Transliteration help

[Andrij Hornjatkevyc]

At 11:15 AM 10/14/99 EST5EDT4,M4.1, you wrote:

>I have seen three versions of the transliteration.  Which is the
>preferable one?
>        1.  Veliky Novgorod (from a friend in Novgorod)
>        2.  Velikiy Novgorod (from the NY Times)
>        3.  Velikii Novgorod (from me)

The first version has ample precedents with Gorky, Nevsky Prospekt and
Grozny, but those are not very satisfactory from a linguistic standpoint.
The second is based on the US Board on Geographic Names (USBGN)
transliteration, while the third is based on the Library of Congress (LC)
system. Although the latter has become quite widespread in social science
circles, without the necessary diacritics from a linguistic standpoint it
is less than adequate or even practical. Since we are all acclimatised to
the spelling Yalta (the USBGN spelling, and doesn't the LC version Ialta
look strange?), I would suggest that Velikiy Novgorod be adopted.


Dr. Andrij Hornjatkevyc
CIUS                            MLCS
352 Athabasca Hall              200 Arts Building
University of Alberta           University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E8    Edmonton, AB T6G 2E6
phone (780) 492-3765            phone (780) 492-0733
fax (780) 492-4967              fax (780) 492-2715

NB: Our new area code is 780.