It’s amazing how you can sound so Russian in a letter.
Are there any examples of letters from this long ago that clearly sound very American?
I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
21–30 of 122 posts
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn’t it seem possible he’d have a different view of the Soviet Union than you? He was born near the beginning, spent most of his formative years in the Soviet Union that had just made a big contribution to taking down the Nazis and was now launching a him, a former farm-boy, into space. It seems like a pretty compelling story from his point of view! Unless you are 90 years old, I guess you were born in a Soviet Un…
A cursory reading of the history of Stalin's mass murders and deportations puts paid to this. No one living through the Terror mistook this bullshit for a Captain Kirk Iowa boy in space fantasy. And his usefulness isn't lost on the current FSB animals who wear Yuri pins inside their jackets.
He was but a small child then, being born in 1934 and they were very good at hiding the worst atrocities which was not exactly hard those years given the rather limited mass communication. No one was posting a Tiktok about the deportation of the Crimean Tatars.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a t there (native Russian speaker), it's a clear ch like in check. This is a common mistake when transliterating the Russian ч (ch), t doesn't add anything. In fact, t makes it more difficult to pronounce it while it's an easy sound for most people to say.
I just cut and paste the IPA from Wikipedia! For actual pronunciation guidance I asked a native Russian speaker! [Edit: I think it's possible in the IPA that the t is there to make it a harder ch sound like in check, rather than soft as in chagrin or chalet, kindof like the d in Django makes it the hard j common in English, as opposed to the soft j natural in French]
Don't know. When I think about it, all Russian ч (ch) pronunciations are consistent unlike some other sounds that vary depending who is talking. Not sure why they'd want to add anything to it. It's an easy sound from get go.
My personal pet hate is how Andrei Tchiml's[1] surname creates unnecessary difficulties for English (and other) speakers. It's a simple ch sound at the beginning and yet everyone stumbles on it trying to speak out a mouthful of consonants while they're not there to start with.
French, I think, are particularly having trouble with it.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Tchmil
Edit: Tchmil that is.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of course he didn't. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain, no one, not even high level party members took this bullshit seriously enough to write it truly in the farewell letter of their families. He wrote this to protect his family, if the state believes Yuri was not a true Soviet man they might take away their pension. The reason it's laid down so heavily because the risk was very great as he might be blamed posthumou…
> no one, not even high level party members took this bullshit seriously enough Don't know when you were born (I was in the 1960s). You're wrong. A lot of people, especially Gagarin's generation, took what you call bullshit seriously and believed in it. Hence, were willing to lay down their life for the cause.
>"A lot of people, especially Gagarin's generation, took what you call bullshit seriously and believed in it."
This is true. Many people did believe back then.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#25> I fully trust the technology. It should not fail. But it sometimes happens that a man falls and breaks his neck with no reason at all. Something may happen here too. I do not believe it will happen. "How do I write a letter to tell my wife I died because the rocket blew up, without sounding like I doubted the glorious Soviet rocket?"
yeah, the whole letter sounds like it was coded with a gun to his and his wife's head.
Nope. It does not
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#26I love that he name checks and quotes Chkalov. Not that I expect anyone to know who Chkalov was, but there's a Chkalov Drive in Vancouver WA, and I went down the "how do I pronounce that, who is it named for" rabbit hole a few years ago, so his name always makes me smile. The Vantucky locals typically say Chuckalov or similar, and look blankly at anything close to ˈtɕkaləf
You don't need a t there (native Russian speaker), it's a clear ch like in check. This is a common mistake when transliterating the Russian ч (ch), t doesn't add anything. In fact, t makes it more difficult to pronounce it while it's an easy sound for most people to say.
That t is not entirely useless (non-native Russian speaker here). Even the pronunciation of 'check' has a starting t sound in it: tʃɛk. Without the starting t, you might end up with something that could be spelled sheck in English.
So I'd argue, that the t in transliterations helps people who don't speak Russian to get the ч sound right. Since the transliteration as 'ch' is ambiguous and doesn't appear to work for many of the inhabitants of Vancouver, WA. So ideally we should all use IPA or better yet, ask a Russian speaker.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#27Related, Nixon's speech in the event of the Apollo 11 mission failing: https://www.archives.gov/files/presidential-libraries/events...
There is also a deepfake from MIT (https://moondisaster.org/) featuring Nixon seemingly delivering this speech.
Past HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33491421.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a t there (native Russian speaker), it's a clear ch like in check. This is a common mistake when transliterating the Russian ч (ch), t doesn't add anything. In fact, t makes it more difficult to pronounce it while it's an easy sound for most people to say.
That t is not entirely useless (non-native Russian speaker here). Even the pronunciation of 'check' has a starting t sound in it: tʃɛk. Without the starting t, you might end up with something that could be spelled sheck in English. So I'd argue, that the t in transliterations helps people who don't speak Russian to get the ч sound right. Since the transliteration as 'ch' is ambiguous and doesn't appear to work for ma…
> Without the starting t, you might end up with something that could be spelled sheck in English.
That might be true.
The truer thing though is, English speakers at least (unless they're a linguist or read IPA in the morning), go ahead and pronounce (or try to) the t and run into trouble every time because t-ch-kalof is a challenge they're not up to (Russians won't have a problem with it, even when drunk).
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn’t it seem possible he’d have a different view of the Soviet Union than you? He was born near the beginning, spent most of his formative years in the Soviet Union that had just made a big contribution to taking down the Nazis and was now launching a him, a former farm-boy, into space. It seems like a pretty compelling story from his point of view! Unless you are 90 years old, I guess you were born in a Soviet Un…
A cursory reading of the history of Stalin's mass murders and deportations puts paid to this. No one living through the Terror mistook this bullshit for a Captain Kirk Iowa boy in space fantasy. And his usefulness isn't lost on the current FSB animals who wear Yuri pins inside their jackets.
The Terror has ended by October 1938, when Gagarin was 4 years old. I wouldn’t call that “living through”.
I’m not saying there weren’t political prisoners or executions later. There were, but the scale is incomparable. We can safely say Gagarin met a lot of people who had won the war growing up, but he had not seen someone familiar taken to prison for no reason every other day, and I would assume had not heard much about it.
Re: I hope you will never see this letter (1961)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need a t there (native Russian speaker), it's a clear ch like in check. This is a common mistake when transliterating the Russian ч (ch), t doesn't add anything. In fact, t makes it more difficult to pronounce it while it's an easy sound for most people to say.
That t is not entirely useless (non-native Russian speaker here). Even the pronunciation of 'check' has a starting t sound in it: tʃɛk. Without the starting t, you might end up with something that could be spelled sheck in English. So I'd argue, that the t in transliterations helps people who don't speak Russian to get the ч sound right. Since the transliteration as 'ch' is ambiguous and doesn't appear to work for ma…
(Native Russian speaker here) I don’t really agree. The “t” and “ch” require very different tongue and jaw positions and combining them is awkward and would require a vowel in between when used in a real word.
English speakers are perfectly capable of pronouncing ch vs sh (e.g. chair vs share) whereas sh vs sh’ (ш/щ) might be more challenging.