this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Volodymyr Zelenskiy declared his personal income for the first time since the outbreak of war with Russia, as part of his effort to increase transparency in his government.

In 2021, the year before Russia invaded Ukraine, Zelenskiy and his family reported income of 10.8 million hryvnia ($285,000), down 12 million hryvnia from the previous year, even as his income was boosted by the sale of $142,000 of government bonds, according to a statement on his website.

In 2022, the first year of the Russian invasion, the Zelenskiy family’s income fell further to 3.7 million hryvnia as he earned less income from renting real estate he owned because of the hostilities.

Even as the war allowed Ukrainian officials to withhold revealing sensitive personal information, Zelenskiy pushed to make them publicly declare assets. Increasing transparency and tackling graft are necessary for his country to ensure continued financial aid from its western allies, even as more than $100 billion of funds are held up due to political maneuvering inside US and EU.

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[–] nikt@lemmy.ca 48 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

His actual name is written in Cyrillic so the latinized versions are all just ways of trying to write a bunch of latin letters that roughly correspond to how his name is pronounced. That’s going to be quite different across languages that use the latin alphabet, even across different accents in the same language.

If you were to write a word like 🚽 the way it actually sounds, would it be toy-let (canadian), tuy-leht, (if you’re from parts of britain) tay-let (if you’re australian), tee-let (new zealand)….?

[–] wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago

Ey mate, shitters clogged

[–] noobdoomguy8658@feddit.de 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Very much this.

The suffix at the end of that last name is also causing some trouble:

  • In Ukrainian, it's Зеленський (note the "ь", a silent letter supposed to soften the consonant before itself)
  • In Russian, it's Зеленский (no "ь", the "н" is not soft)
  • In Polish, it's Zełenski (no "й" or anything similar, resulting in a different pronunciation again)

Now compare it to the last name of a Polish author: Сапковський (Ukrainian), Сапковский (Russian), Sapkowski (Polish).

Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles all have examples of last names like these, but the rules of our languages dictate that we handle them differently, even in terms of spelling and pronunciation; for people not speaking a Slavic language naturally, it understandably is a nightmare, as neither spelling is objectively the right one in terms of linguistics.

For now, it's probably best to either go with one of the following:

  • Zelensky or Zelenski, akin to Polish equivalent spelling of similar last names
  • Zelenskyy, as seems to be the more or less official or judicial spelling of this Ukrainian last name

As messy as it seems, I believe it's going to stay the same. Romanization of the Russian language is already an equally messy phenomenon despite multiple efforts to standardize the process, yet it only resulted in several ways of tackling the difficult cases, which is of very little help; Ukrainian seems to be an even more complicated case for romanization as it has some features that would either require intricate rules to create accurate spellings, or make greater use of diacritics.

[–] rikudou@lemmings.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And in Czech it would be Zelenský.

[–] noobdoomguy8658@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago

Diacritics: the bread and butter of the Slavic languages.

[–] x4740N@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As someone who is learning Japanese all languages should translate words phonetically

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

The problem is that English has few phonetic rules. It's a huge mess

[–] x4740N@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I'm Australian and we don't pronounce it "tay-let"

That sounds like someone trying to badly imitate Australian accents but having the pronunciation very wrong

I don't know how you managed to butcher it so badly

All my life I have pronounced it "toy-let" and I grew up in Australia

"tay-let" sounds like some weird portmanteau with "taylor" and "let"

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

If yer Scruffy, yuh pronounces it 'terlet.'

[–] ABCDE@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Same in the British attempt (which.. with a lot of different accents doesn't make much sense either).

[–] nikt@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

The dingo ate my baby!

[–] Aussieiuszko@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Is there not a standardized translation for Ukrainian Cyrillic to English? Every other language seems to manage it.

Also accents don't change your spelling. We all still spell it toilet.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

The best part about standardization is picking the one you want to use the most.

[–] 100_percent_a_bot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

It's a bit more difficult, since you have to substitute letters and pronunciations that don't really exist in the Latin alphabet e.g. Я>ya, Щ>shch. For English there is no one correct pronunciation of words so there are regional differences. The the way you would write these sounds drifts even further apart in other languages, in German I would write the two examples like: Я>ja, Щ>schtsch

Not sure if that helps but translating what essentially boils down to different sounds is a bit of a mess.

[–] NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago

If you were to write a word like 🚽

Average Kanji enjoyer.