Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/15

Rh that sanctioned by the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain in 1885, and since that time used by it in all of its publications. Its rules are as follows.

1. No change will be made in the spelling of words and names that have become, by long usage, familiar to English readers, such as Cossack, droshky, Moscow.

2. The true sound of the word as locally pronounced will be taken as the basis of the spelling, but only an approximation to the sound is aimed at.

3. Vowels are pronounced as in Italian and consonants as in English.

4. One accent only is used, the acute, to denote the syllable on which stress is laid.

5. Every letter is pronounced. "When two vowels come together, each one is sounded, though the result, when spoken quickly, is sometimes scarcely to be distinguished from a single sound, as in ai, au, and ei.

6. The values of the vowels and of the principal consonants are as follows:

An exception will be made to Rule 1 in the case of a few words, such as Czar, mujik, Nijni, which are misleading in their common English form, and which have been correctly transliterated by such authorities as Wallace, Ralston, and Morrfill.

An exception will also be made to Rule 2 in the case of certain surnames, such as Kropótkin and Tourguénef, whose possessors have adopted for themselves a definite form of signature in roman letters. A guide, however, to the pronunciation of such surnames will be found in the vocabulary at the end of Volume II.