[mova] official Ukrainian-English transliteration table

[I Bell]

Posting on mova .... pls excuse the obvious statements that were 
intended for a different audience ...   Irena

>Good news re an official Ukrainian-English transliteration table.
>       http://life.pravda.com.ua/surprising/4b66e4e1d5c14/view_print/
>
>Interesting that the table is referred to as just 'latynizatsiia' 
>because the 'latinized' result is different, depending on whether 
>you are transliterating for an English, or French, or German, or 
>Polish audience.  For example, a 'j' for Germans or Poles would be 
>quite a different sound than for the French or English.  And this 
>table is obviously geared to the English-speaking world.
>(Most names to date were transliterated according to French 
>requirements, as can be seen from most Ukrainians' passports, e.g. 
>Oukrainka, Tchornyi etc.. because French is/was considered the 
>language of diplomacy. )
>
>Difference between transliteration and transcription.
>         The beauty of Ukrainian is that the pronunciation of every 
> letter is constant, and therefore there is no problem in doing a 
> Ukrainian-to-other-language letter-by-letter transliteration.
>In contrast, English to Ukrainian cannot be transliterated, but 
>rather must be transcribed, i.e. the sounds must be interpreted, 
>which means there is no consistency in the results - transliteration 
>is impossible, as can be seen with words like though, rough, through 
>etc. all with the same letters, and all pronounced differently.
>
>The Library of Congress (LC) transliteration, which is used 
>bibliographically throughout the English-speaking world, is 
>marvellous - for bibliographic purposes because it allows for 
>consistency.  The Simplified LC system drops the diacritics which 
>distinguish several letters from each other, but all else remains 
>the same. So the simplified LC system does differ from the current 
>Official Ukrainian transliteration.
>
>For everyday purposes, I think some concession to practical  usage 
>is welcome.  So I'm pleased to see the Official Table:
>  Y at the beginning of words, e.g. Yushchenko instead of the LC   IUshchenko.
>  Zgh is very awkward, but I can see why they did it - 'zh' is a 
> problem as it refers to a single letter, but also to two separate 
> letters one after the other. So this was an attempt to solve that problem.
>
>At least we now have an accepted version that does not go through 
>Russian for its pronunciation, as per the letter 'h'.
>
>And as for English-to-Ukrainian - perhaps we'll be able to get rid 
>of "khelo, khow are you ?", just because Russian has no 'h' ! 
>Perhaps we'll be able to get rid of khokey, too !
>
>                                 Irena
>