Pronunciation of Donetsk

[imwitty]

One more note regarding "Transnistria."
The transliteration in Russian should be "Dniestr", In Ukrainian it is
"Dniester" (in this case The American Heritage Dictionary follows Ukrainian
version (;'-)))
In Moldavian, which may be considered the dialect of Romanian/Rumanian, it
is "Nistru" with the stress on "i" pronounced as in "index", and "u"
pronounced as in "loop". BTW, Moldavia produced nice aged cognac with the
same name (;'-)))

As you may see on the map, some part of Dniestr/Dniester/Nistru river makes
the border between Ukraine and Moldavia. If you are interested in the
history of that region, check this link

*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transnistria
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Transnistria>.*

As for the "Transdniestria" term, I believe it is the recent invention (and
overkill) of somebody who tries to "ukrainize" *everything.*


*Sometimes it's just ridiculous.*



On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 7:43 AM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Pronunciation of Donetsk
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm going to second the schwa pronunciation of Donetsk, although it can
> occasionally be "colored" (rounded). But I agree that only the north of
> Russia would pronounce it with a full [o], as if every syllable is
> stressed. The same goes for Slavianks/Sloviansk. Although I doubt there is
> anyone at all who would pronounce it with an [o] (up North, they'd be using
> the Russian spelling).
>
> There are other city names that have commonly be used with their
> traditional Russian antecedents, such as Kiev, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk,
> Nikolaev, Lugansk, while Ukranian demand Kiyv, Dniepropetrovsk, Kharkiv,
> Mikolaiv, Luhansk (IIRC--going from memory and might be a touch off).
> Luhansk is one exception--I've seen a lot more reports with the "h" rather
> than "g". Dnepropetrovsk is another oddity--many news stories, particularly
> before the conflict, use "Dniepropetrovsk". Another name that has multiple
> interpretations is "Transnistria", which I've seen as "Transdnistria",
> "Transniestria", and several others.
>
> As for transliteration, there may be some confusion between the standard
> (LOC) set and AP guidelines that used to deviate (but I don't think they do
> now). The standard LOC uses "i" everywhere and "y" only for the vowel
> that's between the two "signs" in the alphabet. So "ia", "iu" are standard,
> "ya" and "yu" are not. There are some exceptions for traditional names that
> have been used for decades, like Yuzovka, Yuzhnyi, etc. But in LOC catalog
> (and other library materials) they will show up as "IUzovka" and
> ""IUzhnyi". Similarly, the German/French transliterations are still
> commonly used for older names of "famous" people (Tchaikovsky), while LOC
> would demand a different spelling (Chaikovskii). As I recall, the
> "ia"'/"iu" vowels demand a ligature in LOC and "e" (at end of alphabet) and
> terminal "i" (in names and adjectives) get a diacritic mark (dot and caret,
> respectively) to distinguish them from normal "e" (sixth letter) and "i"
> (the penultimate one in Chaikovskii, but not the other two). Much of this
> was demanded by use of typewriters and remained unchanged for electronic
> records.
>
> VS-)
>
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