Transcribing foreign names

Lesson opening

This is the first part of the lesson. The rest, the exercises and the reviews are in the app.

How Serbian writes foreign names

In the Cyrillic lessons you may already have tripped over a strange-looking spelling: Њујорк for New York. Behind it is the principle by which Serbian writes every foreign name: Shakespeare’s, Washington’s, and your own.

You already know the principle. It is the rule linked with Vuk Karadžić and usually put as piši kao što govoriš (“write as you speak”). Serbian applies it to foreign names too: they are written not as in the source language, but as they sound, in Serbian letters.

Western names: write what you hear

Western names are remade most boldly, so that anyone can read them by Serbian rules:

Njujork keeps no trace of English spelling: it is the sound “new-york” written the Serbian way, with j for the y-sound of yes. Where English spends two letters on one sound, Serbian has one: sh becomes š, ch as in church becomes č, and the j-sound, however English spells it, becomes dž: Džordž, Džon (John), Majkl Džekson (Michael Jackson). The w, which Serbian lacks, becomes v. A double letter is one sound, so one letter, and vowels follow the sound too: Harry Potter is Hari Poter, Brad Pitt is Bred Pit, Hollywood is Holivud.

A few famous names settled long ago in a form a strict ear would not produce. Americans say Chicago with a sh-sound, yet Serbian writes and says Čikago, with the ch of church; and Shakespeare has settled as Šekspir, with a plain e. Learn names like these as words. Newton, on the other hand, goes strictly by sound: Njutn, with no vowel between t and n, because none is heard. The whole rule fits in one line:

Ime pišemo kako se čuje. We write a name the way it sounds.

Names from Cyrillic: where the “-sky” goes

Names from another Cyrillic alphabet are the easiest: the letters match almost one to one, and the name is carried over letter by letter, not by its pronunciation. You know the famous ones in their English spellings, which are transcriptions too:

Cheat sheet

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How Serbian writes foreign names

The motto piši kao što govoriš covers foreign names too: they are written by sound, in Serbian letters. This is adapted spelling (prilagođeno pisanje, also transkripcija). By the Pravopis, Cyrillic uses only the adapted form (on first mention the original may follow in brackets: Шекспир (Shakespeare)); Latin script also allows the original, but newspapers usually write by sound.

Western names

Names from Cyrillic: letter by letter

Your name

Established names: left alone

Brands: the street’s amendment