUIVALENT IN RUSSIAN

[Jerry Frank]

I agree with Otto.  

For example, the pronunciation for the Polish city we know as Lodz is actually sort of, somewhat like, maybe, kind of - Vwudgze.  :-)  But you would never, ever, see it represented that way on a map.  Any German or English maps of Poland represent the diacritic L as a standard Roman L.  I would guess that Cyrillic would be the same, using the Cyrillic character for L in lieu of the diacritic L.  But of course that could vary with the type of document and the scribe creating it.

Jerry Frank



----- Original Message -----
From: Otto <otto at schienke.com>
Date: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 10:12 am
Subject: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] POLISH DIACRITIC " L" EQUIVALENT IN RUSSIAN

> QUESTION:
> When a town name contains a Polish diacritic "L" how would it be  
> translated
> into Russian Cyrillic?
> 
>                                         Mike
> 
> Ans:
> With difficulty.  The lipped 'w' sound is not produced using the  
> Cyrillic alphabet.
> Try substitute a Cyrillic character for English 'v', 'yu', 'u', 
> 'y',  
> or even 'L' as we do with the Polish 'L' slashed.  The scribe or  
> pastor doing the recording would 'play it by ear'.
> 
> Remember, alphabets replicate vocal sounds.  They guide  
> vocalization.  'Sounds like' is the rule of thumb.  'Looks like is 
> of  
> no value, especially with Cyrillic.
> 
> Most of us adapted the vocalization of our language to the Roman  
> alphabet, including the Poles.  They tweak it using diacritical  
> markings to to bring out proper sounds in their language. The 
> Roman  
> alphabet does not contain characters for some of their vocal  
> sounds.   German with its umlauts is similar.  http:// 
> www.jewishgen.org/jri-pl/translit.htm  (Fraktur has passed to the  
> wayside)  Our alphabets are but a close replication of our vocal  
> sounds.  Old St. Cyril did a magnificent job in formulating an  
> alphabet to produce exactly the sounds of the Russian tongue, 
> giving  
> the Russians a very fine instrument for writing world class  
> literature and poetry. He gave Russian Orthodoxy a leg up,  
> intentionally, over the Roman Catholic, Yiddish, and Turkish 
> Islamic  
> alphabets. Some of the Cyrillic characters may have a familiar 
> look,  
> but not a familiar sound connected to them, old Cyril borrowed  
> characters from assorted alphabets to compose his own.
>