[lojban] Moscow, Petersburg

[MorphemeAddict@wmconnect.com]

In recent messages Aleksej R. Serdyukov <deletesoftware@yandex.ru>
 and John E Clifford wrote via ecartis@digitalkingdom.org:


> /m?s'kwa/ is better, I think ({masKUAS.} or {mosKUAS.}, or rather
> without the stress to make it look better (not sound). Even {myskuas.}).
> The "o" is said to be pronounced "a" in schools, because they don't know
>   schwa and there is no letter for it, but it is a/o/?/?, or maybe ?
> (for me, it is more open than schwa, but still not "a").

My teachers and textbooks say that 'o' is pronounced as /o/ when stressed, and as /a/ when immediately before the stressed syllable, and as schwa elsewhere.  I pronounce the capital as /maskVA/.  No variant with a /w/ is appropriate.  But I'm not a native speaker of Russian.  

> > which many languages have)?  Is the native name
> > of the other place really Saint Petersburg or is
> > it Petrograd, which would introduce a whole other
> > set of issues?

> {la petryGRAT.}, {la pitryGRAT.} ?
> But the official name is Sankt Peterburg (????? ?????????). People call
> it Piter (la piter. would be not bad, but talk about official!).
> Petrograd XOR Peterburg is the original name, and the other one of them
> is one of the old names like Leningrad.

The original name was Sankt Peterburg, but right after the revolution it was renamed Petrograd (the Slavic equivalent), then it was quickly changed to Leningrad.  Only after the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990's did the name revert back to Sankt Peterburg.

> > And how widely variant are the dialects of the
> > two cities (we should follow the local one, I
> > suppose)?  

Or the standard language for the whole country.  Otherwise even people from that country might not recognize it if the local pronunciation is very different from the standard one.

stevo