Why is " Kyrgyzstan" spelled without any "i's'?

[raccoon]

That bothers me. It really does. I have to do a double-take and mentally translate the Y's to I's.

It's probably transliterated anyway, so why the Y's instead of the I's?

Somebody who's knowledgeable about translating/linguistics, have an idea?

[Jamastiene]

1. Isn't that one of those countries that believes in "an eye for an eye?"

They might have already poked them all out.

:P

Sorry, I couldn't resist the pun.

:hide:

[kentauros]

8. Good one

So, with no "I's" all they're left with are "why's" :P

[arcadian]

2. I left my heart in Kyrgyzstan.

On a serious note, just heard on NPR today, Kyrgyzstan is trying to kick U.S. bases out. :thumbsup:

[raccoon]

6. If I were the decider, I'd move the bases out if they changed the y's to i's. nt

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. you mean yf you were the decyder?

ryght?

[NewJeffCT]

3. they lacked the money to buy a vowel

so, tried to fudge their way into it with "y" instead.

[Deep13]

4. Y have no ydea. nt

[MissMillie]

5. it's a word that means "team"

and there is no "i" in "t-e-a-m"

:shrug:

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

7. Poor country, like Wales

can't afford vowels?

[BurtWorm]

10. In all syryousness...

There is probably a slight phonetic difference between the way those y's are pronounced and the way i's would be. When you transliterate Russian, for example, "i" stands for "ee" (the cyrillic "backwards N") and "y" stands for a sound called "yiri" in Russian, represented by something that looks almost like "bi" and that sounds like "ee" pronounced gutturally, toward the back of the throat. You have to hear it to recognize what a different sound it is from either the short or long English "i." I'm guessing the Y's in "Kyrgyzstan" probably sound more like the Russian yiri than they do the English or American (or Spanish or French, for that matter) "i."

[MineralMan]

12. GMTA

[BurtWorm]

13. Deed they do.

Zdrastvuyte! Na zdrovye!

[MineralMan]

14. Nichego!

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

15. ya ne znyio

neicheyvo

[BurtWorm]

16. chto eto?

eto russki yazyk?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

18. barely, took it 30

years ago in college

[BurtWorm]

21. I took one year in freshman year

but I've been reading it since I'm a little malchik. Family's from that part of the world, ponimaete?

[MineralMan]

19. See Below:

смотрите ниже!

[MineralMan]

17. Actually, the correct transliteration,

according to the current rules for transliterating Russian to English is as I wrote it: ничего == nichego.

I know this because I spend many long days typing Russian on an English language typewriter, since the place I worked was too damn cheap to by a Cyrillic ball for their Selectrics. I finally broke down and bought my own.

Current official transliteration is based on alphabetical equivalents, rather than phonetic equivalents, which makes for some pretty silly sounding Russian spoken by people reading from transliterated copy.

[MineralMan]

22. For more information on transliterating (romanizing) Russian,

see this wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Russian

Note that the BGN/PCGN standard is used by the US Government and military.

[MineralMan]

11. Kyrgyztan uses the Cyrillic alphabet,

which has two letters than might be transliterated with our letter "I". To prevent confusion, and to distinguish between those two letters, which are pronounced differently, one is represented by "I" and the other with "Y." Same think in transliteration of Russian.

This message brought to you by MineralMan, who was once fluent in Russian, but can barely scrape along these days.

[MineralMan]

20. Looking at the sub thread above, aren't you sorry you asked?