Rebecca West - Black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through Yugoslavia

The spelling of Yugoslavian names presents a serious problem. The Serbo-Croat language is spoken in all parts of Yugoslavia described in this book; but to write it the Serbs use the Cyrillic alphabet (which is much the same as the Russian, but simpler) and the Croats use the Latin alphabet. Most foreign writers on Yugoslavia follow the Croatian spelling, but this is not satisfactory. The Cyrillic alphabet is designed to give a perfect phonetic rendering of the Slav group of languages, and provides characters for several consonants which other groups lack. The Latin alphabet can only represent these consonants by clapping accents on other consonants which bear some resemblance to them; and the Croatian usage still further confuses the English eye by using c to represent not s and k but ts, and j for y. I have found that in practice the casual English reader is baffled by this unfamiliar use of what looks familiar and is apt to pass over names without grasping them clearly. I have therefore done my best to transliterate all Yugoslavian names into forms most likely to convey the sound of them to English ears. Cetinje is written here as Tsetinye, Jajce as Yaitse, Pe as Petch, estinje as Shestinye. Kosovo I have written Kossovo, though the Serbo-Croat language uses no double consonants, because we take them as a sign that the preceding vowel is short.

This is a rough and ready method, and at certain points it has broken down. The Cyrillic alphabet provides special characters for representing liquid consonants; the Latin alphabet can only indicate these by adding j to the consonant, and this is extremely confusing at the end of a word. In pronouncing Senj the speaker says Sen, then starts to says a y sound, and stops half-way. The English reader, seeing Senj, pronounces it Senge to rhyme with Penge. But the spelling Seny makes him pronounce it as a disyllable; and if the suggestion of the Royal Geographical Society is adopted and the word is spelled Sen he is apt for some strange reason to interpret this sign as a Scotch ch. I have therefore regarded the problem as insoluble, and have left such words spelt in the Croatian fashion, with the hope that readers will take the presence of the letter j as warning that there are dark phonetic doings afoot. In Bitolj, I may add, the l has almost entirely disappeared, having only a short y sound.

I have also given up any attempt to transliterate Sarajevo or Skoplje. For one thing Sarajevo is a tragically familiar form; and for another, it is not a pure Slav word, and has the Turkish word sara, a fortress, embedded in it, with a result hardly to be conveyed by any but a most uncouth spelling. It is pronounced something like Sa-ra-ye-vo, with a faint accent on the second syllable, and a short e. As for Skoplje, the one way one must not pronounce it is the way the English reader will certainly pronounce it if it is spelt Skoplye. The o is short, and all the letters after it are combined into a single sound. I have committed another irregularity by putting an e into the word Tsrna, so often found in place-names. This makes it easier for the English reader to grasp that the vowel sound in the rolled r comes before it and not after.

R. W.