Why is «Совет» Transliterated to "Soviet" in English Instead of "Sovyet"?

Question

The word Совет seems to always be transliterated in English as Soviet. However, it seems to me that it would be more appropriately transliterated as Sovyet.

I think this is the most logical variant as there are three syllables when Soviet is spoken by a native English speaker, whereas Совет and Sovyet each only have two syllables. This also seems to more accurately reflect the Russian pronunciation of the word (as I understand it).

I'm curious if there's something that I'm misunderstanding, or if this is just a result of some arbitrary difference between transliterations that has been simply been standardized over time, while some other words have not (e.g. tsar vs. czar).

Edit

Ideally, I'd like to find the etymology of the word Soviet that would include references to various historical usages and/or information about alternative transliterations.

Forget what is "logical". You might as well ask why Москва is translated as Moscow instead of Moskva. — KCd, Jun 04 '13 at 14:39
@KCd: because it was actually pronounced similar to Moscow in Russian at some time. Words like церковь, морковь etc. on one side, and плотва, буква, тыква on the other side had the same ending ы in sg. nom. It's perfectly logical. — Quassnoi, Jun 04 '13 at 14:54
@DownVoter Please explain why you've down voted this question so that we may better understand what should be improved. — Александр, Jun 04 '13 at 15:04
@Quassnoi: Thanks for the information. Did Москва used to be Московь, and if so is there a place that discusses the transition from the second form to the first? — KCd, Jun 04 '13 at 16:11
@KCd: it was Москы (sg. gen. Москъве, sg. acc. Москъвъ) which, along with other words with ы-stem, later split into equally used nominatives Москъвъ / Москъва, of which the first eventually died out. Ы at that time was pronounced as ū (long у) — Quassnoi, Jun 04 '13 at 16:30
@KCd: what I wanted to say is that there is always some kind of logic behind transliterations (not that it's always consistent and/or immediately obvious). People don't just say: "oh, Moskva sounds stupid, let's change the last two letters". — Quassnoi, Jun 04 '13 at 16:32
But isn't it even better to use "Saviet" if the pronunciation is important? Here, only the proper accent is a problem. — johnfound, Sep 03 '13 at 19:48
@johnfound Or, better yet, if we're just going for phonetics, we end up with something like "Savyet"! [sɐˈvʲɛt] (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_Russian or http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Таблица_МФА_для_русского_языка) — Александр, Sep 03 '13 at 20:03
@Александр - Насчет "y" или "i", мне кажется что ответ kirelagin-а (ниже) аргументирован лучше. Поэтому и "i". IMHO. :) — johnfound, Sep 03 '13 at 22:13
@johnfound Это хорошо указывать. Спасибо, что напомнил об этом. :) — Александр, Sep 04 '13 at 04:16
Speaking of etymology, "совет" is just a Russian word for "council" and "advice". In this context it means "council" — alex.k, Feb 20 '18 at 12:43

score 16 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 04 '13 at 10:28

Before the Russian orthography reform of 1918, the word was written as совѣтъ.

The letter ѣ, though having long since merged with е in standard Russian, is pronounced as a long vowel or even as a diphtong in several Slavic languages (compare Croatian Rijeka < рѣка).

It was common to transliterate ѣ as ie, and some borrowed Russian words, especially those borrowed before the ѣ-е merger, transliterated non-Russian diphtongs ie as ѣ: Вѣна < Wien, индѣецъ < (American) Indian etc.

As for the word itself, it's a loanword from Church Slavonic съвѣтъ which is a calque from Greek symboulion ("common counsel").

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 03 '13 at 20:05

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The transliteration ye is only used in two romanization systems: BGN/PCGN and Passport (1997–2010).

Both of these, though, use this version when

The digraphs ye and yë are used to indicate iotation at the beginning of a word and after vowels й, ъ, or ь.

See Romanization of Russian.

Your case does not match any of what is being described here so no ye. The other systems use e but I've always seen ie to keep the original reading of the Russian letter "Э".

Keep also in mind that the letter "y" is used to transcribe "ы" and it might explain why ye is not so used.

answered Jun 03 '13 at 20:05

Alenanno

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According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_transliteration_of_Cyrillic "While linguistic transliteration tries to preserve the original language's pronunciation to a certain degree, the latest version of the ISO standard (ISO 9:1995) has abandoned this concept, which was still found in ISO/R 9:1968 and is now restricted to a one-to-one mapping of letters." But, if I understand this correctly, according to the ISO 9 standard, it should be transliterated as Sovet. – Александр Jun 03 '13 at 20:21
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@Александр Well, yeah, you're talking about transliteration, but here, IMO, “transcription” is a more appropriate word. – kirelagin Jun 03 '13 at 20:25
@kirelagin Indeed, you're quite right! I was confusing "transcription" with "transliteration". Thank you for pointing that out. – Александр Jun 03 '13 at 20:42
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Note that none of the Romanization systems mentioned in the article deals with pre-1918 ortography which was in effect at the time the word was borrowed. – Quassnoi Jun 03 '13 at 21:01
@Quassnoi You're correct about none of these Romanization systems being in place at that time. Thus, I've selected your answer instead. However, I think this answer still has merit; the contemporary systems seem to reenforce the original transliteration. – Александр Jun 04 '13 at 16:06

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 09 '20 at 14:28

For every Russian it is obvious that “y” is pronounced «й» (Nyan Cat being an obvious exception), so “Sovyet” will become [сав'йэт], but there is no «й» in Russian pronunciation. I think that's the reason why they didn't use “ye”.

Now, another option is “Sovet” but here v won't become soft — [совэт]. That's also not really cool.

In “Soviet” [сов'иэт] e sounds really close to what it should be in Russian. That и shouldn't be there, of course, and there is also a problem with stress. But if you pronounce it quickly and stress e you'll get something similar to [совыэт] which is fairly close to the Russian pronunciation.

Anixx · Answer 4 · 2013-06-08T04:43:37.173

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Regarding etymology, as Quassnoi pointed out it is a borrowing from Church Slavonic, where it is in turn a calque from Greek. The word itself derives from two Proto-Indo-Europeam roots: com meaning "with" and u̯eq̆- (u̯oq̆s meaning "voice"). So the literal meaning is "co-voice".

edited Jun 08 '13 at 04:43

answered Jun 08 '13 at 02:35

Anixx

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 03 '13 at 19:50

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I'm not sure of the etymology behind the English translation, but vyet sounds kind of weird to us English people; it just seems more natural for us to use viet instead.

answered Jun 03 '13 at 19:50

Zaz

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I would agree that it seems more natural to me too, but only because that's the only way we've ever seen it. My point is that it seems like Sovyet more closely resembles the Russian pronunciation; the word is after all, a loanword to English. – Александр Jun 03 '13 at 19:58
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@Александр Sovyet sounds like something from a Schwarzenegger movie. – kirelagin Jun 03 '13 at 20:40
@Александр When the word comes from one language to another it starts to live there by new rules. For example, in Russian we say 'компьютер' and not 'компьюта', 'Шекспир' and not 'Шейкспиа', etc. – Artemix Jun 04 '13 at 07:42
@Александр the word has no "y"-sound, why it should be in transliteration? – Anixx Jun 04 '13 at 08:09
@Anixx The second syllable starts with a ye. This is how it is pronounced in the sample on Wikipedia too http://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/совет – Александр Jun 04 '13 at 16:17
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@Александр there is no "y"-sound in that pronunciation. The Russian e is not iotized after consonants. It it was совьет, then there would be y-sound there. – Anixx Jun 04 '13 at 17:28
@Anixx It sounds to me as though there is a slight ye sound, but that makes sense. Your answer to Pronunciation of “е” seems relevant here too. – Александр Jun 04 '13 at 18:40
@Александр I have no idea why you hear it so. sovyet=совьет. – Anixx Jun 04 '13 at 18:51

Why is «Совет» Transliterated to "Soviet" in English Instead of "Sovyet"?

5 Answers5