hyphenation question

[Hugh Olmsted]

Dear colleagues,

Here's a kind of conservative set of partially ordered rules which   
should mostly  work.
1. Any transliterated combination should be treated  as its Russian  
counterpart.  Thus, for example,
any multi-consonant  transliterated sequence representing a single   
Russian letter shouldn't be broken up (e.g. shch, ts, kh, ia, iu, in  
the simplified-LC system).
2. It's preferable not to leave a single letter alone at the end or  
beginning of a line.
3. Otherwise, it's safe to divide between two vowels (a, e, i, o, u  
y  -- e.g., mo-ego, razdelia-emym)
4. It's generally safe to divide  after a vowel followed by a single  
consonant (including those described in no. 1,  above -- e.g.,  Po-po- 
va, Ti-kho-mi-ro-va, ovo-shchi)
5. It's generally safe to break at the boundary between prefix and  
root (raz-deliaemym,  is-pravit', is-tratit').
6. Otherwise, certain consonant combinations should preferably not be  
split up (generally those allowed in syllable-initial position, and  
frequently with a resulting whiff of morphological conditioning,   
such that suffixes like -sk+ and -stv+ stay together): e.g.,  tv,  
stv, tr, str, dr, zdr, dv, sk, or any consonant plus l or r or iu /  
ia (= ju, ja).  This preference, it's true,  has been being relaxed  
in more recent times.
7. Otherwise  it's okay to divide between two consonants (after a  
soft sign, if one be present -- pol-nyi, vol'-nyi), preferable not  
to  break before the two consonants.

All of this yields among other things the following results for the  
list cited (slightly at variance with some of the discussion so far):
chuv-stvi-tel'-no / Go-du-nov / po-pri-shche / Po-pri-shchin / ob- 
shche-stvo / mno-go-chi-slen-naia.

Note that the "phonetic effect" of the weakening / disappearing -v-  
is not traditionally taken as  relevant.  The Russian word division  
rules, unlike their English counterparts, have traditionally been  
taken as a graphic system only.

Hugh Olmsted


On Jul 17, 2006, at 9:34 PM, Anne Lounsbery wrote:

> Hello Everyone,
>
> Can someone please tell me the rule(s) governing where to hyphenate  
> (for
> line breaks in a book) transliterated Russian words?  Specifically  
> I'd like
> to know where it's permissible (and where it's not permissible) to  
> hyphenate
> the following:
>
> chuvstvitel'no
>
> Godunov
>
> poprishche
>
> Poprishchin
>
> obshchestvo
>
> mnogochislennaia
>
>
> Thank you!
>
> --A.L.
>
>
> Anne Lounsbery
> Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Study
> Department of Russian and Slavic Studies
> New York University
> 19 University Place, 2nd floor
> New York, NY 10003
>
> (212) 998-8674
>
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