I always wondered... do you guys type your stuff by using special Cyrillic keyboards, or do you type in normal latin characters which are automatically transcoded by the computer into Cyrillic ones?

A Bulgarian friend of mine here at the university types his email messages in Bulgarian when communicating with other Bulgarians, but always uses the Latin alphabet. However, I see that a lot of posts here in SSC made by Ukrainians or Serbs are typed in Cyrillic.

So, what's the dealio? :cheers:

do you think that worth a thread?

What are you asking exactly?

The normal Latin characters on the keyboard have Cyrillic equivalents, and when you change over by pressing alt and shift, you type in Cyrillic. Although it's hard sometimes to find some letters that are on other symbols.

KM, he's asking if we use a translit or have little letters above the Latin alphabet on our keyboards.

Personally, I use a translit, as I type it automatically translates into Cyrillic.

The normal Latin characters on the keyboard have Cyrillic equivalents, and when you change over by pressing alt and shift, you type in Cyrillic. Although it's hard sometimes to find some letters that are on other symbols.

Oh OK. So you use an English keyboard, and let Windows do the transcoding.

What about keyboards sold in shops in Macedonia? What characters do those use, Latin or Cyrillic? And what do people usually buy?

KM, he's asking if we use a translit or have little letters above the Latin alphabet on our keyboards.
:yes:

Oh OK. So you use an English keyboard, and let Windows do the transcoding.

What about keyboards sold in shops in Macedonia? What characters do those use, Latin or Cyrillic? And what do people usually buy?

Yeah normal windows, microsoft whatever keyboard, and when you change over the letters are like you said 'transcoded'.
I'm not familiar with what characters are used on keyboards being sold in Macedonia, however all the internet cafes i've been to over there had normal latin letter keyboards.

KM, he's asking if we use a translit or have little letters above the Latin alphabet on our keyboards.



Thats what I thought he was asking, but then I saw him comparing us (Serbs & Ukrainians) with Bulgarians...so I don't know.

Well then, I myself never use cyrillic online...I would but never learned how. Thats me, lazy as always:lol:

laptops in Russia have both alphabets printed on the keyboard.

You're a smart guy, you shold have figured that out yourself. No need for a thread.

What about keyboards sold in shops in Macedonia? What characters do those use, Latin or Cyrillic? And what do people usually buy?


we don't have a special keyboard layout or a customized keyboard for our alphabet. We simply use the language support that comes with windows. Most letters in our alphabet have a corresponding one with the Latin one. The special characters would be (I'll just write the caps)

[ = Ш
] = Ѓ
Q = Љ
W = Њ
X = Џ
; = Ч
' = Ќ
\ = Ж
Y = Ѕ

That's 9 letters (out of 31) the rest have a corresponding letter in the Latin alphabet.

each letter represents another letter in Cyrillic im assuming, open up Microsoft word and try it out

I think he is asking when we write bulgarian, but with the latin alphabet

In this case, I can say zdravei choveche instead of здравей човече
Some people memorize letter positions. I personally don't, I instead use the onscreen keyboard from microsoft and just click letter by letter, when I need to write in cyrillic.
There is no official latin transcription, so it's up to person to person on how to write bulgarian in latin. Some people even like using other characters in lieu of cyrillic letters. Some people use the number 4 for ч or 6 for ш

Also, there are some programs out there, I lost the link but it was really cool, which automatically transcoded whatever you were typing in latin, into cyrillic. So that's helpful as well

I always wondered... do you guys type your stuff by using special Cyrillic keyboards:


http://www.dinovo.ru/files/dinovo-edge-rus.jpg

I press ctrl+shift which automatically transforms every button from latin to cyrrilic. For instance latin S becomes cyrrilic I. I just memorized where everything is, I don't even have the cyrrilic letters on the keyboard next to the latin ones.

P.S. there's no universal cyrrilic alphabet. Each language has it's own cyrrilic alphabet which is slightly different from all others. I have two different sets of cyrrilic configuartion programmed in, ukrainian and russian and two latin english and german.

in ukrainian section 99% of posts are done in cyrrilic, when we use latin to transliterate ukrainian it looks weird: dobroho dnya shanovna hromada, koly pochnetsa masove vbyvstvo kurok?

dobroho dnya shanovna hromada, koly pochnetsa masove vbyvstvo kurok?

А кращого придумати не зміг? :laugh:

Перше що вигадав :)

Перше що вигадав :)

I know how to read cyrilic but i dont understand most of the words....for example what you just wrote is "Pershe sho vigadav" no?

yes, except that ukrainian г is not latin g but in between g and h.

yes, except that ukrainian г is not latin g but in between g and h.

I have noticed that...I have a Ukranian friend here and everytime he talks to this other Ukranian i have noticed that G-h sound.

Only ukrainians, belarusians, slovakians and czechs have it. Some remote dialects of slovenian too. But we also have the regular hard G, however it's almost never used.

Hmm...as for Bulgaria:

There are 2 cyrillic keyboard layouts - BDS and Phonetic. BDS is kinda old state standart since the times of typewriters and so it is used mostly by older people and secretaries. The phonetic one is like a latin-to-cyrillic map, virtually most of the letters have their cyrillic equivalent, there are a few exceptions like:

"W" is В
"Y" is Ъ
"[" "]" are Ш / Щ
"J" is Й
"`" is Ч
"Q" is Я
"X" is Ь

Personally, I use phonetic one. Keyboards sold in Bulgaria have cyrillic symbols on them together with the latin ones, but they follow the BDS standart thus they are unusable for me.

Most operating systems support the cyrrilic layouts and fonts anyway.

As for Bulgarians typing mails in latin, IMO that's left from the older times when there were e-mail clients that did not support non-ASCII charsets.

There are two character encodings widely used to encode cyrillic letters - CP1251 (refered sometimes as windows-1251)...and the universal one, UTF8.

CP1251 is still used on many sites, though it's being replaced by UTF8.

The bad thing about UTF8 is that cyrillic letters are encoded with 2, not 1 bytes. Thus, imagine two forums with similar number of posts - the cyrillic one will take almost 2 times more disk space. But in UTF8 the worst is with Chinese and Japanese languages - they can take as much as 4 times more space hehe.

As for web-applications like forums, we have free javascript thingies that are embedded in the site's code and let you change your keymap with one mouse-click (even if your operating system does not support it) - an example is the forums at clubs.dir.bg

Pretty much things are the same in every other country that uses cyrillic alphabet.

P.S. writing in Bulgarian in latin in BG forums is often considered rude and such posts are even being deleted. We have a term for that, "шльокавица" which cannot be translated properly but it is a word, like a mix of Rakiya and alphabet and is used in negative sense. I personally hate the 4/6="ch/sh" people the most, ugh!

^^ You said it all :) Just to add that "шльокавица" is some type of serbian weak rakia. Don't know how we started calling the broken cyrrilic with that name though. Here is an article about "шльокавица" (http://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A8%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BE%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0)from the bulgarian wikipedia :lol:

I used online transliteration previously but then bought Cyrillic stickers during my last visit to Moscow. After I attached them to the standard Latin keyboard, it looks similar to what Gamma-Hamster posted at the previous page. Now I just need to press Shift-Alt to switch between the two.

In Serbian, we have 30 letters, and every letter is one voice. Linguists says its the most perfect alphabet on the world... As our language reformer from start of XIX century said:"Read as it is written, write as you speak!". In Serbia we use both alphabets, latin and cirilic, when i write i use mostly cirilic, but when i type, i use latin...

"Read as it is written, write as you speak!"

As i know you write the sound that we have letter for "Ъ", with the ' symbol or you even miss it. makes me wonder what are the rules in your language that tell how to pronounce the word "srpski" let's say as "сръпски" and not as "сърпски". I hope you understand what i am asking for .

As i know you write the sound that we have letter for "Ъ", with the ' symbol or you even miss it. makes me wonder what are the rules in your language that tell how to pronounce the word "srpski" let's say as "сръпски" and not as "сърпски". I hope you understand what i am asking for .

The syllabic r is red only in one way, so no confusion is possible. And their dark vowel is quasi non-existent, so it's not even a question for them ;). In the dialects where the dark vowel is more present, it's still the same rule but for those I am not sure.

As i know you write the sound that we have letter for "Ъ", with the ' symbol or you even miss it. makes me wonder what are the rules in your language that tell how to pronounce the word "srpski" let's say as "сръпски" and not as "сърпски". I hope you understand what i am asking for .
we write it српски and we say српски as well.

As for keyboards i think all of the keyboards are in latin. It is not hard to type Cyrillic. Both scripts latin and cyrillic have the same number of letters and same letters.

^^ ok, i just wanted to know how you make the difference between ср'пски and с'рпски ... but never mind ... dia gave me a good explanation .

Why did Serbia adopt the Latin alphabet to begin with?

There is no Ъ in Serbian btw. Първанов is written Прванов in Serbian and that's also how we pronounce it - Прванов.

Btw our Cyrillic keyboard is the same as latin. What I mean is that when you press A it will come out as A in both scripts while Russian and Ukrainian use a different layout so if you press A you get Ф (F).

There is no Ъ in Serbian btw. Първанов is written Прванов in Serbian and that's also how we pronounce it - Прванов.

... you don't understand me, do you ? I know there is no Ъ in serbian ... but if someone doesn't know the name of our president , when he sees Прванов written how he understands that it is pronounced Първанов and not Пръванов ? There must be some kind of a rule that i don't know about ...

... you don't understand me do you ? I know there is no Ъ in serbian ... but if someone doesn't know the name of our president , when he sees Прванов written how he understands that it is pronounced Първанов and not Пръванов ? There must be some kind of a rule that i don't know about ...

It's difficult for them to understand because every language gives a different understanding of these things- to put it simply. It's even more difficult than to us to understand how it's possible to not use the definite article and use complicated cases to say something simple.

I will continue in Bulgarian, as it's easier to understand why Serbian people have difficulties answering this particular question.

Turnovec, просто за тях фактът че р-то е сричкообразуващо е достатъчно. При нас се изисква гласна, като гласните са доста ясно изразени, за да има сричка. При тях- не. И това което ние осъзнаваме като изключително кратко ъ, което обуславя и ударението в думата, в тяхната глава (глава не е пежоративно разбира се), просто НЕ съществува. Аз и ти ще "чуем" кратко ъ в Српска, прст и т.н., а те- не. За тях това просто е времето траещо за преминаване на езика от един звук в друг. Защото ние сме обусловени от езика ни да го чуваме, да разбираме по този начин сричкообразуването, а те не. :) Няма да разберат, освен ако нямат представа за български, и няма как да ти отговорят.

За нас звученето на "Српска" е абсолютно неадекватно, но просто трябва да приемем, че трябва да се подредят съгласните възможно най-бързо една след друга- просто да "изключим" натуралното ни търсене на "ъ" в такива случаи. едит: Така също няма Първанов или Пръванов, то си е Прванов.

И аз постоянно питам Крък ли е или Кърк, никой не ебава за какво говоря и отговорът е.. Ами то си е.... "крк" :)

^^ Ясно :) Thank you , dia!

интересно как ли се пише пъдпъдък на српски ? пдпдк ? :nuts:

^^ I doubt there is pdpdk in Serbian...seems crazy!

^^ I doubt there is pdpdk in Serbian...seems crazy!

^^ I doubt too ... but imagine if there was a word like that. Crazy uh :nuts:

^^ I doubt too ... but imagine if there was a word like that. Crazy uh :nuts:

Impossible, only r AND, if I remember correctly, the l are syllabic :)

... you don't understand me, do you ? I know there is no Ъ in serbian ... but if someone doesn't know the name of our president , when he sees Прванов written how he understands that it is pronounced Първанов and not Пръванов ? There must be some kind of a rule that i don't know about ...

We omit ъ so whether it's Пръванов or Първанов we pronounce it as Прванов

^^ Ясно :) Thank you , dia!

интересно как ли се пише пъдпъдък на српски ? пдпдк ? :nuts:

If it was a last name I guess they would add something to make it more pronouncable like Падпадак but as in bird it's препелица ;) Sometimes they translate Първанов as Парванов (so ъ becomes а) but correct way to do it is not to include ъ at all.

^^ Thanks :cheers:

I remember when we had Жельо Желев for president , many foreigners had problems pronouncing his name. It was funny to hear some one calling him Зельо Зелев :lol: Same with one of our footballers in USA'94 - Цанко Цветанов ... they usualy called him Занко Зветанов :lol:

I doubt there is pdpdk in Serbian...seems crazy!
___________________________________________________________________

No,there is no such word in Serbian. However, we do have many words containing no vowels, such as: krst (cross), prst (finger), smrt (death).
As for the use of Latin alphabet, it's only natural as good chunk of the Serbs (also, later on, scientists, writers, and reformers-such as Vuk Karadzic) lived and gravitated toward West, so we have 2 official alphabets, Latin and Cyrillic. I think that's a very good thing (just like being a polyglot is better than speaking only one language), though I mainly use Latin alphabet myself.

slogotvorno R - it's the r taking place of a vowel when one is not present. so it's present in all those wors like krst, prst

BTW I've always wondered why do you write "срПска" but you call your country "СрБиjа". Why does B changes into P ?

BTW I've always wondered why do you write "срПска" but you call your country "СрБиjа". Why does B changes into P ?

It's called "гласовне промене" (alterations). This one is called "једначење по звучности". For an example врабац—врапца
http://sr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Једначење_сугласника_по_звучности

I see...does this happen only to B and P or there are others?

No there are others

У српском језику се сугласници према звучности деле на:

* безвучне сугласнике (п, т, к, с, ш, ћ, ч, ф, х, ц),
* звучне сугласнике (б, д, г, з, ж, ђ, џ).

Звучни су и сви сонанти, али они не учествују у овој гласовној промени.

but there are exceptions

* Једначење се никад не примењује на сугласничке групе дс и дш: одступити, подшишати.
* У некој мери ни сугласник ђ не једначи се испред с (као у примеру вођство), али овај сугласник се врло ретко налази у таквом положају па и не можемо говорити о системском правилу.
* На саставу сложеница код којих се осећа пауза између делова једначење се не примењује (како у писању тако у изговору): политбиро.
* Једначење се не врши уколико би се тиме добила два иста сугласника чијим би се даљим упрошћавањем дошло до неприхватљиве окрњености првог форманта: подтачка (не „поттачка“, нити „потачка“ јер би изгледало да је префикс по-), субполаран (не „супполаран“, нити „суполаран“ јер би изгледало да је префикс су-).
* У префиксима ад-, дис-, јурис-, транс- и пост- не долази до једначења: адхеренција, дисгресија, јурисдикција, трансгресија, постдипломац.
* У новијим туђицама врло често не долази до једначења: драгстор, нокдаун, брејкденс, гангстер.
* У страним властитим именима сугласници с, з, ш и ж по правилу се једначње, али ипак остају неизједначени када би њихово једначење повукло и једначење суседног сугласника: Потсдам, Питсбург (јер би једначење изазвало и претварање т у д, чиме би се добили неприхватљиви облици „Подздам“, „Пидзбург“).
* Остале сугласнике у несловенским именима властитим не треба једначити: Вашингтон, Редфорд, Тбилиси.

we write it српски and we say српски as well.

As for keyboards i think all of the keyboards are in latin. It is not hard to type Cyrillic. Both scripts latin and cyrillic have the same number of letters and same letters.

I highly doubt that you say "српски" ;) because saying "srpsk" is almost impossible without some vowels :) I'm pretty sure you say serpski

I highly doubt that you say "српски" ;) because saying "srpsk" is almost impossible without some vowels :) I'm pretty sure you say serpski

:rofl: nope serpski would be the name of the Serbian language in 19th century, Slavenoserbski (славяносербскій) to be precise. Nowadays it's srpski.

Btw Serbian is always pronounced the way it's written, no hidden voices, no difference.

Serbian isn't that bad

Polish on the other hand, to me, on paper, it looks like some african language

look at this:
Jego gra wprawiała kibiców w zachwyt i Brazylia wygrała mistrzostwa. W nagrodę za występ dostał od państwa nowy samochód. Po mistrzostwach, jako gwiazda Santosu zdobywał mistrzostwa stanu Sao Paolo. Na kolejnych Mistrzostwach Świata w Chille zagrał tylko w dwóch meczach, gdyż doznał kontuz

looks like I was typing letters at random :D

With Polish you just got to learn how to interpret their letters combination. SZ = SH, CZ = CH etc. then it's pretty easy, I can never find a ukrainian newspaper when I work (mostly drive a lot) in NY, so I buy a polish one and read that.

:rofl: nope serpski would be the name of the Serbian language in 19th century, Slavenoserbski (славяносербскій) to be precise. Nowadays it's srpski.

Btw Serbian is always pronounced the way it's written, no hidden voices, no difference.

I don't understand how can SRPSK be pronounced together, can you link me to it being pronounced in some audio or video file with sound? :)

Found this on wikipedia. A bit artificial but should give you an idea. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/RepublikaSrpska.ogg

sounds like he is saying сЫрпска / syrpska

I don't hear anything between S and R :dunno:

I do :crazy: maybe its because I'm a Chornobyl child

That guy sounds like he stresses every voice. In reality it should be a bit more natural.

You can hear srpska pronounced by several people in this video
e45MxPmrC_o

I still hear syrpski

P.S. wow, serbian sounds very "close", no doubt our ancestors spoke a single language, I understand so much and this is the first time I hear serbian. It would probably take no more than a couple of months to understand it at 85% level.

^^it is Srpska, it is not that hard to pronounce it

I can't say srpska just as I can't say mngdma or gbmgba

^^ That English translator guy didn't have a really good pronunciation and it was easier for me to just listen to what they were saying in Serbian :) And it was really nice to see serbians and bulgarians communicating peacefully :) Someone would get the impression that we've become modern people :nuts::lol:

As to the question about how we write in cyrillic. Personally, I use the "old" layout and most of the keyboards sold in Bulgaria have the common latin layout of letters along with the layout I use, which is shown with red letters and most computers recognise it just as Bulgarian, but my father uses the Phonetic alphabet layout,which is Bulgarian Phonetic. In our case the older person uses the "modern" layout and I use the "old" one :lol: I think that most people learned to use the Phonetic, because at first there were no cyrillic characters on the keyboard and it was easier just to know that pressing the latin T will result in a cyrillic T , K into K and so on, you just had to memorize the positions of a very small amount of characters like Ш,Щ,Ь,Я..... And younger people use that one, because they only use cyrillic when writing in a forum , otherwise they use the stupid 4 and 6 style of writing, where Q equals Я in all chat programs. In Skype I am the only one among my friends that bothers using the cyrillic alphabet, which I think is a very sad trend.

With Polish you just got to learn how to interpret their letters combination. SZ = SH, CZ = CH etc. then it's pretty easy, I can never find a ukrainian newspaper when I work (mostly drive a lot) in NY, so I buy a polish one and read that.

Can you give me a link to a site explaining how you should read polish characters, because as 3tmk said, they really do look like random typing. :cheers:

Stas if you are looking for a more pro answer you can ask students of Ukrainian language at their forum. They are more into linguistic stuff than me so they can explain why you hear syrpska and we don't.
http://forum.fil.bg.ac.yu/index.php?showforum=20
(needs registering)

I always wondered... do you guys type your stuff by using special Cyrillic keyboards, or do you type in normal latin characters which are automatically transcoded by the computer into Cyrillic ones?

A Bulgarian friend of mine here at the university types his email messages in Bulgarian when communicating with other Bulgarians, but always uses the Latin alphabet. However, I see that a lot of posts here in SSC made by Ukrainians or Serbs are typed in Cyrillic.

So, what's the dealio? :cheers:


i have a few cyrillic keyboards but i also use a converter.. depends where i am

Windows has cyrillic support, so you just need to set it up in CntrlPnl...

After that you don't need some "special" keyboard... Any will work fine.

I don't hear anything between S and R :dunno:

If it's just sr, then you have srypska. I personally hear syrpska. It's impossible to pronounce three consonants in a row without having a silent letter or a vowel in there somewhere.

It's like Krk, the island in Croatia. You say it as "Kryk" I'm sure, cause there's no other way to pronounce it. Maybe it's a northern vs. southern slavic thing? :dunno: Serbian probably had more vowels at first but then dropped them for some reason, but even if you don't write the vowel in the word the sound is still there.

^^ it is not true Krk is pronounced as Krk not Kryk.
In serbian language R has a function of vowel it is something like semi-vowel.

it's just because Ukrainians, Russians, Poles etc. are not used to having a consonant "R" perform a function of a vowel, so we hear a sound "Y" in front of it.

You say it as "Kryk" I'm sure, cause there's no other way to pronounce it.

I think it's more like "Kyrk", though I'm not 100% sure. Serbians and Croatians say there is no vowel, but there is a short "y" sound. We also have that sound in Romanian - " î ". Also in Turkish it's the "I" without a dot.

yup , it is Kyrk ... just like Trstenik is actually pronounced as Trystenik.

yup , it is Kyrk ... just like Trstenik is actually pronounced as Trystenik.

There is nothing between 'K' and 'r' in Krk.
Have you actually heard a serb or croat pronounce that word?
Just because it seems improbable to you, does not mean its not true :cheers:

And also i am tired of yelling "Krk' out loud to see if i can hear anything! :bash:

^^ You just don't have that sound in your language, you pretty much associate it with another ones, anyway, it seems perfectly understandable to me.

yup , it is Kyrk ... just like Trstenik is actually pronounced as Trystenik.

:nuts: So Krk is Kyrk but Trst is Tryst? How do you know when the vowel sound is placed before the r and when it is after?

Like I said, it's probably just phonetics. There is a vowel sound there, because you can't pronounce it without one, but if the Serbian/Croatian r performs the function of both consonant and vowel, then that makes more sense than "there is no vowel sound." I was just curious how you would say it cause from a foreigner who has no knowledge of this, might now know whether to say if it's Syrbija, Serbija, Sorbija, etc.

^^ It's just S, R and B and it's pronounced SRBija. Just like there is H, R and V and its pronounced HRVatska Or G, R and Č in Grčka (Greece):

:lol: Guys no need to get excited. For Serbians there's NO vowel for the others- there IS, even if it's a short one. No matter how hard everyone tries, a Serbian will not hear a vowel and a non-Serbian will never hear only SRB in Srbija :D