Live data from Hacker News

Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

nginx.com

361–366 of 366 posts

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. From what little Russian I know, the original is до свидания, with an O, but in most dialects an unstressed O is pronounced A: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_phonology#Unstressed_v...

It's even more convoluted than that. Due to vowel reduction, unstressed o is pronounced as a, but до is one syllable so the o is stressed. When pronouncing до separately, it would definitely be pronounced as do, but до свидания is always said quickly as if it was one word, so the до turns into an unstressed syllable. As a side note, Russian pronunciation is remarkably uniform compared to languages like English. Diale…

> As a side note, Russian pronunciation is remarkably uniform compared to languages like English.

AFAICT, that goes for absolutely every other language too. Nothing even comes close to English for inconsistency in pronounciation (and even more so, spelling).

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#362
post #137

Oh my gosh, I thought he passed away.

Same. An editorialised title may have been preferable, but I understand the rules here generally don't allow that.

An inserted translation of the literal meaning might have been allowed, since the rules also say (ISTR) that this is an English-language website.

Colloquialise that from the formal exact "Til we meet again" to be a bit more informal (because that can still be read as "...in Heaven"), and you'd get something like

    "Do svidaniya (=See you later), Igor, and thank you for Nginx"
...which probably would have been much less likely to make half the readers start to tink he'd died.

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add a bit more, "svidaniye" means a date, and "Do svidaniya" literally means "till [our next] date". In English, "see you" or "see you later" translates closest to the original phrase in Russian.

It's interesting, because "svidanyie" in Russian is probably closely related to "svitani" in Czech, which means "sunrise", nothing else. But more literally "svitani" would probably translate as "meet again". Fascinating how meanings morph and sometimes the original meaning is fairly obfuscated.

Because we get to see the Sun again each morning...? (WAG)

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fluent, but I've been studying for 3 years now. I hate when people use latin characters to 'sound out' russian words. When I see Cyrillic, my brain immediately switches to Russian. When it's latin sounding out Russian, it takes a stupid amount of time for me to realize and comprehend what they are trying to say.

Accurate transliteration should be fine though. There are also Slavic languages, such as Polish or Czech, that use the Latin alphabet. One of the annoying things about Latin transliteration is that people use different phonetics of western languages. Should you use y or j for palatal sounds? Seems like there are also french influenced transliterations for vowels. These can be inconsistent based on the source.

> Accurate transliteration should be fine though. There are also Slavic languages, such as Polish or Czech, that use the Latin alphabet.

Yeah, that leads to the question of which transliteration to use.

> One of the annoying things about Latin transliteration is that people use different phonetics of western languages.

Eng Michael(?) Gorbachev, Ger Michail Gorbatschow, Swe Mikhail Gorbatjov...

> Should you use y or j for palatal sounds?

'Xackly: Eng/Ger Boris Yeltsin, Swe Boris Jeltsin.

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#365

Is the title a reference to hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy or is that too far-fetched?

I half-suspected that it might be, but have no data to support that hunch. Guess it partly depends on how "So long" translates into Russian; was the title there "Do Svidanya, and thanks for all the fish"?

Re: Do svidaniya, Igor, and thank you for Nginx

#366
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see this if anyone has a screenshot from this era!

Maybe these graphics? https://web.archive.org/web/20090228234133/http://wiki.codem...

Love it! Thank you for sharing!
Post reply on HN