[mova] Harper or KHarper ?!

[K&I Bell]

Hello Myroslava -
         I hope there is something that can be nipped in the bud via 
E-Poshta and the Ukrainian media - I have already seen prime-minister-elect 
Stephen Harper's name written in Ukrainian as KHarper  instead of Harper 
!  ('X' sorry, I don't have cyrillic script in my e-mail)
         As should be known, the Ukr language has an 'H' - so Harper should 
be used rather than KHarper. In Russian, there is no 'H', and there the 
'KH' sound is probably closest. But the actual pronunciation of the English 
'H', and Harper's name, is much much closer to the Ukr 'H' than to 
'KH'.  In Ukraine it now seems to be accepted that transcription and 
transliteration should go directly between two languages and not through a 
third language (in this case, Russian), as had unfortunately been done in 
the years of the Soviet Union.  Going from English through Russian to 
Ukrainian created the unintelligible 'KHello' pronunciation instead of 
Hello, Khokei instead of Hoki,  and 'KHow are you', instead of 'How are you'.
         Correct Ukrainian to English transliteration, however, has had 
more prominence lately, and so presumably we will no longer have references 
to Gnatishin instead of Hnatyshyn, and official Ukrainian gov't 
correspondence with 'vul. Grushevskogo' on letterheads.
                                                 Irena Bell ,   Ottawa



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