# Bulgarian: Cyrillisation of Portuguese



## Psi-Lord

I believe this post will fall out a little bit of the usual scope of the forum, but it's language-related nonetheless, so here it goes.

Back when I studied Serbian, a Serbian friend of mine and I would often discuss the more proper Cyrillisation (and further re-Romanisation, given the nature of Serbian in Latin script) of Portuguese names, since I'd often mention Brazilian people and places when writing in Serbian. A couple of weeks ago he finally got to send me the section of his Serbian Orthography Manual that has rules for transcribing Portuguese names into Serbian, which was really neat.

So it got me thinking…

Would any of you people happen to know if there's an official (or at least recommended) equivalent for Bulgarian regarding Portuguese?

From the little I could find about Portuguese names transliterated into Bulgarian around the Web, the situation seems to be more or less chaotic (with a mix of orthography-based versus phonology-based transliterations – the later usually giving me an eye sore, although a Bulgarian might judge differently¹). But then, it's not because languages such as Serbian or Russian have proper rules that native speakers of such languages know about them or follow them at all, so the question about Bulgarian remains open.

I had a look around the Web and I did get to find some Cyrillisation rules (_Наредба № 6 от 12.06.1995 г. за транскрипция и правопис на чужди географски имена на български език_), which seems to be the closest one can get to something official, if not the real thing. However, only French, Italian and Spanish are included from the Romance group, and none of them can really, really work as a nice parallel for Portuguese when it comes to orthography versus phonology once again.

______
¹ Just to mention an example, if I were to transliterate the name of Paulo Coelho into Bulgarian, I'd spell it Пауло Коельо; however, according to a friend, the more phonology-based spelling Паулу Коелю seems to be more common, and it strikes me as really odd-looking.


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## Tagarela

Hi,

I think it's a very tough subject as you mentioned, and I don't believe that there are really good rules about that. 
In this website, about our famous soap operas, you can see sometimes a cyrillisation more based on Latin writing but other times more based on phonetics - as for João Gilberto that's like Жоао Жилберту. 

Good bye.:


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## Kanes

There isn't a standart for romanisation or the oposite. In most cases people do it phoneticly, but that doesn't aways work as some latin leters are translated differently in many cases. J for example could be ж, й or дж. More so it doesn't work with allot of languages as we pronounce latin letters in our own way, so it still sounds different. Just there hasn't been that big of an exposure to latin alphabet for it to be a problem and honestly if anyone has the authority to do it, they just doesn't care...

I think in that case the phonetic ones will be by defult the most accurate. I don't see the problem with names though. It is very simple if you know how the name actually sounds, in the case you gave, the two Bulgarian versions sound different. I think your frend just havent heard how you pronounce it. I bet it is not totally phonetic, or the way you say the latin letters is not like us. Here is another one: Палло Коелхо


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## Outsider

Why "Pallo"? 
I prefer letter-to-letter transcription, myself (Пауло Коельо, or similar). I think it's more elegant. But I've noticed that people whose language is written in non-Latin scripts tend to prefer phonetic transcription.


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## Kanes

Just another version that sounds prety much the same. Letter-to-letter would only work if the letters had direct counterparts that sound the same in speach and most dont. How do you say the last name?? Коельо(Koelio) or is it Коелхо(Koelxo/ho)


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## DarkChild

There isn't a rule but they usually try to follow the original pronunciation to a certain degree. For example, Vasco da Gama is Вашку да Гама. More often though the names are transliterated letter for letter rather than original pronunciation: Sao Paolo is Сао Пауло and not Съу Паулу, while Belo Horizonte is Бело Оризонте and not Белу Оризончи. So I would say the transliteration is somewhere in between phonetic and letter-to-letter.


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## Outsider

Kanes said:


> Letter-to-letter would only work if the letters had direct counterparts that sound the same in speach and most dont.


That's true, if we assume that the aim of transliteration is to reproduce pronunciation. But that's ultimately impossible. All Slavic languages have sounds that do not exist in Portuguese, and vice-versa. 



Kanes said:


> How do you say the last name?? Коельо(Koelio) or is it Коелхо(Koelxo/ho)


Neither, but it's not quite Коелю, either.


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## DarkChild

Outsider said:


> That's true, if we assume that the aim of transliteration is to reproduce pronunciation. But that's ultimately impossible. All Slavic languages have sounds that do not exist in Portuguese, and vice-versa.
> 
> Neither, but it's not exactly Коелю, either.


It's really Куелю.


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## Outsider

DarkChild said:


> It's really Куелю.


That depends on the speaker's dialect, actually. In Brazil (where Paulo Coelho is from) it seems to be more common to pronounce the _o_ as a Cyrillic "о". 

And the _lh_ represents a palatal sound which I suspect does not exist in Bulgarian. It does exist in other South Slavic languages, like Serbian, where it's written "љ".


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## DarkChild

Outsider said:


> That depends on the speaker's dialect, actually. In Brazil (where Paulo Coelho is from) it seems to be more common to pronounce the _o_ as a Cyrillic "о".
> 
> _Lh_ represents a palatal sound which I suspect does not exist in Bulgarian. It does exist in other South Slavic languages, like Serbian, where it's written "љ".


Lh does exists. ЛЮ = lhu


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## Outsider

Nope, it's not the same.

Take a look at this previous discussion in another forum.


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## DarkChild

Outsider said:


> Nope, it's not the same.


Excuse me, but I think I know my language better. лю = льу.


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## Outsider

I fear we're talking at cross-purposes, now. You're talking about Bulgarian, but I was talking about Portuguese...


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## DarkChild

You said that lh exists in other Slavic languages as in Serbian љ. I am telling you that this same thing exists in Bulgarian but not as a separate letter, but as the combination ль which can be represented as ль and лй or in combination with the letters ю (=йу) and я (=йа). So, л followed by ю or я always becomes soft and sounds exactly like lh in Portuguese.


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## Psi-Lord

My personal preference is indeed usually a mix of phonology and orthography, but strongly leaning towards the latter. It's a bit like I departed from a narrow IPA transcription and tried to reach the broadest equivalent possible.

In my Portuguese variant, for instance, _ti_ and _di_ sound like _чи_ and _джи_, not _ти_ and _ди_. Being pure allophonic variations, though, I always transliterate them into non-Latin scripts as _ти_ and _ди_. And the same process happens in many other situations, such as the pronunciation of _s_ and _z_ in certain environments, or that of unstressed (especially final) vowels. As with DarkChild's examples, I'd also go for _Сао Пауло_ and _Бело Оризонте_, even if I hadn't seen them transliterated like that before.

I always transliterate my real name as _Марсел_; if I were to truly base myself on pronunciation, however, I'd have to spell it at least along the lines of _Марсеу_, which looks like a crime to me, hehe. A name like _Rafael_ would even go from _Рафаел_ to _Хафаеу_! 

Just out of curiosity (and hoping that doesn't take the thread too off topic), a comparison between the only two 'official' systems I know for other languages using Cyrillic – one for Russian, one for Serbian.

The Serbian system my friend took from his Serbian Orthography Manual says, for instance, that the nasal diphthong _ãe_ is transliterated as _аи_. So, while it does follow a phonetic approach in not using _ае_, it doesn't go all the way by making it _ај_, and it makes no attempt to represent the nasality by using e.g. _аин / ајн_. A name like _Guimarães_ becomes _Гимараис_. Very similarly, _Camões_ becomes _Камоис_.

As both examples above also show, the Serbian system doesn't try to represent the European sound of _s_ in the end of such names, and takes a plain _с_ instead of _ш_. On the other hand, and now including a third example, it does distinguish between final _s_ and final _z_, even when both would sound the same, and so it transliterates _Cruz_ as _Круз_ (that is, not _Крус_ or _Круж_ or _Круш_). It also 'preserves' final vowels (especially in order to make names fit the Serbian declension), having _Ricardo_ as _Рикардо_ and _Henrique_ as _Енрике_.

So, the Serbian system may have its quirks, but seems to be internally coherent.

Then, the Russian system I (used to) know. According to it, the nasal diphthong _ãe_ is transliterated _айн_; final _s_ and _z_ are unified in final positions, and the distinction between a Brazilian and an European pronunciation of them is made. That put together makes _Guimarães_ and _Cruz_ become _Гимарайнс_ and _Крус_ for a Brazilian, but _Гимарайнш_ and _Круш_ for a Portuguese. _Camões_ would similarly become _Камойнс / Камойнш_. It transcribes final, unstressed _e_ and _o_ in their 'reduced' forms, making _Ricardo_ and _Henrique_ _Рикарду_ and _Энрики_ (which, if I'm not mistaken, makes them undeclinable).

One thing I find weird is that, according to the chart I have of the Russian system, Portuguese _lh_ and _nh_ are always spelt _ль_ and _нь_ even before _е_, _и_, _я_ and _ю_ – they give _Guilherme_ as _Гильерми_ and _Minho_ as _Минью_. The Serbian system, however, would have them as just _Гиљерме_ and _Мињо_, respectively, just as expected.

And so, just to finish this post, I'd personally go for a Serbian-like system when transliterating into Bulgarian, especially if there's no formal system going some other way and if Bulgarian native speakers don't really care that much. 

Back when I attended Japanese classes, I noticed that it was curious that Brazilian-Japanese usually followed a compromise between spelling and pronunciation when transliterating Brazilian names, while Japanese from Japan itself seemed to go phonetically all the way. Again, I found the former really natural, but the latter looked odd to my eyes.


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## dudasd

Psi-Lord said:


> As both examples above also show, the Serbian system doesn't try to represent the European sound of _s_ in the end of such names, and takes a plain _с_ instead of _ш_. On the other hand, and now including a third example, it does distinguish between final _s_ and final _z_, even when both would sound the same, and so it transliterates _Cruz_ as _Круз_ (that is, not _Крус_ or _Круж_ or _Круш_). It also 'preserves' final vowels (especially in order to make names fit the Serbian declension), having _Ricardo_ as _Рикардо_ and _Henrique_ as _Енрике_.
> 
> So, the Serbian system may have its quirks, but seems to be internally coherent.


 
A small note - it's true about the "quirks" (I like the word  ) in the Serbian system of transcription, but in the same "manual" (I guess your friend is talking about Pravopis MS) it's almost always pointed out how the letter/combination of letters is really pronounced (including examples of s = sh and z = zh), and the final "product" is often a mix of traditional transcription and of "how we really hear it".  The same is with other languages, but at least the "written pronunciation" is standardized, more or less. Changes of that kind are not something you can apply so easily; if people have been speaking "Vasko da Gama" for ages, it's hard to make them say "Vaško da Gama".  But for anyone who is interested to learn, the true pronunciation(s) are written in the manual that is mentioned above.


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## Psi-Lord

dudasd said:


> But for anyone who is interested to learn, the true pronunciation(s) are written in the manual that is mentioned above.


Ah, that’s pretty interesting to learn. 

In a way, I find it interesting how frustrating it is for someone like me, who likes reading about transliterations and such, to know that Portuguese itself has pretty weak (or rather non-existent) formal rules as well. In Brazil, for instance, the only time I’ve ever come across any sort of standards was in manuals of style published by larger newspapers and publishing houses – each seemed to have its own minor deviations, but it was kind of sad that they were obviously heavily based on English. I remember one of such manuals pointed that, for Russian names, one should use J instead of ZH for Ж (which makes total sense), but that one should also use CH instead of TCH for Ч (and I wonder why, since the former sounds Ш and the latter Ч). But this is definitely off topic, so let me get back on track.

While browsing around, I happened to find an article in the Bulgarian Wikipedia that seems to be interesting. I can post links here yet, but it’s named Транскрибиране на български език. Among many interesting points given there (such as not using Ь before Е, which means Portuguese LHE and NHE would have to become just ЛЕ and НЕ, just like LE and NE), the following paragraph sounded like one of the things I was looking for (if, of course, I’m translating it correctly):



> Чуждоезиковата редукция се отразява на български тогава, когато не е типична за българския език. Например _Палма ди Сима_ вместо _Палма де Сима_, защото редукцията на _е_ до _и_ не е допустима в българския книжовен език. Когато редукцията обаче еднотипна с редукцията в българския книжовен език (т.е. сближаване на неударено _а_ до _ъ_ и на неударено _о_ до _у_), тя не се отразява при транскрибиране. Например _Джонатан_, а не _Джонътън_ и _Порто_, а не _Порту_.


So, following this reasoning, Paulo Coelho would indeed be _Пауло Коельо_, but Jorge Amado would be _Жоржи Амадо_.


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## Ærie Descent

I admit that I've notived this thread a little too late and I'm a bit too busy to read all that's been said so far, but here are a few simple but important rules to transcribing foreign words and names in Bulgarian as shaped by L. Andreychin in 1952:

I - When it comes to pronouncing foreign names, they are pronounced in Bulgarian (by bulgarians) as they are pronounced in their own language, and not in the way they are spelt in it. So for example Ivan is Айвън and not Иван. Mike is Майк, not Мике.

II - Sounds that do not exist in the Bulgarian language are replaced by the nearest existing sounds. The Norwegian Bjørn in Bulgarian is Бьорн because ьо is the closest sound we have to ø.

III - The stressed syllable remains the same as in the name's own language.


About written transcription of foreign names:
I - The written form obeys the already mentioned rules of pronounciation.

II - If a foreign name has any sorts of special characters that don't influence the pronounciation, are not included in the transcription.

There are foreign names that haven't been adopted directly from the country they come from, but have passed through other languages first. For example Paris is Париж and not Пари as it's pronounced in France, because it's passed through Russian and Polish languages first, that's where it's got the ж.  

Also - when transcribing a name or a word, you can't put ьо or ю after ж, ш and ч. That's why we write it Жул Верн, and not Жюл Верн, Шонберг and not Шьонберг.

Prolonged vowels in foreign names are transcribed as normal in Bulgarian, but there's a tendency to trabscribe them with ий. Example is Брус Ли which can easily also be Брус Лий. 

Typical Russian pronounciation of unstressed o as a is not mirrored in Bulgarian. Барадино for Russians is Бородино for Bulgarians.

There are a few other rules but they don't matter much. 
Also it would be easier to me if I could write all that in Bulgarian as you seem to understand it anyway


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