Stigma wrote on 07/31/11 at 16:07:16:


Nice one, Stigma. I enjoyed this.

Zwischenzugzwang wrote on 07/31/11 at 14:23:11:


I thank you for this information, but the issue is one of practical transliteration, not exact phonetic transcription - a different matter entirely.

I and J are brothers, but Y is a different animal, with ties to U/Ü (see German, Greek...)
So I can live with both Iakovenko and Jacobenko, but certainly not Yakovenko.
Ian sounds different in English because of the tonic accent.
And I don't think FIDE has any system, except to ask ten-year-olds at their first tournament to write down their names.

@MNb: you can't go wrong with the absolute classics can you 

You are contradicting yourself a bit, Phil, fortunately to your own benefit.

Phil Adams wrote on 07/30/11 at 12:26:24:

First these reasons are not very good and second they might even not be true. You would be amazed when learning how many people do hardly, mis- or not understand English spelling, including native English-speaking countries like Guyana and Jamaica.

Phil Adams wrote on 07/30/11 at 12:26:24:

See? Now you are referring to the virtues of those other great languages. The simple fact is that the Y for Yakovenko etc. is understandable for about everybody in the world in about every language using Latin script. The J isn't. That should overrule any esthetical objection like mine.
(at least I admit that I'm a chauvinist; that makes it easier to set it aside)

@Uruk: when it comes to a harder-edged sound I prefer Led Zep I, II, In Rock, Machine Head and especially Made in Japan. Contain much more aggression too. (No, S_F, I'm not going to hijack this thread)

It still seems to me that my arguments and proposals are modest and reasonable. Some of the critical comments made above seem to be based on a careless reading of my words and an assumption that I am some sort of “language-chauvinist”.

My plea for standardization would apply only to the FIDE rating list, although one would hope that the main game databases would then follow suit. I do not see why that should be at all controversial.

There is no suggestion in anything I have written that national chess literature should adopt world-wide standardization. Far from it; “localized” usage can and probably should remain the norm.

However, I do bemoan (and this was my starting point) the increasing and unnecessary usage in the English-language chess media of misleading transliterations such as Karjakin, Zvjaginsev, Jakovenko and (God help us) Nepomniachtchi. When I questioned this with one chess publisher, the answer was that that is how they appear in the FIDE list. (By the way, my latest theory is that the FIDE list is based on Serbo-Croat usage, probably emanating originally from the way Chess Informant handles Cyrillic-Roman transcription.)

The issue that has caused the most controversy at the forum, and apparently roused some feelings of indignation, is my proposal that in problem areas such as Yakovenko / Jakovenko, the pragmatic choice would be for the FIDE list to adopt the English-language usage as standard. As a linguist, I am well aware of the great virtues of major languages such as Spanish, German and French, but realistically I still think that it would be most useful and practical for FIDE to err on the side of the English usage, since that is the most widely understood and least open to misunderstanding. 

The arguments that English is unphonetic, inconsistent and difficult for children to learn are powerful, but hardly relevant in this context. However regrettable some might find it, the fact is that English has become the “lingua franca” of the modern world, replacing Latin and French in that role.

In reality, we are only talking about a few controversial letters/sounds here. Let us consider (calmly please) for instance the J/Y/I issue:
J is pronounced completely differently in (e.g.) English, German, French and Spanish.  Even German usage is not completely consistent; one finds words like Jazz, Jeans, Jeep, Joker etc. used in German, all with a “dz “ sound. 
In contrast, the sound of Y (as in Yakovenko) is far more consistent across the major languages using the Roman alphabet, and even German, where Y is generally an “oo” sound,  uses words such as Yoga and Yucca, so its use and pronunciation in names such as Yakovenko will not be entirely unfamiliar to German chess fans.

If initial Y is really so offensive to Middle- and Eastern- European chessplayers, a compromise that would also further reduce ambiguity might be to use the letter I even in the initial position, giving us Iakovenko, Iakovich, etc. – a little strange-looking perhaps, but fairly unambiguous, and I expect that we would all soon get used it. (I would refer you to the standard used by the Russian Passport Service given in an earlier post.)

@Phil Adams:

I'm really sorry that your summary shows that the hispanoamerican joke above is more than a joke.

Quote:
TalJechin shows a way to react to this.

To take "English" for "International" shows big gaps.

Btw: Yussupov looks very ugly here. 

And English is one of the languages (like German too) putting children serious problems in the first years to alieniate the sound to written language. Under this objective point of view Quechua or Spanish would be much better languages as a base for transcriptions.

As everyone is probably well aware, the rules for this part of the forum are far more relaxed than other sections.

Having said that, if you're only commenting on music groups, perhaps you'd like to create a separate thread?

Phil, does your proposal mean that German magazines should no longer use the transcription for the German language, but the one for the English language? And even more, instead of installing an English transcription system, you wish to install an English transliteration system, which is usually only used in science, but not in simple journalistic productions (where easy readability is king)? And if that were not enough, instead of any of the ten existing English transliteration systems (three of which have the "ja" and not the "ya"), you are the one who picks the system to be used in the chess world, and by sheer coincidence you are picking the one called "British Standard"? (Btw: Wouldn't that damage your income as translator or proof-reader? The software would love it when everything is standardized.)