11 Comments
So even names have a Genitive form? Would you do this with a non-Ukrainian name too? If so, would you decide what ending to put on based on the name's spelling or the person's gender? For example, if a girl's name ends in a consonant, would you add -а/-я because the word is like a masculine noun, or would you add -і/-и because it refers to a girl? (And if it's the latter, would it sound odd to use a neuter ending if the person is nonbinary?)
Girl names that end in a consonant and boy names that end with in a vowel are unchangeable :)
34
That's a shame! It's so easy to get paranoid there when you're called Kim and don't speak Ukrainian. An extra letter would be great to avoid the confusion. I think I need to change my name next time I visit.
Why extra letters? People all over the world are, actually, pretty well aware what common English names sound like.
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I don't mean that they have a problem with the name, I do! It's one reason I really need to learn more Ukrainian. When you keep hearing ким and don't understand the rest of the sentence, you're never sure whether people are talking about you or not.
Although I can easily imagine problems with "з ким?" "ні, не з Кім!"
So.... "without Liz" = "без Лиз" but "without Emma" = "без Еми"
Likewise for boys: "without Ashley" = "без Ашлі" but "without Frank" = "без Франка"
Is that correct? (Hopefully I transliterated those correctly—I tried to think of easy ones! Although I'm less worried about transliteration names than just understanding how the grammar applies to the names.)
Thanks so much!
Genitive - perfect! Transliteration - not so good :) It should be: без Ліз, без Емми, без Ешлі, без Френка
(Франко is our famous writer, so "без Франка" looks like you are talking about him :D )
Thanks! :) It was my first time trying to do transliteration into Ukrainian. The vowels are tough!
When it comes to transliteration of foreign proper names, we usually just write it the way it should be pronounced. Because we read the way we write. Double consonants stay double :)
