Il giorno 25 ottobre 2021, alle ore 16:58, Igor Melnyk via tz <tz@iana.org> ha scritto:
But Ukraine has the Ukrainian language and Kiev is in russian language. The correct name of the capital city of Ukraine is Kyiv.
Kiev is English language, as every other name in the db, not russian. It is only a coincidence that the English name is more similar to russian than to Ukrainian.
On 10/25/21 09:04, Pierpaolo Bernardi via tz wrote:
It is only a coincidence that the English name is more similar to russian than to Ukrainian.
I doubt whether it's entirely coincidence, as the English-language spelling for the city was all over the map (so to speak) long ago, with spellings like Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, and Kiiow. In the 19th century the city was spelled "Kieff" as often as "Kiev" in English-language text, and surely this was because English speakers most often heard about the city from Russian speakers. You can see a similar effect in "Prague", the English-language name for the capital of the Czech Republic. English-speakers got that spelling from the French, and formerly pronounced it to rhyme with "vague" (a rhyme that still works in French, although most English-speakers would disagree nowadays).
Here are the results of a Google ngrams search for frequencies of the various spellings between 1700 and 1940: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Kiev%2CKyiv%2CKiou%2CKiow%2CKi... @dashdashado On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 1:49 PM Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
On 10/25/21 09:04, Pierpaolo Bernardi via tz wrote:
It is only a coincidence that the English name is more similar to russian than to Ukrainian.
I doubt whether it's entirely coincidence, as the English-language spelling for the city was all over the map (so to speak) long ago, with spellings like Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, and Kiiow. In the 19th century the city was spelled "Kieff" as often as "Kiev" in English-language text, and surely this was because English speakers most often heard about the city from Russian speakers.
You can see a similar effect in "Prague", the English-language name for the capital of the Czech Republic. English-speakers got that spelling from the French, and formerly pronounced it to rhyme with "vague" (a rhyme that still works in French, although most English-speakers would disagree nowadays).
On Oct 25, 2021, at 11:59:10, Arthur David Olson via tz wrote:
Here are the results of a Google ngrams search for frequencies of the various spellings between 1700 and 1940:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Kiev%2CKyiv%2CKiou%2CKiow%2CKi...
But none of them rise above 0.0000700%?! Where is the mode? Interesting. I'll need to look up how to pose such a query. Thanks, gil
On 25 Oct 2021, at 19:46, Paul Gilmartin via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
On Oct 25, 2021, at 11:59:10, Arthur David Olson via tz wrote:
Here are the results of a Google ngrams search for frequencies of the various spellings between 1700 and 1940:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Kiev%2CKyiv%2CKiou%2CKiow%2CKi...
But none of them rise above 0.0000700%?! Where is the mode?
Interesting. I'll need to look up how to pose such a query.
Just to add to the mix, I noticed the other day that the BBC have adopted “Kyiv” and indeed googling for “site:bbc.co.uk kyiv” produces many pages. Most interesting is that the BBC weather pages direct a search for “Kiev” to a page with “Kyiv” at the top. One of the many previous discussions did say that when “Kyiv” is the common English spelling, the tz database should change to prefer that spelling. Anecdotally, I don’t think we’ve reached that point yet but perhaps we’re getting closer (but “Kiev” needs to be kept for compatibility for a good long while).
Thanks, gil
There has been a pretty dramatic shift in ngram frequency between 1990 and 2019 (the most recent data in that corpus), with usage of Kiev falling off dramatically, and usage of of Kyiv rising steadily. Given recent events, and particularly a shift in official style guides of many prominent English language publications, I would expect that trend has accelerated in more recent data. On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 10:59 Arthur David Olson via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
Here are the results of a Google ngrams search for frequencies of the various spellings between 1700 and 1940:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Kiev%2CKyiv%2CKiou%2CKiow%2CKi...
@dashdashado
On Mon, Oct 25, 2021 at 1:49 PM Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
On 10/25/21 09:04, Pierpaolo Bernardi via tz wrote:
It is only a coincidence that the English name is more similar to russian than to Ukrainian.
I doubt whether it's entirely coincidence, as the English-language spelling for the city was all over the map (so to speak) long ago, with spellings like Kiou, Kiow, Kiew, and Kiiow. In the 19th century the city was spelled "Kieff" as often as "Kiev" in English-language text, and surely this was because English speakers most often heard about the city from Russian speakers.
You can see a similar effect in "Prague", the English-language name for the capital of the Czech Republic. English-speakers got that spelling from the French, and formerly pronounced it to rhyme with "vague" (a rhyme that still works in French, although most English-speakers would disagree nowadays).
-- Scott Atwood
participants (6)
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Arthur David Olson -
John Haxby -
Paul Eggert -
Paul Gilmartin -
Pierpaolo Bernardi -
Scott Atwood