Wiktionary talk:Carpathian Rusyn transliteration

Transliteration of Ы

There needs to be some way to differentiate и and ы in the transliteration. I have changed the transliteration of ы to "ȳ" ("y" with a macron). This may not be the best choice, but it is better than having them both be "y". --WikiTiki89 07:31, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the module. I think it's not a problem for two letters producing the same symbol. Cases like this are too common in Thai, Lao, etc., even Russian "э" and "е" (after consonants). The "и" and "ы" discrepancy must be caused by mixture of Russian and Ukrainian. It remains to be seen, which one is more common. I know very little about Rusyn, though. They should be both "y", IMO, e.g. руси́ньский язы́к (rusýnʹskyj jazýk). --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 13:04, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

They are pronounced differently, which is why they are still written differently. I believe there are minimal pairs for all three of "і", "и", and "ы". --WikiTiki89 16:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm against this change for various reasons. Macrons are used to represent long vowels or the first tone in Mandarin. It's not certain that "и" and "ы" represent different sounds, despite Pryashev's document but just a spelling convention, even if they do, the corresponding letters in Ukrainian and Russian are both transliterated as "y". A number of letters in Persian and other languages represent the same sounds and are transliterated identically,eg. if someone pronounces ع as in Arabic, it's an exception. Both ح and ه are just "h", etc. I don't see the need to make two different symbols for these letters. Users will be able to see the Cyrillic spelling. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 23:35, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I understand that a macron is not the best solution, but as I said, it is better than not making the distinction. Where is your evidence for the fact that they are pronounced identically? In Persian, the Arabic sound ع is not transliterated and ح is transliterated the same as ه because that is how they are pronounced and the spelling is just etymological. In Rusyn, that is not the case as the letters have a distinct pronunciation (and we are not discussing Pannonian Rusyn). --WikiTiki89 13:40, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I have come up with a better scheme. You might not like it because it departs a bit different from the Ukrainian. This scheme is more internally consistent and more consistent with both Russian transliteration and with the transliteration of South Slavic languages (Serbo-Croatian, etc.):

Character	Transliteration
ы	y
и	i
і	i initially, ji elsewhere
ї	ji

This also allows Pannonian Rusyn to be transliterated the same way as Carpathian Rusyn. Note that in this scheme, palatalizing vowels are always marked with j (so i alone does not palatalize). --WikiTiki89 20:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Or, if you prefer to follow established standards, we can adopt one of the systems I found here (by searching Google), the first of which is essentially my original proposal, but uses a circumflex instead of a macron: ŷ; and the second of which is essentially what I proposed in the table above. --WikiTiki89 21:03, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in getting back on this. I have no evidence on identical pronunciation but I don't 100% trust the sources claiming they are different (/ɪ/ (и) and /ɨ/ (ы)) either. It seems, from other sources, that the Rusyn spelling may either follow the Russian spelling, using "и", "йи" and "ы", or Ukrainian "і", "ї" and "и" to produce "i", "ji" and "y". Pryashev explains when to write "и" and when to write "ы". If they are different sounds (/ɪ/ and /ɨ/), would the spelling require such a rule? Anyway, you seem to have done some research. I'm surprised about the rule for "і" in your table. Where did you find it? If you insist, you can leave it as "ŷ". Your last suggestion is more acceptable to me. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 01:41, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I made up that rule, but it is consistent with South Slavic orthography (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene), which is very phonetic. And if you think about it, it makes perfect sense that "ле" and "ли" (pronounced essentially /lɛ/ and /lɪ/) would be le and li, while "лє" and "лі/лї" (/lʲɛ/ and /lʲi/) would be lje and lji. This scheme would ignore the purely orthographic difference between лі and лї, it would use no diacritics on vowels except for the stress mark (so no double diacritics like ŷ́), and it is just overall more consistent and better than the Ukrainian-influenced transliteration of и as "y" (in turn, Ukrainian only does this because и is seen as the equivalent of Russian ы; if Ukrainian had come up with its own transliteration, it probably would not have used "y"). --WikiTiki89 02:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

As for Pryashev's rules (if you could link me to them, that would help me from having to guess), there are several possible explanations. He could be writing them for non-native speakers (such as speakers of Ukrainian, or even of dialects like Pannonian Rusyn). It could be that the distinction is only realized in stressed syllables, so the rules have to be memorized for everywhere else. It could be that he's mixing in some language rules along with the spelling rules. I could think of more reasons if you want, but as for transliteration, I have not found any scheme that does not distinguish them except for the unsourced one that Wikipedia uses. --WikiTiki89 02:14, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Oops. I assumed Pryashev was a surname. Here's the document I viewed about some rules. Василь Ябур, Анна Плїшкова Русиньскый язык у зеркалї новых правил про основны і середнї школы з навчанём русиньского языка. Is "лї" really possible? I thought "ї" is only used at the beginning of words, after vowels or ' as in Ukrainian? It's always "ji" but Cyrillic "і" is never transliterated as "ji" in any language.

Marking palatalisation of consonants with "j" in front of "і" is a first. I don't like it. As I said, I can accept your other suggestion, which you have already implemented. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 02:46, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

It's not a first. It's only a first if you've never heard of Serbo-Croatian or Slovene. As for ї, "ї" was the original graphical form of the letter "і". The two dots were changed to one sometime in the early 19th century, but were retained in some languages like Rusyn. The two-dot version was later re-introduced in Ukrainian to represent "ji", and Ukrainian-influenced Carpatho-Rusyn seems to have adopted that convention. The document you showed me seems to use ї when derived from ѣ, but і elsewhere, but that is my first time hearing of such a convention. --WikiTiki89 03:07, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Re: if you've never heard of Serbo-Croatian or Slovene. We're are talking about transliteration, not pronunciation? Cyrillic "і" corresponds to Roman "i" in Serbo-Croatian and Slovene uses Roman letters. "Ji" is also common in Czech. I think Rusyn still lacks wide acceptance as a language, resources are very poor and may be opinionated or influenced by some other languages and not really standardised. I'm not planning a lot of work with Rusyn and I think the current schema will do. --Anatoli ^{(обсудить}/^вклад) 03:18, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm not talking about pronunciation of Serbo-Croatian (for the sake of simplicity, forget about Slovene), but their spelling conventions, which are essentially transliterations of the Cyrillic orthographies. Rusyn does have wide acceptance as a language. As far as I know, it's only some people in Ukraine that disagree. As far as I'm concerned, if Ukrainian is not a dialect of Russian, then Rusyn is not a dialect of Ukrainian. Either way, as far as Wiktionary is concerned, it's a separate language that deserves as much thought to be put into its transliteration scheme. Your document has however convinced me that we cannot transliterate "ї" and "і" the same way, which precludes my alternative scheme, so we are stuck with the one we have now, which we both agree with. --WikiTiki89 03:35, 4 January 2014 (UTC)