Almaty or Almaty? A linguist explains how to speak Russian correctly
In the Russian language, geographical names of foreign settlements must be regulated by fixed norms and rules.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports that Maria Rovinskaya, a linguist and member of the Spelling Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Moskovsky Komsomolets.
The publication noticed that the Russian media spell the names of Kazakh cities differently, and asked what is correct.
“In the Russian language, the names of toponyms, including foreign ones, are regulated by the sources and rules of the Russian language. There are dictionaries and other sources that tell us how to correctly transliterate and write the names of geographical objects,” says Rovinskaya.
“So far, the only correct spelling of the Kazakh city of Alma-Ata has been recorded in the Russian language - just like that, with a hyphen. Taldy-Kurgan is the same, with a hyphen, both parts are capitalized. The city of Shymkent is called that in Russian, and Shymkent is the Kazakh name of the city. Such a name is impossible according to the rules of the Russian language, as we know, “write zhi-shi with an “i,” adds the linguist.
She emphasizes that one should not “shatter the norm accepted in the Russian language” and is convinced that variability in names “occurs only outside the literary norm.”
Also, the expert does not believe that this issue should be unconditionally based on the practice of the consular departments of the Russian Federation.
“Consular departments do not establish the rules of the Russian language. We know from practice how differently the name of our capital, Moscow, sounds in different languages. And we do not oblige speakers of these languages to call the city as we are accustomed to. This is a normal practice when a toponym changes in a language in accordance with the laws of that language,” Rovinskaya summed up.
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