Way to Russia Talk Lounge

DStuntz · Just Starting Joined: 13 Nov 2003 Posts: 4

I have recently started to study the Russian language, and have learned the Cryllic alphabet. Although my computer has the capability to type Russian letters, they are often distorted when sent by e-mail (to strange-looking symbols that look like neither English nor Russian letters). So, I was wondering if most Russians are familiar with the English alphabet even if they don't know the language. That is, if I use English letters to spell Russian words ("zdrastvuyte" for "hello", for example) would most Russians understand it? Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Malindor · Guest

This is probably due to the character set your email application is using. You must ensure your correspondence is encoded in the proper character set.

For example, you can make sure your website properly displays in all foreign languages by including the following tag "<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
content="text/html; charset="ISO-8859-5">" in the <HEAD> tag of your HTML documents. If you perform a quick search on the internet you can find hundreds of documents that can help with your email.

A very good document about this can be found here: http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/docs/lang/l3/l3.pdf

David M Rowell · Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2003 9:25 am Post subject:

The short answer to your question is 'yes'.

Russia people have to transliterate all the time (ie type Russian words with English letters), for the reason you mention. While there is no 100% standard method of transliteration, you'll be understood.

But, as the other poster mentioned, you're also better advised to fix your computer to increase the chance of being able to read Cyrillic.

Cheers and Good luck

36_CKOTUHOK · Frequent Guest Joined: 13 Jun 2004 Posts: 29

I think you are _wrong_. People from Estonia or Latvia have to transliterate because some of them hate russians so much that even cannot install russian fonts. Go to mail.ru and check, is there any reason to transliterate?
PS iso8859-5 is an unused charecter set, uft8 cr1251 and koi8r are used widely

wavetossed · WayToRussified Joined: 27 Jun 2004 Posts: 337

For email you need to use KOI8-R encoding. If you are using an email program then yu should be able to find instructions on the Internet for setting it up with Cyrillic.

The big problem is when you are using a web-based email service. Usually they will display the web pages using a Windows 1251 coding. All I can suggest here is to either change email services and use one from Russia like mail.ru where they convert the codes for you.

I use one email service to send email to my Russian girlfriend because it supports KOI8-R. But she replies to my standard Yahoo email account and then I change the coding in my browser every time I read one of her messages. It's a bit clunky but it works and I do all the hard work. She only has to remember to never reply to a message.

Alyona · Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 9:20 am Post subject:

Yes))
In Ru we use not only "cirillica", but also so called "latinica".

http://www.translit.ru/

dc197 · Frequent Guest Joined: 25 May 2004 Posts: 14

Hi
Yes, I saw people in Moscow using mobile phones, they typed their text-messages using Latin characters, "zdrastvutye" and the like, exactly as you say.

Some of the newer phones apparently have cyrillic chars though.

What surprised me though was the translitteration of the soft sounds.
Those "b" characters at the ends of weres were being added, which on older phones is time-consuming. To a non-native it seems a waste of time as I can hardly (if at all) hear the difference between " a word " and " a word' "

Regards
Daniel

AliceFromMoscow · WayToRussified Joined: 10 Jul 2004 Posts: 411