Talk:Russian phrasebook

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Still need to check my spelling and grammar on a few of the phrases. Am leaving the more complicated phrases till I can get home to my dictionary. My Russian is kind of rusty, this is great practice. (WT-en) Mudbrother 14:21, 16 Jun 2004 (EDT)

Sorry, haven't been able to work on this much lately. Work is really bad. Hopefully will be able to contribute again in a week or so. (WT-en) Mudbrother

Щ

The most common transliteration for this letter for English speakers is indeed shch, but it is not pronounced that way. It is not helpful to instruct native English speakers (such as myself) to pronounce it like harsh choice, because a native speaker attempting to do so will pronounce a sound quite unlike the Russian letter and will not be understood. As I "voiced" in an earlier edit summary, Щ is a relatively long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative. There is no affricate. No stop. It is a difficult letter to romanize—hence the "ch" in the romanization. That "ch" does not indicate that there is an affricate in the sound—that is a common mistake that native English speakers make when pronouncing romanized Russian names.

Furthermore, this is not a difficult letter for native English speakers to pronounce, it is merely a difficult letter to know how to pronounce. If native English speakers understand what it means for the letter to be a palatalized "sh," then they will be able to pronounce the letter well. If not, they will pronounce it like an English "sh" and in context they will be understood. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 22:41, 11 December 2007 (EST)

I think ш is similar to sh in shot and щ is sh in sheet. Shoe is a bad example, imho --144.92.110.139 21:05, 6 October 2009 (EDT)

Public domain.

Is the Wikivoyage Russian phrasebook in the public domain? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 71.253.103.29 (talk • contribs)

I regret to tell you that it is not. It is, as is all text on Wikivoyage, automatically licensed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 1.0. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 18:12, 14 March 2008 (EDT)

Pseudo-pronunciation

I went through and standardized all the phrase pronunciations today, which were all over the place. Few if any conformed to the Project:Pseudo-phoneticization guide, stresses were often placed on the wrong syllable, and vowel reduction was ignored.

I changed the "ы = i" transliteration/pronunciation guide to "ы = yh" because i and ы are very different sounds, and we should note this, even if non-Russian speakers will likely not be able to pronounce it. Y is the standard translation; yh is a better pseudo phoneticization to distinguish it from the "ee" sound that often follows consonants at the end of words in the English language.

I standardized all incidences of "ой" under vowel reduction (e.g., курицой) to "uy". That's not at all ideal, and I'm not sure if native English speakers will get that right. But while it is an easy noise to produce, it is not easy to convey in written form. Basically, the о reduces to schwa. The closest would be "uhy", but that would risk the pronunciation "uh-hee". --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 20:55, 5 April 2009 (EDT)

Belatedly, I'm also using a simple "sh" for all instances of щ. As per above, if we write shch, English native speakers will likely pronounce it incorrectly. --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:23, 5 February 2010 (EST)

I'm still not down with this whole pseudo-pronunciation thing (rather embarrassing since I've majored in a foreign language) but wouldn't a double ss (ssh) get the point across better? --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^talk 15:36, 5 February 2010 (EST)

I doubt the pseudo-phoneticization will make a lot of sense to non-native English speakers. But again, it's really not pronounced ssh—there's no s sound. It's just a matter of where the tip of your tongue is when you pronounce sh. I've tried to add a bit more guidance to the consonant section. Hopefully not too much, so as to be confusing! --(WT-en) Peter ^Talk 15:59, 5 February 2010 (EST)

Starnom discussion

I'm re-nominating this after a near miss in the slush pile. I have done the work suggested by PerryPlanet, ChubbyWimbus, and AHeneen, but didn't add anything about dialects per Gorilla Jones' suggestion—Russian is very regular, perhaps owing to the excellent and very disciplined Russian/Soviet system of primary education.

It would be nice to have a star phrasebook that other contributors could look to as an example. Does this one look ready to fill that role? --Peter ^Talk 23:41, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support. Nice comprehensive article. — Ravikiran (talk) 18:02, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I don't speak Russian but my colleagues that do tell me this is good. -- Alice^✉ 08:57, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
• Support. I'll add my vote of support since this nomination has been pretty quiet. I'd say the concerns brought up in the last nomination have been addressed. PerryPlanet (talk) 15:37, 4 April 2013 (UTC)
• I doubt an anonymous opinion would count here but this phrasebook needs some rework to match day-to-day realities. For example, noone ever measures beer in pints in Eastern Europe, and few people even know how nuch a pint is. 176.15.11.225 19:16, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Spotting the problems so they can be fixed is the main point of the nomination process, so go ahead and point out any other problems, If possible, suggest fixes, as that is even more useful. Cheers, • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 19:27, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I removed the pint bit. There's a phrasebook template that was used to start the article, so someone at some point translated that without considering whether it really belongs. If you spot anything else like that, please change it, or bring it up here. --Peter ^Talk 19:47, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

External links

Shouldn't the external links at the end of the article be removed? I ask here, because it wasn't brought up during the star nomination, so maybe there's a reason why these are included? Globe-trotter (talk) 13:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Huh, I could've sworn there was a discussion somewhere about keeping this section as an exception to the "get rid of all external links sections" initiative way back when. But the best I could find was Wikivoyage talk:Phrasebook article template#"Learning more" section, which is a clear consensus to remove them. So I've removed it! --Peter ^Talk 07:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Error

полька (PAUL-kah) - a female Polish

"Полька" means the Polka dance. "A female Polish" — "полячка".

Another good example — "мол" (breakwater); "моль" (moth, mole (unit)). --Midnight Gambler (talk) 13:22, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

If you see errors, please plunge forward and correct them. It won't take you more time than posting about them here, but it will be more helpful. Thanks a lot. Ikan Kekek (talk) 13:27, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Swear words

I say we shouldn't cover them in any phrasebook, but there's a budding edit war about covering the "most popular" one. What do you all think? Ikan Kekek (talk) 18:16, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Nu, anyone want to discuss this? Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree as well. No need to list swear words. A traveler won't need to use them. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 07:32, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

User:46.204.0.20, any comment? Ikan Kekek (talk) 23:00, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Probably won't respond. IPs can't be pinged. SHB2000 (talk | contribs | meta.wikimedia) 05:33, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

That's unfortunate. I hope they don't continue to edit war when I re-delete that stuff... Ikan Kekek (talk) 05:39, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd say we need not include swear words unless there is a very good travel-related reason to, but let's also ask our resident Russian speakers here. Any thoughts, Brateevsky and Wolverène? The dog2 (talk) 10:07, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I see the context. Nah, it's useless. This will encourage the use of such words although in most of situations they can be (and normally have to be) avoided in regular speech.
If your Russian friends use the profanities like 'blyad', it means that they as native speakers are able to assess the context of usage, the setting surronding them, to whom they're saying so... things which a foreign person may not assess properly sometimes.
Just simply doesn't sound nice when a foreigner tries to use Russian profanities after remembering phrases from memes or overheard them somewhere. Take a try to use phrases like 'suka blyad' (mentioned in the reference above) being with familiar Russians, and first it may cause tender emotions and sincere laughter, rather because of your accent than because of your 'special knowledge'. Subsequently if you will not stop, you'll be probably rudely mocked. --Wolverène (talk) 12:04, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello! I think this article isn't suitable for posting this information about Russian profanity (Russian mat). Firstly, as Wolverène rightly said, it is quite possible to speak without the Russian mat. And secondly, Russian mat is very diverse, and the same word in different situations can carry different information and can be translated in different ways. These "words" are very often difficult to translate. F.e. the word "ебать" (yebat') - it can be translated by 10 varians in English (not only "to fuck", but also "wow", "work (hard)"), ... . Because these "words" are mostly emotional rather than informative. Moreover, the number of the most frequently used abusive words is about 50-100 - so why are they all need to be in this article? The only thing, I think, that we can, - to give a link to an article in the English Wikipedia about the phenomenon, - to show that, indeed, Russian mate exists, but is extremely undesirable, etc. - without using the words themselves here. Brateevsky (talk) 17:33, 12 November 2021 (UTC)