EEPORT OF THE UNITED STATES GEOGRAPHIC BOARD. 



27 



diacritics. Tlie expedient may be con- 

 sidered of reducing ttie diacritic mark 

 to an imderscoring line, which is easily 

 done by pen and is contained in ordi- 

 nary typewriters and would be repro- 

 duced in print by italicizing the letter. 

 This expedient, however, does not com- 

 mend itself as conveying efficient dis- 

 tinction, and it seems that the neces- 

 sity Mould better be admitted of using 

 a diacritic mark. 



No. 35 represents the Greek theta, 

 but has the sound of f, identical with 

 No. 22, which is the Greek phi and 

 which is being substituted for it by 

 Russian reformers. No. 35 is omitted 

 from the tables used by the State De- 

 partment, War Trade Board, and Rus- 

 sian Embassy, presumably because of 

 its being wholly superfluous in an al- 

 phabet containing No. 22 (f). In the 

 necessity, however, of providing a 

 transcription of every Russian charac- 

 ter, the choice appears to be open be- 

 tween ph. and th. Although the sound 

 suggests the former (ph) as being the 

 Latin form of the Greek letter convey- 

 ing that sound, ^nd the latter (th) is 

 the Latin form of the Greek letter con- 

 veying a different sound, yet the latter 

 seems preferable on the score of iden- 

 tity of origin and similarity of graphic 

 presentation, the pronunciation being 

 of secondary importance. If ph were 

 used the anomaly would be presented 

 of using for the thirty-fifth letter a 

 digraph which is the actual transla- 

 tion of the Greek letter adopted as the 

 twenty-second Russian character. The 

 initial letter of the Russian name 

 Theodore is the thirty-fifth, but is pro- 

 nounced f. It is therefore recom- 

 mended that No. 35 be transcribed 

 as th. 



No. 36 is seldom used and has been 

 discarded by many authorities. Re- 

 cent grammars count the Russian al- 

 phabet as of only 35 characters. No. 36 

 being the one dropped ; it is also ig- 

 nored in the tables used by the State 

 Department, War Trade Board, and 

 Russian embassy. It represents the 

 Greek upsilon, having a sound ap- 



proaching i and the German oe; as 

 stated by the War Department, " it 

 occurs mainly in certain ecclesiastical 

 works and most of these are also 

 found in good usage written with i." 

 It must be differentiated in writing 

 however, from No. 9 ; this has been 

 done in the Britisn Admiralty system 

 by transcribing it as oe, and this seems 

 to be the best solution, it being a dis- 

 tinctive representation and not differ- 

 ing greatly in sound from that usually 

 given to it. 



The transliteration system resulting 

 from the foregoing discussion is ex- 

 hibited in the appended Table I. 



In order to observe the actual appli- 

 cation of the system in practice, Table 

 II has been prepared containing a 

 number of place names as spelled in 

 Russian ; the transliteration by Table 

 I is given in column 2. Application of 

 the results of further consideration is 

 given in column 3 of the same table. 



Scrutiny of Table II reveals that, 

 while the development of the details 

 is logical, the system in its entirety 

 produces combinations of diphthongs so 

 awkward as to be repugnant. In- 

 stances of this may be observed in 

 several names containing the diph- 

 thongs oiy, eiy, aiy, uiy, yiiy, uiiy. 

 In some instances also doubt would 

 exist as to which two of three letters 

 form the digraph ; for example, iyu 

 could represent the letters transliter- 

 ated into iy and u or i and yu. 



Table I, therefore, must be amended ; 

 and it is manifest that, to accomplish 

 satisfactory amendment, recourse must 

 be had to the use of diacritics which, 

 however, should be restricted to char- 

 acters that can not be well distin- 

 guished in any other way. 



Having under consideration Table I 

 and the table used by the Library of 

 Congress, which exhibits full recourse 

 to diacritics, the following translitera- 

 tions proposed in Table I are given 

 further study : 



No. 10. The use of yi is objection- 

 able as leading to awkward combina- 



