u/terrortara

A faithful Russian romanisation.

A faithful Russian romanisation.

This is my attempt at a Russian romanisation, in which I tried to have a unique latin letter for every unique cyrillic letter. In theory, one can then simply perform the substitutions and have a latin system that works precisely the same as the cyrillic system. I'm taking this approach because I don't know enough about Russian to atttempt spelling reform.

https://preview.redd.it/v7jl8vi2mo0h1.png?width=838&format=png&auto=webp&s=bcb14896d3611a56037954b2fef06c3a08bdc63a

Sample text:

Все люди рождаются свободными и равными в своём достоинстве и правах. Они наделены разумом и совестью и должны поступать в отношении друг друга в духе братства.
Vse lúdi roždaútsá svobodnìmi i ravnìmi v svoóm dostoinstve i prabax. Oni nadelinì razumom i sovestjú i dolžnì postupatj v otnošenii drug druga v duxe bratstva.

Съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок да выпей чаю.
Swešj že eşó ètix mágkix francuzskix bulok da bìpey çaú.

Notes:

The vowels are organised into four categories: hard unmarked (a o u), hard marked (è ì), soft unmarked (e i), and soft marked (á ó ú).

The fricatives and affricates are organised into three categories: alveolar, retroflex, and palatal. The alveolars are the base forms, the retroflexes are formed by addition of a caron, and the palatals are formed by addition of a cedilla.

reddit.com
u/terrortara — 1 day ago

Changing standards of politeness.

I'm a British Gen Z, and I recently had an interaction with an older person where I asked if I could borrow something. They responded "what's the magic word", prompting me to respond "please". This made me realise that I almost never say the word "please", and I almost never hear anyone my age say it either.

To me, please actually sounds passive agressive or dismissive. When I hear someone use please to me, it sounds like they're saying an expectation they have of me, instead of a humble request. (Another association I have of "please" is horror movie victims, but I think that one might just be me.)

Instead, the politeness marker I invariably use is "could/can", as in "could you pass the...", "can I ask...".

Is this a pattern linguists have noticed in English, or am I just imagining it?

reddit.com
u/terrortara — 3 days ago

Why is it spelled "what" and not "hwat".

"What" derives from the Old English word "hwæt". This was how it was pronounced back then, but the "hw" sound has merged with "w" in most dialects. My question is, when did the spelling swap from "hw" to "wh", and why?

reddit.com
u/terrortara — 6 days ago