Spreadsheet of English-Hebrew transliterations of siddurim, machzorim, tehillim, and benchers. Includes denomination/egal/non-egal, nusach, pronunciation, and other notes.

so just. a word from me.

you cannot put "kyryll" and "chudomirovich" in one sentence like. what. first of all, the name "kyryll" doesn't even exist. it's either A. Kyrylo, which is an english transliteration of the ukrainian name Кирило, or B. Kirill, which is an english transliteration of the russian name Кирилл. in official ukrainian transliteration, ukrainian letter И is transliterated as Y because it makes an according sound, while russian И makes an english I (i) sound. basically, this does not make any sense if they'd tried making it a russian way—it ended up sounding like a ukrainian name and like a nonexistent name. comedic imo. or it is an attempt at mocking ukrainian language because i genuinely cant put any more explanation to this.

second, "chudomirovich" is a patronymic (it's like a middle name, but it's always derived from the father's name) and is obviously taken from russian with rules that i mentioned previously and like. no?? it does not work like that. you don't put two names from two different languages after letting the playes assume for years that a region was based on only russia. you dont put two names from two different nations currently at war after letting half the characters from the said region have only russia-related names and symbolism.

[verse 1]

なあ今どれくらい？ 「5000マイル過ぎたくらい」 灰皿にしたスムージー 椅子に溢れたチェダーチーズ なあどこへ行きたい？ 「あと少しだけ走りたい」 バックシートに空元気 気付けにしがむペパーミント

naa imad're* k'rai? "gosen mairu s'gita k'rai" haiza ra nishi ta sumuujii is'ni koboreta chedaa chiiz' naa dokoe ik'tai? "ato s_kosh'dake'ashiritai" bakk_shiito nika ra genki kits'ke nishigamu** pepaamint'

[pre-chorus]

思えばあの時はどうかしていて 笑える方を取って 目的地を(don't stop) 遥か通り過ぎた (don't stop, look) 思いがけやしない出会いの先に トラウマのような夢を ただ見たくて走っていた 「進め 先へ 進め」 何処へ？

omoeba an'tok'wa douka sh'teite waraeru hou wototte mok'te kichiwo (don't stop) ha r_ka to oris'gita (don't stop, look) omoiga k'yash'nai deaino sak'ni torauma no youna yumewo tadami tak'te hashi tteita 'susume sakie susume' doko e?

tagging @robin-teddybear 'cause i know you enjoy these too.

and a loose translation, because i find this song hilarious.

hey, how much farther now? 'about 5000 miles to go.' my smoothie has become an ashtray. there's cheddar cheese spilled all over the seats. come on, where are you trying to go? 'i just wanna go a little farther.' i'm in the backseat, faking a smile gnashing peppermint gum to settle my stomach.

thinking back on it, i knew you were insane, but going along with you was the funniest option. we've lost (don't stop) sight of civilization out here (don't stop, look) beyond [this] meeting i couldn't have foreseen only visions of trauma running through my head 'onward, to our destination! onward!!' where, you fool?!

I recently learned about the Cyrillic transliteration system for transliterating Chinese to Cyrillic based languages, such as Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other Cyrillic-based languages. The Palladius system (Cистема Палла́дия) was created by Russian Orthodox monk and sinologist Palladius Kafarov in the 19th Century.

A transilteration system is a way of converting text from one writing system into another, like the pinyin in Chinese or romaji in Japanese. In this case its Chinese to a cyrillic based language, such as Russian. This however does not mean that russian speakers learn Chinese using the Palladius system, they actually also use the pinyin tones in the textbooks.

An interesting fact is that this system does not have tones in transliteration. Zhōngguó would be Чжунго, which as you can see doesn't have the tones represented. Instead, it's a context based system, which relies on the context to help determine the meaning. Some may be easy e.g. Шанхай for Shanghai or Пекин for Beijing, but some other words may be a bit more tricky.

This system also does not use "hui" for 会 and other words that sound similar, and instead uses хуэй, which sounds kind of like who-ey, because the russian pronunciation of "hui" is not a very polite word.

Here's how the system works down below:

Why, when languages are transliterated into English, do people use transliterations that don't make sense in English?

In the context of Thai, this comes up for me with the hard "T" or "P" sound being spelled with a "Th" or "Ph"

But I first thought of it way back when I got involved in anime fandom, and people transliterate long vowels in Japanese to English with double vowels:

"Aa" instead of Ā (to indicate the acknowledgement noise/yes)

"Iie" instead of īe or, idk, eeay

"zanpakutoo" instead of, idk, zanpakutō or zanpakutoe

I ask this because (for the Thai example) I tended to assume that, for instance, Phongsakorn was pronounced "Fongsakorn", like with the "F" in "Fog", rather than "Pongsakorn", like with the "P" in "Pong"

And "Theerakit" was pronounced "Theerakit" like with the Th in "These", rather than "Teerakit", like with the "T" in "Tea"

And, for Japanese, English doesn't really do long vowels very much, so I can see that being harder to transliterate properly, but the way it's transliterated still feels like it lends itself to mispronunciation? Because if the transliteration is for native English speakers:

"aa" looks like i should hold the short English A vowel sound, not like I should pronounce it something a longer version of the first o in "octopus"

"ee" looks like I should be prouncing it like the ee in "eeek", not like a longer version of the first e in "nether"

"ii" isn't going to read like the eee in "eeek", it reads like the sarcastically long "i" in "iiiiii don't know what to tell you"

"oo" is going to read like the oo in "oooo it's a ghost" rather than 'hey you should hold this vowel for another beat'

"ou" looks like, variously, almost what it's meant to look like ("arigatou" actually does parse as an English long O vowel sound, although it still doesn't parse as a sustained vowel sound)

OR, "ou" looks like it should be pronounced like the "ou" in "dour" or "hour" ("Kaname Tousen" could go either way for me)

With Japanese, I can reason out the problems - there's really no good way to transliterate a long vowels without using the diacritics, but those take extra effort to type, and most people didn't know how to type them in [insert word processor of choice], so basically you had to learn a whole new spelling and grammar schema, and this was at least easy to pick up.

With Thai, it's a little less clear, because it seems like there's already a one-for-one transliteration of the sound you're going for, so why use a different combination of letters?