LANGUAGE !

[Gator]

Animal Meat    French
Ox        Beef      Boeuf
Calf      Veal       Veau
Sheep   Mutton   Mouton
Pig       Pork       Porc

In other words, the Norman rulers cared much more about the correct designation of what would appear on their tables, than on their rural origin/production

And I suppose because the Saxons would never eat frogs or snails, they are not called grenouilles and d'escargots? 

BTW, we slaughter our beef cattle (steers and heifers) before they attain the size of oxen.

[SANDRO43]

And I suppose because the Saxons would never eat frogs or snails, they are not called grenouilles and escargots?

Either that, or the Normans did not have enough faith in the local produce to dignify them with a French name, and had them brought over from across the Channel .

BTW, we slaughter our beef cattle (steers and heifers) before they attain the size of oxen.

Anglo-Saxòn queebbles, jast breeng the meet ovér, you doomb paysan, zut.   

[SANDRO43]

I was reading recently a very old book by US linguist W.D. Whitney (The Life and Growth of Language, 1875), which includes a chapter on the Indo-European origins of Western languages that got me thinking about why all human languages probably descend from a unique Mother Tongue or Ursprache (the monogenesis theory, as opposed to the less shared multicentric theory), but I could not find much detailed literature on this fundamental issue.

As to WHEN this may have happened, a possible starting point is 2 million years ago, when the hominid brain began a period of rapid expansion, including the primary brain areas associated with producing or processing language: Broca’s area in the left frontal cortex and Wernicke’s area in the left temporal lobe.

Humans with a larynx located at the top of the trachea, lower than in other primates, first appear in fossils of some 300,000 years ago in Ethiopia, but evidence of more sophisticated behaviour is from some 100,000 years ago, and by 50,000 years ago fully modern behaviour is thought to have developed in various parts of Africa. All humans alive today are descended from "Mitochondrial Eve", a woman estimated to have lived in Africa some 150,000 years ago. Other possible milestones come from genetic studies: researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig reported last year that the FOXP2 'speech gene', which affects both language and the ability to articulate, was apparently a target of natural selection. This gene may have undergone its final mutation fewer than 100,000 years ago — and no more than 200,000 years ago.

Therefore, we have a "window of opportunity" of about 150,000-50,000 years ago. But HOW and WHY did the first human speech develop ?

Since speech is used for communication, let's consider how our closer cousins, the primates, communicate:
- Visually: facial expressions, body postures, gestures, etc.
- Vocally: calls, shrieks, cries, etc.

Visual communication is short-ranged and requires facing the communicator to receive the intended message. Vocal communication, on the other hand:
- Has a much longer range.
- Does not require facing the communicator (our ears have practically a 360° perceptual angle).
- It cannot be blocked out totally by intervening obstacles.
- Exploits a part (exhalation) of the constantly-ongoing activity of breathing.
- Is less energy-consuming than most muscular activity.
- Leaves the communicator free to use most other body parts at the same time.
- Also works in the dark.

Therefore, although human communication probably started in a primate-like fashion, then, as man began ranging farther and farther and started using tools, he found that vocalisations were a much more efficient instrument for his purposes.

Lastly, how else, in the dark of his cave, could he have expressed: "Darling, please turn over now" ?

[SANDRO43]

WARNING: ONLY FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN LINGUISTIC MATTERS
An area of linguistics that I never had the opportunity of exploring until now concerns punctuation. Last week, I started reading a freshly-published, 590-page Storia della punteggiatura in Europa (History of Punctuation in Europe), and made a discovery: it turns out that punctuation was introduced for prosodic rather than syntactic reasons.

In ancient times, written texts were read ALOUD (well into the XIIIth century, when the practice of silentium was introduced in monasteries), not silently as we normally do now. Then they started adding puncti (dots) to show the reader where to pause. This standard practice of reading aloud is indirectly confirmed, among others, by:

- St. Augustin (Confessions, 6.3) who, relating his visit to St. Ambrose in Milan (ca. 384 AD), noted in wonder: "Oculi ducebantur per paginas et cor intellectum rimabatur, vox autem et linguam quiescebant." (His eyes were led over the pages and his mind caught their meaning, but his voice and tongue remained silent).

- Turcius Rufus Apronianus Asterius, a Roman noble from the end of the Vth century, who wrote a note in his copy of Virgil's Aeneid stating proudly "legi et distincxi codicem" (I read and punctuated the book).

A further reason for introducing punctuation was that ancient texts were usually written in scriptio continua, i.e. in one continuous line without spaces separating words. The Greeks started adding stigmé (marks) sometime around the Vth century BC: a 'high-level' mark corresponding to the period, a 'mid-level' mark corresponding to the colon, and a 'low-level' mark corresponding to the comma, the 'levels' relative to text letter heights.

Also interesting is that the above English terms for punctuation marks correspond to the Greek/Latin terms identifying a complete sentence (periodus) and its smaller constituents (colon and comma), as well as the corresponding decreasing lengths of the pauses when reading them aloud.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuation

[UTRO]

So Sandro, who's responsible for Smileys? They surely are a modern form of Punctuation.....? Or do they trace back to the native petroglyphs?

[BC]

So Sandro, who's responsible for Smileys? They surely are a modern form of Punctuation.....? Or do they trace back to the native petroglyphs?

I remember seeing smileys for the first time in the late 70's and early 80's.  They were in the form of text smileys on computer terminals/telex machines that had only text input/output.  Cut and paste were really cut and paste.. miles of yellow waxpaper ribbon with holes in them.  A pair of scissors and tape did wonders back then.

[SANDRO43]

So Sandro, who's responsible for Smileys? They surely are a modern form of Punctuation.....? Or do they trace back to the native petroglyphs?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smileys
Not quite punctuation in the traditional sense, or rather a new level of it (emotional) with no previous equivalents, unless one considers miniatures in illuminated manuscripts as also having some emotional function.

I think their universal diffusion started in the late 1970s,  mostly due to IT people still working on dumb, non-graphic terminals and using what was available on a keyboard, i.e. punctuation marks, hence their 'sideways' look: ;-)  :-)  |:-(

While I was writing this, I see that BC preceded me .

[SANDRO43]

Or do they trace back to the native petroglyphs?

Petroglyphs are considered by most scholars to have some ritual motivation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyphs).

On the other hand, pictographs/pictograms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictograph), i.e. rock-graven symbols believed to represent synthetically some concept/idea rather than trying to depict an actual image, are believed to be the precursors of writing, which seems to have been motivated by the need to record permanently the deeds/attributes/accounting of some deity or ruler.

For instance, the pre-Dynastic Narmer or Scorpion King palette (http://www.ancient-egypt.org/index.html), found in Hierakompolis in Southern Egypt, is reputed to be a precursor of hieroglyphic writing.

This form of 'pictorial script' resembles cartoon vignettes, and was still used until quite recently (1800s) by some North-American Indian tribes, who never seemed to reach the alphabet stage of their southern cousins, such as those located in Mexico for instance. Witness also the Australian Abos.

This is probably due to a mostly-nomadic lifestyle. However, still a conjecture: settled life implies buildings, walls, etc. i.e. a culture with more durable materials on which writing may survive for centuries, whereas pelts, wood, etc. are perishable.

[SANDRO43]

WARNING: ONLY FOR THOSE INTERESTED IN SOME 'TECHNICAL' DETAILS

Poetry probably predates literacy: its prosodic patterns may well have been invented to make its memorisation and recital easier when writing was not yet available.

Legend has it that blind Homer toured ancient Greece in the late VIIIth century BC reciting his Iliad and Odissey, a feat that to us appears almost impossible given their length (15,693 and 12,110 lines of verse, respectively) but was probably within the capability of many itinerant storytellers of ancient times. And a contemporary orchestra conductor knowing by heart, say, all the 1,800+ measures of Beethoven's 5th Piano Concerto in Eb major is not altogether too different in this regard.

The earliest extant poem is the Epic of Gilgamesh (3rd millennium BC, Sumer), but Western classical poetry is a legacy of the Greek culture - which also explains why most of its technical terminology is Greek-based.

Poetry has two formal 'dimensions':
- 'Horizontal': the meter within each verse (line)
- 'Vertical': the rhyme scheme of its verse sequence 

METER
Words in a verse have a 'rhythm pattern' created by the succession of their long/stressed and short/unstressed syllables. The Greeks classified a number of different feet (groups of 2 or 3 syllables), the basic ones being:

Short feet (2 syllables):
- Iamb: 1 unstressed + 1 stressed (ta-DUM)
- Trochee : 1 stressed + 1 unstressed (TA-dum)

Long feet (3 syllables):
- Dactyl: 1 stressed + 2 unstressed (TA-dum-dum)
- Anapest : 2 unstressed + 1 stressed (ta-ta-DUM)

Musicians would call the dactylic rhythm a waltz, while a trochaic 2/4, heartbeat rhythm is what you typically hear in a disco - you could nonchalantly offer this definition while dancing with an RW/UW, and maybe make a profound and lasting impression, they are supposed to be poetry-savvy .

The number of feet in a line determines its length classification: dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, hexameter, etc.

Applied to my version of Sculpto's dimeters:
- I WILL know - for SURE (irregular trochee + iamb)
- if my HEART - has a CURE (anapest + anapest)
- when my WORDS - will just SAY (anapest + anapest)
- what my EYES - yet BETRAY: (anapest + iamb)
- I'm not LONELY - any MORE!  (anapest + iamb)

RHYME
The sequence of sounds ending each verse (where a short pause is always inserted) defines the 'rhyme pattern' of a poem.

Rhyme was not used in Greek and Latin poetry, and is a late development of the High Middle Ages attributed by some to the influence of Andalusian Arabic poetry. Latin languages lend themselves better to rhyme than Germanic languages, which is probably why Shakespeare used mostly blank (rhymeless) verse in his works.

Poets invented all sorts or rhyming schemes over the centuries. Returning to Sculpto's poem:

1. I will know - for SURE (A)
2. if my heart - has a CURE (A)
3. when my words - will just SAY (B)
4. what my eyes - yet BETRAY: (B)
5. I'm not lonely - any MORE!  (?)

Sculpto's stanza is therefore a quintain of non-uniform dimeters (mostly anapestic/iambic) in an A-A-B-B scheme ending with a broken rhyme : here a PURE or ENDURE would have made a better rhyme, but rather problematic to fit in, sense-wise .

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetry

[Sculpto]

while your commentary is wise
as a modernist in disguise
i most respectfully disagree
as such rules don't apply to me
thus through my attempt
I may inspire contempt
or confuse all of those
who misunderstand my prose

being serious for one second.. in visual art I submit to the golden rectangle and laws of symmetry.. yet for some reason.. in words spoken or written... asymmetry, absurdity and dadaism rule the day.

[OlgaH]

being serious for one second.. in visual art I submit to the golden rectangle and laws of symmetry.. yet for some reason.. in words spoken or written... asymmetry, absurdity and dadaism rule the day.

Proclamation Without Pretension
     
     Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance

MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage

THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding. I write because it is
natural exactly the way I piss the way I'm sick

ART NEEDS AN OPERATION

Art is a PRETENSION warmed by the
TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, the hysteria born
in THE STUDIO

We are in search of
the force that is direct pure sober
UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING
we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-
STANT

the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics

At this moment I hate the man who whispers
before the intermission-eau de cologne-
sour theatre. THE JOYOUS WIND

If each man says the opposite it is because he is
right

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight of images

above the rules of the
and its control

BEAUTIFUL

It is not for the sawed-off imps
who still worship their navel

Tristan Tzara

[Sculpto]

I woke up this morning with a bad hangover
And my penis was missing again.
This happens all the time.
It's detachable.
This comes in handy a lot of the time.
I can leave it home, when I think
it's gonna get me in trouble,
or I can rent it out, when I don't need it.
But now and then I go to a party, get drunk,
and the next morning I can't for the life of me
remember what I did with it.
First I looked around my apartment, and I couldn't find it.
So I called up the place where the party was,
they hadn't seen it either.
I asked them to check the medicine cabinet
'cause for some reason I leave it there sometimes
But not this time.
So I told them if it pops up to let me know.
I called a few people who were at the party,
but they were no help either.
I was starting to get desperate.
I really don't like being without my penis for too long.
It makes me feel like less of a man,
and I really hate having to sit down
every time I take a leak.
After a few hours of searching the house,
and calling everyone I could think of,
I was starting to get very depressed,
so I went to the Kiev, and ate breakfast.
Then, as I walked down Second Avenue
towards St. Mark's Place,
where all those people sell used books
and other junk on the street,
I saw my penis lying on a blanket
next to a broken toaster oven.
Some guy was selling it.
I had to buy it off him.
He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I
talked him down to seventeen.
I took it home, washed it off,
and put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.
People sometimes tell me I should get
it permanently attached,
but I don't know.
Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass,
I like having a detachable penis.

Detatchable Penis, by King Missile

[Sculpto]

Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down, you dig? Farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. This 'ass-talk' had a sort of gut frequency. It hit you right down there, like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you hafta do is 'turn loose'? Well, this talking hit you right down there. A bubbly, thick, stagnant sound. A sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival, you dig? And, to start with, it was like a novelty ventriloquist act. Real funny too, at first. He had a number he called 'The Better Oh', that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it, but it was clever, like, "Oh, I say, are you still down there, old thing? 'Nah, I had to go relieve myself!'"

After a while, the ass started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib, and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like, little raspy in-curving hooks, and started eating. He thought this was cute at first, and built an act around it. But the asshole would eat its way through his pants, and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags, nobody loved it, an'...and wanted.. and it wanted to be kissed, same as any other mouth.

Finally, it talked all the time, day and night. You could hear him for blocks, screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it. But nothing did any good, and the asshole said to him, "It's you who will shut up in the end, not me. Because, we don't need you around here any more. I can talk, and eat, AND shit".

After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly, like a tadpole's tail, all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call "un-D.T.", undifferentiated tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly, and grow there. Grow anywhere...on him... Grow anywhere on him, a glob of it fell...So, finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have amputated spontaneous..

Did you know there is a condition occurs, in parts of Africa, and only among negros, where the little toe amputates spontaneously?...

...Except for the eyes, you dig? That's the one thing the asshole couldn't do, was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied, so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while, you could see the silent helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes. Then, finally, the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eye on the end of a stalk.


William Burroughs  (as performed by Frank Zappa)

[SANDRO43]

while your commentary is wise
as a modernist in disguise
i most respectfully disagree
as such rules don't apply to me
thus through my attempt
I may inspire contempt
or confuse all of those
who misunderstand my prose

Not bad, but IMHO it lacks an ending, punch-line couplet (dystich) such as:

And finally I will confess,
You're a major pain in the a$$!

Incidentally, the A-A-B-B-A anapestic quintain form is also often used in limericks:

There was a young man from Belgrave
Who kept a dead whore in a cave.
He said: "I admit,
I'm a bit of a sh!t,
But think of the money I save !"

[SANDRO43]

Detatchable Penis, by King Missile

Is this supposed to be poetry ? Remove the line breaks, and it's a minute short story.

[OlgaH]

I'm first for DADAISM
                in English grammar
Down with Tense
           and preposition dilemma
Forget articles
          and sentence construction
Time for injection
                of Russian extraction!!! 

[Sculpto]

Is this supposed to be poetry ? Remove the line breaks, and it's a minute short story.

actually its a song..
i would post the youtube link but my computer isnt working properly.. this musci comes from the lower east side of Manhatten... the world of artists.. punk rockers.. and other assorted freaks..

[Sculpto]

I hope I have not killed this thread
by posting words from a warped head
but I cant help feeling intrigued
and captured by the bizaare need
to express and understand
the freakiest minds in the land
those who speak the words we fear
turn the opaque to crystal clear
for without that which is dirty
there would remain much uncertainty
for without that which is ugly
my poem can not end snugly
for without that which is disgusting
life would be rather purfluxing

[SANDRO43]

Well well well, it seems we have at least three amateur poets here at RWD, we must set up a certamen poeticus one day, with a rosemary wreath for the winner (tastier than laurel, can always be recycled for a good roast ).

I hope I have not killed this thread
by posting words from a warped head
but I can't help feeling intrigued,
and captured by the bizaRre need,
to express and understand
the freakiest minds in the land:
those who speak the words we fear
turn the opaque to crystal clear,
for without that which is dirty
there would remain much uncertainty,
for without that which is ugly
my poem can not end snugly,
for without that which is disgusting
life would be rather purfluxing

I added a few punctuation marks for clarity. Is purfluxing an innovative poetic license for perplexing ? And I would change "rather" to "indeed" in the last verse, to preserve the mostly anapestic rhythm. In this connection, "the freakiest minds in the land" could also become "the freakiest minds in OUR land", or "the freakiest minds WHO HAUNT THIS land", or similar .

Unless the wobbly feet ARE intentional, of course .

[Sculpto]

Purfluxing is an entirely new word.  I am sure the purists will  have my head for such an invention.. like we really need new words, especially one with multiple syllables, when there are so many people who can barely read the words we already have.  But, if someone doesn't invent new words well then we will just end up dumber than dumb as it seems the young are being educated by the rhymes of rap, text/sms abbreviation and truncated grammar/verbage of chat rooms.

Purfluxing: from Eric's New Dictionary of non existing words
to be perplexed to a degree where your head feels like you are stuck in the ozone flux of outer space.

[SANDRO43]

Converting text from one writing system to another is not at all a straightforward process, and transliteration is not the only term used to describe it (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration).

Transliteration maps the symbols (letters) of one writing system (alphabet, script) into another, whereas transcription maps the sounds of one language to those of another language, using the latter's best-matching script symbols.

Complications are caused by 4 problems, namely how well:

1.  The original alphabet maps the sounds of the original language
2.  The receiving alphabet maps the sounds of the original language
3.  The receiving language maps the sounds of the original language
4.  The receiving alphabet maps the sounds of the receiving language

Usually, a given alphabet maps best only the language for which it was originally adopted - and it's said to be orthographic with respect to it. The Latin alphabet does not map even Italian 100%: it lacks our letter U, and the actual pronounciation of its V and C are still an open debate among Latinists.

Applying the 4 above problems specifically to the case of Russian-to-English transliteration/transcription (sometimes called Romanization):

1.  Cyrillic maps Russian sounds quite adequately.
2.  The Latin alphabet does not map Russian sounds equally adequately (no sounds like, and hence no letters for, the ЪІ, Щ, Ж sounds - the French use J for the latter)
3.  English has no equivalents for the above Russian sounds, nor for Ц.
4.  The Latin alphabet does not map English sounds adequately (or, rather, English spelling is a mess for historical reasons, see upthread).

Let’s consider a simple case, i.e. the Russian word for milk, молоко:

- Transliterated: moloko
- Transcribed: malako

Transliteration uses the Latin vowel equivalents of Cyrillic, transcription preserves the original Russian vowel sounds. The alternative could be a transliteration adding an accent (which neither Russian nor English possess):

- molokò

However, this strategy would imply giving to English-speaking readers some instructions/rules (a convention) on its significance (tonic syllable) and its consequences in Russian (pre-tonic Os pronounced as As).

An analoguous but less simple case concerns Russian words that are similar to English words, like soldier, СОЛДАТ. Here transcription would produce an unfamiliar:

- saldat

A soldat transliteration would be more comprehensible, but not preserve the original Russian sound of the word (which could be important in the case of poetry, song, etc.).

Of course, the situation is further complicated when dealing with strange sounds like ЪІ, Щ, Ж, Ц which DO require some agreed convention for their pronounciation, like unfamiliar combinations such as yi, shch, zh, ts or whatever other solution is adopted for writing them.

The idiosyncrasies of receiving languages, and other cultural/historical influences, are also worth mentioning, bearing in mind that the Latin alphabet is used by a wide variety of rather different languages, phonetically speaking.

Consider for instance the case of the Russian composer Пётр Ильич Чайковский, whose family name is usually rendered as:

- Tchaikovsky in English (the initial T unnecessary, a French influence)
- Chaikovsky in Italian  (while Ciaicovschi would be orthographically more correct)

In the ending Y above we also see the influence of another Slavic language, Polish, with which we are more familiar in the West since it uses the Latin alphabet, too.

On the other hand, the names of choreographers of the Ballets Russes like George Balanchine, Michel Fokine,  Leonide Massine are always written with a final -INE, which is necessary only in French.

You can appreciate the difficulties in rendering a Cyrillic text legible to non-Russians (the same probably applies in reverse), and can also imagine the major problems inherent in rendering Far-Eastern languages like Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, and Burmese with their different tones.

Is there a universally valid system for transliterating/transcribing one alphabet into another?

No, unless one considers the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet ) used mostly by language specialists (you may have seen some of its symbols in the pronounciation guides in square brackets shown by most dictionaries).

[Vaughn]

Sandro,

  Is there a term or sub-term for creative transcription? By creative, I mean offering more than just a
single letter to single letter transfer, for instance - the word "soldier" = СОЛДАТ. Transcribed
conventionally as you pointed out, it becomes saldat. In my experience, the average student
(American, at least) still isn't quite sure of the pronunciation syllable by syllable. Consider how "sal"
sounds in the English word "salad" - and there's much room for mispronunciation.

  I've latched onto a habit over the years, transcribing with extended syllables that attempt to
clarify these nuances, albeit there IS no perfect system. Hence, СОЛДАТ would appear
as sahl-DAHT, with caps used to denote stress. The "habit" developed when I saw such
clarifying transcriptions in, believe it or not, simple Phrase Books sold at kiosks and bookstores.

   While this thread about the pieces and parts of language might be boring to many, I enjoy your
each and every lesson.

[SANDRO43]

Sandro,  Is there a term or sub-term for creative transcription?

Not that I know of, VAUGH-un . But we could improvise one relying on Greek as usual, say 'orthophonetic transcription', i.e. a transcription giving out correct phonetics.

In addition to being inherently unorthographic (messy spelling), English is also handicapped in this area by its rather indistict vowel sounds compared to, say, Latin-derived languages or even its cousin German. I'm beginning to harbour the suspicion that the Angli, Saxons and Jutes did not really mean to invade Britannia, rather they were kicked out of the Continent because nobody could understand what the hell they muttered .

Also, the notion of short/long vowels is rather foreign to English, and it has no native way of indicating tonic stress, hence your use of sahl-DAHT to mark out both .

While this thread about the pieces and parts of language might be boring to many, I enjoy your each and every lesson.

I'm glad that at least a few 'enlightened' ones may share my amatorial interest in the inner workings of languages .

[OlgaH]

transliteration & transcription
http://intranet.library.arizona.edu/users/brewerm/sil/lib/transcription.html

Transliteration of Russian alphabet
http://www.russki-mat.net/trans.htm

Romanization of Russian 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transliteration_of_Russian_into_English

Russian transcription download
http://3d2f.com/tags/russian/transcription/

[OlgaH]

The word СОЛДАТ-soldat (soldier) became current in Russia in the 17th century, when Russia started to form its army according to the Western European military standards - so called Regiments of the new order
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regiments_of_the_new_type