User talk:Stephen G. Brown/Transliteration of Russian letters Ж, Ц, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь

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Transliteration of Russian letters Ж, Ц, Щ, Ъ, Ы, Ь[edit]

Please, help. How to transliterate these letters in articles? Is there any transliteration table in Wiktionary? --Jaroslavleff 14:20, 28 May 2006 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jaroslavleff. For these six letters, I write ž, ts, šč, ", y, ’ (or '). That is: a, b, v, g, d, e (je at the beginning of a word or between vowels), jó, ž, z, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, f, χ (or kh), ts, č, š, šč, ", y, ’, e, ju, ja. —Stephen 13:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
I've also seen ц transliterated as c quite often. Isn't that the international standard we generally follow? —Vildricianus 14:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, c often means ts, but the problem is that it often means any of several other sounds. Whenever I see c used to transliterate a language that I’m not familiar with, I always wonder what system is being used. With ts, there is no question, and in the case of Russian, ts is by far the most common way to transliterate ц. —Stephen 14:57, 29 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
Now that you’ve raise the question, I took a look at the different systems in common use, which are given below. I mentioned to Eclectology and others last year that we should select one of them as official policy for en.wiktionary, but I didn’t get much of a response. I still think we should have official policies for transliterating Russian, as well as for other languages. These are similar systems for transliterating Arabic. Unofficially, we have a policy of using the w:Revised Romanization of Korean for Korean, and I really like it. Perhaps this question should be moved to the BP, Tea Room or Grease Pit? It would be wonderful to finally get some agreement on the issue (although any change to Russian would mean a lot of work, since I have transliterated almost all the Russian we have as it now is ... perhaps someone could make a bot to convert the old Russian transliteration to whatever new one we decide on). —Stephen 15:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)Reply
Absolutely, it would be quite amateurish to use different systems on an arbitrary basis. I don't know whether a 'bot would be feasible for this, though. We'll see. But please raise the topic at the Beer parlour. —Vildricianus 20:43, 29 May 2006 (UTC)