"Пока, Иван!"
Translation:See you, Ivan!
28 Comments
Is there any particular reason why this name (and others) is pronounced differently by other languages than in the language it originates from? In this case, in most places you will hear this pronounced as 'EYE-van' but the correct pronunciation is 'EE-vahn'. Is it just a poor translation that became popular or something else?
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I think in other European languages Ivan is pronounced EE-vahn, not EYE-vahn. In those languages the letter i can't represent the sound "EYE." So the problem is in the English language, which allocates (at least) two different sound, "EYE" and the short "EE" to the letter i.
In other words, the problem partly comes from the lack of proper orthography in English language. In English sounds don't correspond to letters one-to-one. So it's very difficult to represent the original sound of a foreign word in English.
Not that it really matters, though. Proper orthography or no, people just copy the original spelling (or just replace the Cyrillic alphabet to corresponding Latin alphabet), not the sound. Ivan is spelled Ivan in French (which, of course, has a proper orthography), but it's not to copy the sound, I guess.
Does anyone know an European language that changes the spelling of a foreign word to suit the original sound?
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The last thing is quite common practice with proper names when they come from a different alphabet (Putin becomes Poutine in French), less so if it's from the same alphabet. It's maybe the most obvious in Serbian: Cyrillic is the "main", more traditional/ national alphabet, so all names are written phonetically to fit it. Latin script is also official, but of course the same spelling is used as in Cyrillic, so George Bush becomes Džordž Buš.
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First of all, French orthography is not as messed up as the English one, but pretty messed up still. In both cases the problem with these orthographies is that there are outdated and the language has changed since they've been adopted. The letter i used to represent what is now the ee sound in English, but it shifted to the diphthong you hear in "eye". Compare English "rice" to Swedish "ris", pronounced like reece. Essentially it's not so much a thing about orthography, it's just that the pronunciation of Ivan in English, just like the pronunciation of rice, has shifted from what it used to be, that is closer to the original Russian name.
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Since поко is an informal way to say "goodbye", shouldn't Ваня be used instead of Иван?
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Unless this Ivan is your close friend or relative, it's better to use the form of their name they prefer to be called with. So, if your coworker introduces himself as Ivan, bringing it down to Vanya will be rather impolite, as if you want to build an informal kind of relationship all of a sudden. So it's better to use diminutives only when you are really in that kind of relationship (i.e. the person allows it).
My understanding of Пока in english has always been "for now." Why isn't an acceptable translation?
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Пока has different meanings: "bye"; "during some time" (eg "while", "for now", "until now" etc.); "yet".
For example: "ПОКА я ем, ты красишь забор" - "WHILE I eat, you paint a fence".
-Do you have painted the fence? (Ты покрасил забор?)
-No yet. (Пока нет)
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They way Иван is pronounced here makes me wonder: is there some connection between the names "Ivan" and "Evan"?
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they share the same origin - both are local versions of John (or, to be more precise, Ivan, Evan, John, Juan, Jean, Johann, Jens etc all have the same Hebrew origin).
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Is 'See you' a common way to say goodbye somewhere? In California we would say "see you later," "see you around," "see soon," etc but never just "see you."
The designated correct translation of "пока, Иван" is given above as "See you, Ivan!" But "увидимся" is much closer to "see you" than is "пока". There is a dynamic equivalence between "пока" and "see you". But the answers "bye", or even "later" should not be marked wrong. They're no less literal than "see you", but have similar meanings.
As a russian speaker this is incorrect, it is more "good bye, ivan" litteraly "for now, ivan"
