RUSSIAN WORDS IN ENGLISH DRESS.

ripHE time has arrived for a great rapprochement between the British and Russian peoples. It is beyond question that one of the greatest barriers between the two peoplee has

been, and is still, the barrier of language—a stumbling-block heightened and rendered more formidable by the Russian alphabet. That alphabet, with its thirty-six characters, which are the modern remnant of the Slavonic alphabet as modified by the Monk Cyril, of Constantinople, in the ninth century,

admirably serves its purpose and achieves in Russian what

is practically a phonetic spelling. Any one who has studied and tried to understand English spelling realizes that tho obstacles to a rational phonetic spelling in our language are

the presence of such ambiguous letters as c, 8, and g, and the fact that we have only the five -vowel letters a, e, i, o, w to

represent something like a dozen vowel sounds. While wo have been taught that a consonant is so called because it is a letter that cannot be sounded except in conjunction with a vowel, we come to realize that there is not a single one of the vowel letters which can be interpreted by itself but that each must be considered in relation to the consonants or vowels that surround it. Thus while we call the first letter "ay," it rarely has that Hound when standing by itself, but generally requires the addition of an i, as in "aid," or an o following the consonant that it precedes, as in "late."

The Russian alphabet, on the contrary, Las an umple supply of letters for its vowel sounds, and the rules of spelling are simple and easily to be learned.

I have tried to discover reasons for the misleading trans- literation of Russian words which is current in English newspapers and books and which the war has brought into prominencs.

True, it may be difficult, owing to our ambiguous English methods of spelling, to represent some of the combinations

and successions of vowels in some Russian words, seeing that

we have often to employ two or even three letters to represent one vowel sound. But there is no difficulty whatever with

regard to the rendering of the Russian consonants in the Roman characters. It may be said that people who have lived in Russia and have mastered the language there ought to know how to transliterate it. Perhaps they ought, but a little study shows that often they do not : they have become so immersed in their Continental surroundings that they have forgotten some of their English, and have adopted the Continental way of transliterating Russian, to the utter confusion and mis- leading of their English readers.

The first reform of our spelling of Russian words is to abolish for ever the letters j and w. We owe their use to German or French transliterators. There is no j in the Russian alphabet and no so, and nothing corresponding to either of those two letters. The use of j is doubly misleading to English readers, since one is never certain whether it is intended to represent the sound of the German j as in "ja" (like the y in "yet ") or the French j of " jour."

The first three letters of the Russian alphabet are A, a (ab), B, 6 (b), B, n (v). It is the third letter, B, a, which is so falsely and foolishly for.English readers represented by to. There seems no reason why, for example, in transliterating the Russian genitive plural termination on we should not follow the Russian spelling as well as the Russian pronuncia- tion and make it "43v," instead of, as is sometimes seen, " of."

Where we can give the precise equivalent in a Roman letter for the Russian character surely we should do so. It is true

that the s (the Russian en at the end of a word is sounded more like f, but to turn the Russian genitive plural teriniva- tion into "off," as is sometimes done, is to go in for an

exaggerated phoneticization akin to the conventional figuring of French pronunciation which led Mr. Mangles to talk about " allouging and marshonging." The double/ suggests that all ,the stress of the word falls on the final syllable, -which is not the case. If there is little reason for " off " as representing " on," there is still less for " ow." To the ordinary English reader those two letters will always rhyme with "cow." Their use is the worst possible example of Teutonized transliteration of Russian.

The Russian alphabet contains a number of characters which have no single-letter equivalents in our own. These

are : (zb), LI, u (ts), LI, e (eh), III, m (sh), III uu (shch) among the consonants; and such soft vowels as le, is (ye) and 51, su (yah). There is no h in Russian. In spelling foreign names and words beginning with an h. the Russians use r, r (g) or X, x. The latter letter has the sound of eh, in the Scottish word "loch." Eh is usually employed to represent the Russian character X in transliterating into Roman characters, as in the name Kharbin, an important town on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

Next to the Russian v (a), Ott is the letter most constantly misrepresented in transliteration for English readers. To a Frenchman j, as in jour," is the natural equivalent for this character. The appropriate English equivalent, to my mind, is zh, since j, which is often employed to represent it, will always spell " jay" to the ordinary English reader, who is the person to be considered. A familiar example of a word in which xe occurs is " mouzliik," usually misrepresented by " rauj ik."

LI (ts), which as often as not in Russian words begins a syllable, has the sound of a clear t and a sharp s. The first and most familiar example that occurs to one is LIape (Tsar). " Czar " is an inefficient spelling, which does not rightly give the pronunciation of the word, about which there is no real difficulty: the sound is unusual, that is all. The Italians write leaps " Zar," since s in Italian has the sound of is. If there is no valid reason for " Czar," there is none at all for " Czaritsa," " Czaritza," or " Czarina." The first two forms are inexcusably foolish, since "cc" is given to represent u (ts) at the beginning of the word, and another combination (in one case exact and in the other inexact) for the same Russian character at the end of the word. Even an intelligent paper like the Westminster Gazette will report that the " Czar" and "Czarina" (or " Czneitna") have gone to " Tsarskoe Selo," the absurdity and inconsistency of which is demonstrated when it is observed that " Tsarskoe " is simply a possessive adjective derived from the word "Tsar."" " Czarina " is a Frenchified invention with nothing to commend it.

LI is the " oh " of "church." There is no reason why a t should be placed before the ch, except for French readers. The uninstructed French reader coming across the English word "church " would be sure to pronounce the word " shursh." The great Russian singer who has recently sprung into fame in Western Europe has his name rightly spelt on French concert announcements as " Chaliapine," ch rightly representing to the French the initial letter of the Russian name, III (shah), while the final e indicates that the termina- tion is not the nasal " in." The correct spelling of the singer's name for English readers is therefore " Shaliapin," or, better still, " Shalyapin," since the " ye" makes the Russian n one syllable, not two, as well as suggests the proper accent on the penultimate syllable.

111 is a combination of m (sh) and 'e (oh), making four letters necessary to transliterate the one Russian character. It takes seven letters—schtsch—to indicate this character in Roman lettering for German readers.

The soft vowel 'h represents the " ye " of the English word "yet." It occurs in Dniester, which the Germans spell "Dejestr," as they spell Niemen " Njemen." There are occasions when .h is pronounced "yo," but there is no need to indicate this permutation when it takes place. It is an exception which has a rational foundation. A similar instance of permutation of sound occurs in the name of the favourite of the great Empress Catherine, Potemkin. The rules of pronunciation make the e in this case to be sounded like "yo," and as the Russian o (which is, like the Italian o, " aw," rather than our round English o) becomes " " when unaccented, the name is pronounced " Paletyom-kin." Two other Russian vowels call for notice, for it is impossible to deal with all of them here. There are tee u's in Russian. First, ice which is the is of "useful," and secondly, y, the oo of "loot" and the on of the French " jour." There is no vowel corresponding to the u of " hut." To spell the name of the Russian legislative assembly "Duma " is twice misleading, since the word is pronounced neither " Dewma " nor "Dumma," but "Downie" or, if you like, " Dooms."

Probably the single u has been used for the Russian y in analogy with the spelling of " Soudan " as " Sudan " and " Hindoo " as " Hindu," but, for all that, I think it is generally misleading for English readers, though perfectly unmistakable for Continental readers. Most English people have been brought up to believe that the name of a great Russian river figuring largely in the war maps to-day is the same word as the name of a noxious domestic insect not to be mentioned in polite circles. The name is rightly expressed in the English spelling, however, as "Boug," as the French spell it., or, better still, "Boog." So, too, the familiar Russian weight met with in the oil and other markets should be spelt " poud " or "Food," not " pud." There seems no reason, too, why we should not follow the native spelling and call the Russian farthing a "kopek," instead of "copeck," since k is the initial and final letter in the Russian spelling and is found in our own alphabet as well. The Russians distinguish sharply between their s (o) and a (a), so that the latter character ought always to be represented by a. Thus the name of the Russian Foreign Minister should be spelt " Sazonov" in place of the many other variations.

It was the exasperating variety of the spelling of the plaoe- names on the Russo-German frontier which suggested this article, though, strictly speaking, what has been said above has nothing to do with these, because for the most part the places mentioned np to the present are in Poland. There are at least three ways of spelling Polish place-names. The first and right way is the Polish with its plentifully

besprinkled w's, se's, and ez's, and the cc termination; then there is the German rendering, which turns, for example, the Polish " Warszawa" (Varshilva) into " Warschan " ; and then there is the transliteration of the spelling in the Russian characters, which phoneticizes them for Russian readers. One or two papers keep fairly consistently to the Polish spelling, in which j and w have their right place. The larger number of newspapers achieve an incongruous mixture of the proper spelling according to the Polish and an attempt, generally unsuccessful, at phoneticization, sometimes, indeed, combining both in the same word. Which is absurd.

EDWARD MUSE.