Belarusian Cyrillic to Latin converter

December 1, 2017

First, to our knowledge, Belarusian Cyrillic to Latin converter that correctly handles ◊ regressive palatalization, ◊ binarities «г»:/ɣ—g/, «і»:/і—jі/, «e»:/ɛ—^(j)ɛ/, and is ◊ compliant with the UN standard. Read more below.

Прасторны шлях, калі ж, калі Ты закрасуеш на зямлі І злучыш нашы ўсе дарогі? Якуб Колас

This is the first, to our knowledge, Belarusian Cyrillic to Latin converter that ◊ systematically cares to render Belarusian phonology correctly. It concerns, e.g.,

• the regressive palatalization issue (i.e. /s^jn^jɛɣ/ is rendered “śnieh“ and not “snieh”). Overpalatalized dentals constituting a characteristic feature of Belarusan (so-called “dziekańnie”, “ciekańnie”), it is primordial to render them correctly systematically;
• the laxist graphic convention of the official Cyrillic system as to the letter «г»: may denote /ɣ^(j)/ or /g^(j)/ with no evident pattern: “гісторыя”/“гузік”);
• the laxist graphic convention of the official Cyrillic system as to the letter «і»: may denote /і/ or /jі/ (diphtong) with no evident pattern trigerring two different palatalization patterns: “ім”/“інтэгральны” → “з ім”/“з інтэгральнага” /і→ы/ /jі→^(j)i/;
• the laxist graphic convention of the official Cyrillic system as to the letter «e»: in borrowed words, it may confer or not palatalization to the previous consonant with no evident pattern: “веласіпед”/“Аве Марыя” /v/ and /v^(j)/;

◊ complies with the official Belarus’s prescription to use the alphabet «abcćčdefhijklĺmnńoprsśštuŭvyzžź» and the UN standard based thereupon;

◊ complies with the official Belarus’s Orthographic rules.

We thoroughly follow the Belarusian phonology description as given at:

Фанетыка беларускай літатурнай мовы / І. Р. Бурлыка, Л. Ц. Выгонная, Г. В. Лосік, А. І. Падлужны; Рэд. А. І. Падлужны. — Мн.:Навука і тэхніка, 1989. — 335 с ISBN 5-343-00292-7

We are aware of the following toy converters: Sloŭnik.org, Baltoslav, Draŭliany Zedlik, Dobrapis. As of Aug 02, 2019, all of them fail to render correctly the phonemes (try: “снег, здзяйсняецца” (not) to obtain “śnieh, ździajśniajecca”).

The transcription generator by the Speech Analysis and Recognition Lab of the Belarusan Academy of Sciences only deals with tagged text and produces phonetic [···], not phonematic /···/ transcriptions. The transliteration generator Philology.by by Alyaxey Yaskevich pursues another objective as well.

Examples of valid texts

Numerous examples of valid Belarusian Latin texts: Lacinka — Teksty

GitHub

Belarusan2latin