joer1212

Can someone please explain to me how a street map of Moscow in English can possibly be of any use when virtually all street signs in Russia are written in Cyrillic?

I just received my maps of Moscow and St Petersburg, Russia for my trip to these cities next month. When I opened these maps, I was horrified to see that they were all written in English letters, not Cryllic. Silly me to expect a map to actually match what's on a street sign when I'm on the other side of the world by myself with this paper as my only lifeline.

I'm not being sarcastic here, but WHY would maps like this even be published??? If anything, street maps of Russian cities should be primarily written in Cryllic, with perhaps smaller English translations next to the Cryllic words. What am I supposed to do with these now?

sparkchaser

Because if you learn to read (not comprehend, just read) Cyrillic, it is an extremely simple matter to reconcile the street names with the map. Unlike English, each letter in the Cyrillic alphabet has only one pronunciation.



пер. Денежный = per. Denezhnyy

So, if you learn to read Cyrilic and come upon a sign and work out the pronunciation in your mind, it is a simple matter to find the corresponding name on the English map.

I found this book to be invaluable for learning how to read Russian: Read and Write Russian Script: A Teach Yourself Guide

joer1212

Thanks for this, and I am aware of the Cyrillic alphabet, but I still think it would have been WAY easier and more efficient to simply write the map in, both Cyrillic and English.

homelyboy

The human mind works so that a written line of text is efficiently matched with another not by glyph shapes, but via a sort of idea how these lines "sound" (unless one is deaf at birth or early in life, I suppose).

I, for instance, was unable to match two Thai writings until I learned their alphabet.

homelyboy

Well, Russian spelling is pretty much more phonetic than English, but still that's too strong a statement.

An example that everyone is bound to come across is the letter О. In standard Russian, О only sounds as "oh" if under stress. In unstressed syllables, О is reduced in quality and sounds vaguely more like "ah" or "eh".