Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> Do svidaniya

I wonder if using English letters to write Russian phrases is acceptable practice for native Russians.

Does it sound respectful, neutral or like a mockery?

I don't mean in context of that post, which obviously is respectful, but in general. Especially when unicode is a thing and you could just write до свидания



Transliteration is extremely common in all Slavic speaking countries.

Flip note: the letters are not 'English', they are Latin (or Roman).


It's common practice amongst Russian/Ukrainian/Belorussian/Bulgarian speakers to write in Latin alphabet when Cyrillic is not available. I know for a fact that this is taught at school in Russia. Not sure if in other countries.


Native Russian speaker here. It is a perfectly acceptable and common practice when one wants to include Russian phrases in an otherwise non-Cyrillic text. "Doveryai no proveryai", etc.


What if he was Japanese? Would you prefer to see "Sayonara" or "左様なら"?


I know this is getting very off-topic, but Japanese speakers would probably not write 左様なら either - it's usually written in kana: さようなら.

Back on topic, as a speaker of another language using Cyrillic, for me romanisation is perfectly normal/expected in this context. I don't expect English speakers to have to learn a new alphabet just to be able to read the title of a blog post which is otherwise in English.


I don't know. I'm not Japanese. My question is about how people from original culture feel about latin transliterations.


While it is a little more difficult for us to read transliterated text, it is pretty common, and the only way to write something in Russian without a Cyrillic keyboard. So no worries, it is quite acceptable.


I think it depends :)

Back when texting (SMS) was still a big thing, you had a choice to either write in English letters and enjoy 140 char limit per message or write in Cyrillic and have it reduced to 70 chars. Many were doing the former. I assume many other countries with non-latin alphabet had the same.


That depends on the person who is listening/reading.


Are you Russian? How would you feel about it if you read it?


Feels respectful, but again even for me personally it would depend on other factors.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: