Hi, sometimes I see that Russian male surnames ending in ‘v’ (in English), for example, Petrov, Sidorov have the letter ‘w’ in German (Petrow, Sidorow). Is the ending -w correct for the German writing such surnames? Is the ending -v also acceptable in German?
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Hi Irina, there used to be two main variants of transcribing the Cyrillic alphabet when Germany was divided into two parts. Here in the East, the Cyrillic letter в used to be transcribed as with the letter ‘w’ whereas in the west it used to be transcribed with ‘v’. I think nowadays the ‘ov’ version is more prevalent.
Please let me know if this makes sense.
Regards,
Torsten
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Torsten, this division is interesting.
Is the letter ‘v’ pronounced at the end position as the sound ‘f’ in German? Then the Russian surnames are pronounced as ‘Petrof’, ‘Sidorof’. I’m confused…
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Well, in German we actually don’t distinguish between ‘f’ and ‘v’ when it comes to pronouncing both letters.
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Thank you very much, Torsten!
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