What's the difference of the words tsar & czar? Are they the same or different????

They're different transliterations of the same word. I prefer tsar over czar because tsar is a corruption of tsesar, the Russian version of the word caesar (from which kaiser - German - and kaisar - Greek - also descend).

About the only difference is that in American, when the President appoints someone to supervise some aspect of the economy, he's always referred to as "czar" not "tsar." For example, "Energy Czar," "Car Czar."

цар is the only correct version. ;)

There's no difference between the different transliterations.

czar
PRONUNCIATION: zär, tsär
NOUN: 1. also tsar or tzar (zär, tsär) A male monarch or emperor, especially one of the emperors who ruled Russia until the revolution of 1917.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/87/C0848700.html

I think "Czar" is the American preference, while "Tsar" tends to be used in Western Europe, although the two are more or less interchangeable, and you'll occasionally see "Csar" or "Tzar" as well. I assume one of them is a more accurate transliteration, although I'm not sure which, especially given that Westerners generally pronounce it with a "z" anyway.
Red Elk's link implies that "Tsar" is more accurate, though, given the alternate pronunciation as "tsär".

I use Tsar, so it be the right one!

but really, they just different translations of same word.

"Czar" is used for several positions in the US government.

From my experience when ever someone is referring to the emperor of Russia they use "Tsar."

"Tsar" is the word that easily predicts the correct pronounciation, so I choose that.

Does it really matter?

May God bless and keep the [Czar/Tsar]...... Far away from us!

May God bless and keep the [Czar/Tsar]...... Far away from us!

If I were a rich man, yubba dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum

I prefer Tsar, Because in Polish, Czar would be pronounced Char.

цар is the only correct version.

Царь. The "ь" indicates that the "р" sound in the end is "soft".

I would use Tsar always since its closer to the English pronounciation.

"Czar" just makes me think it pronounced Kzar, or possibly Char because of how Czechoslovakia is pronounced.

I do use Czarina for the lady Tsars though. I think this is just because I see the word Czarina much more often than Tsarina. I just saw that it has nearly 4x as many hits on google too.

Strangely, Czar has 8 million hits compared to only 4 million for Tsar even I though I've very rarely seen it used. Must be because of the media's preferences.

the word czar means other things in polish, and possibly other languages - which would explain some of the hits

I would use Tsar always since its closer to the English pronounciation.

"Czar" just makes me think it pronounced Kzar, or possibly Char because of how Czechoslovakia is pronounced.

Your getting your slavs confused :nono:, Czechs are Western Slavs, Russians are Eastern slavs, the languages are completely different. a Comparison like that is a poor one.

Americans can't pronounce it right anyway, so it's all the same...

Let's just disregard the Western Slav version of pronunciation & the Eastern Slav. Just the meaning. Can we get a real Russian to ask this question???????
Or does that mean that the words "tsar" & "czar" are the same & it depends on what your refering to? I use "czar" for a Russian monarch since that it looks fancy & Western, just like probably Peter the Great used to describe himself.

Does it really matter?

May God bless and keep the [Czar/Tsar]...... Far away from us!

Yes it does matter. Depends on the ideology of the person.

just like probably Peter the Great used to describe himself.

He took the title of the Emperor.

Or does that mean that the words "tsar" & "czar" are the same

Completely the same, different transliterations on the same word.

Царь. The "ь" indicates that the "р" sound in the end is "soft".

Ah, yeah, sorry, I know about the meaning of the soft sign, I just didn't realize it was supposed to be there. :blush: I know how to read in Cyrillic but spelling in it is a completely different story, even for words I know how to pronounce.

Czar is cool because where the hell else are you gonna find "cz" in English?

Tsar is cool because of it's got quite a few anagrams (rats, tars, star, arts)

Czar is cool because where the hell else are you gonna find "cz" in English?

Czech, eczema?

I bet they use czar over tsar because you know, wouldn't want the government appointing a drug tsar, that would sound too Russian, and they would have been accused of being communists!

(in spite of the fact that the Russian communists deposed the tsars... but that's ignorance for ya)

Screw it, lets just go to the root, and call them Caesar :)
Personally I tend to see Tsar used more in newer as well as more formal documents (trained historians writing as opposed to some random person writing about it). Czar I find more use in older things and by average people.

He took the title of the Emperor.



Completely the same, different transliterations on the same word.

But who is the first person to call himself a "czar"????

But who is the first person to call himself a "czar"????
Yaroslav the Wise, a grand prince of the Kievan Rus', called himself tsar in the eleventh century, partly to emulate and partly to rival the Byzantine Empire to the south. However, the term was not resurrected among the Russian peoples (though Serbia and Bulgaria both used it in their monarchs' styles during those states' ephemeral existence during the later Middle Ages following the collapse of Manuel I's Byzantine Balkan hegemony) until the reign of Ivan III, the Great, formerly simply a velikiy knyaz (grand prince). The title was resurrected, again, because of our Byzantine friends; the Second Rome, Constantinople, had fallen, and Ivan wanted to emphasize his role as the new caesar at the head of the Third Rome, Moscow, and in charge of the great body of Orthodoxals in Russia. Anyway, Ivan started using the title in the late 15th century, around 1480ish or so.

I use tzar, since that's the closest transliteration in my eyes. The sound is meant to be that of the zz in pizza.

The particular africate in that word is represented closest in the normal Latin alphabet as "ts". There's no doubt about that. The africate made by the sounds "t" and "z" together doesn't exist in any language I know, because it would be amazingly difficult to pronounce. The difference is whether the last sound is voiced or voiceless, and it's very, very hard to make a voiced sound at the end of a voiceless first sound, like T is, in such a way to actually produce an africate. Edit: In fact, now that I think about it, I don't know of any africate where the first sound is voiceless and the second is voiced. In any case, "tz" is factually incorrect.

The particular africate in that word is represented closest in the normal Latin alphabet as "ts". There's no doubt about that. The africate made by the sounds "t" and "z" together doesn't exist in any language I know, because it would be amazingly difficult to pronounce. The difference is whether the last sound is voiced or voiceless, and it's very, very hard to make a voiced sound at the end of a voiceless first sound, like T is, in such a way to actually produce an africate. Edit: In fact, now that I think about it, I don't know of any africate where the first sound is voiceless and the second is voiced. In any case, "tz" is factually incorrect.

But czars are from Russia not from a kingdom in Africa. But I agree that "tz" is incorrect.

The affricate doesn't have anything to do with Africa. ;) The name comes from the word "fricative", which is a certain kind of consonant (the one sounding at the end of an affricate).

"Czar" should be pronounced "tsar", but because the average news reported tends to "talk down to" what he/she perceives to be the average American, and because the average news reporter seems to be dumber than a box of rocks, they pronounce "czar" as "zar", so the average American thinks that is correct. :crazyeye:

"Czar" should be pronounced "tsar", but because the average news reported tends to "talk down to" what he/she perceives to be the average American, and because the average news reporter seems to be dumber than a box of rocks, they pronounce "czar" as "zar", so the average American thinks that is correct. :crazyeye:
Is the average American also dumber than a box of rocks? And if so, what kind of rocks?

No, but IMHO, the average news reporter thinks the average American is dumber than a box of rocks.

"Dumb this down so that 'Joe and Sally Sixpack' can understand it." (Why do they think Joe and Sally Sixpack can't understand it the way it really is?)


Of course, the point is that the average news reporter is dumber than a box of rocks, so they pronounce "czar" as "zar".


(Of course, this is all going way off-topic. :))

Just curious what is the actually pronunciation? And I don't know IPA or any of that phonetic stuff.

No, but IMHO, the average news reporter thinks the average American is dumber than a box of rocks.

"Dumb this down so that 'Joe and Sally Sixpack' can understand it." (Why do they think Joe and Sally Sixpack can't understand it the way it really is?)


Of course, the point is that the average news reporter is dumber than a box of rocks, so they pronounce "czar" as "zar".


(Of course, this is all going way off-topic. :))
So infract yourself for thread-jacking. :p

@say1988: t-sah.

@say1988: t-sah.

WTF? You've just described something like "Цах".

"Tsar" really gives the best idea of pronucation, just remember, that the "t" and "s" are united in one, and that the "r" in the end is the russian/spanish type of "r". To get the idea of how it sounds, try pronouncing "rd" fast.

Also, remember that the "r" sound in the end is "soft".

Interesting, somewhat similar to Polish. In Polish, C means 'ts' and r is the same scottish/spanish/russian R. Perhaps some Proto-Slavic stuff.

Nah, the trilled R is a common feature of almost all non-Germanic European languages and many, many non-European ones, the only exception that I am aware of apart from Germanic languages being French.

As for the C, there's no connection, since Cz is just a transliteration version (and an incorrect one, if we want to label them) for the Russian Ц. :)

I always had problems pronouncing those R's.

I've always had problems pronouncing Rs any other way than that. :) Last year I remember I was still slipping one or two in there in English conversation, though definitely not very often (maybe once ever 2-3 days of speaking in English-only), I'm not sure how I'm doing right now since it's been 3 months since I've been abroad. It's all a matter of what you're used to.

I'm neutral on the R's, being born a native english speaker i say my r's like in English, but my big influence on Polish and Spanish R's got me used to both ways.

"Czar" should be pronounced "tsar", but because the average news reported tends to "talk down to" what he/she perceives to be the average American, and because the average news reporter seems to be dumber than a box of rocks, they pronounce "czar" as "zar", so the average American thinks that is correct. :crazyeye:

Yeah, but no American could pronounce the r correctly, so the fact that they mess up the first sound doesn't add much.

The r is not trilled like Spanish, as it is soft in this word. While some accents may features an r like the russian soft r, English itself does not use it. The closest I can think of is the r in reek, but that doesn't quite capture it, and there is no w sound to it.

No, but IMHO, the average news reporter thinks the average American is dumber than a box of rocks.

"Dumb this down so that 'Joe and Sally Sixpack' can understand it." (Why do they think Joe and Sally Sixpack can't understand it the way it really is?)


Of course, the point is that the average news reporter is dumber than a box of rocks, so they pronounce "czar" as "zar".


(Of course, this is all going way off-topic. :))

Something I've been wondering about for a while

since when do average Americans have six packs?

Something I've been wondering about for a while

since when do average Americans have six packs?
Since a six-pack is a pack of six beers.

The first sound in the word doesn't exist in English as a single letter, therefore "ts" is used is to make the correct sound. As for Czech being a "totally" different language than Russian because Czechs are Western Slavs and Russians are Eastern Slavs is a an true statement - the foundation for each is "Old Church Slavonic," which is the root for all Slavic languages, in the same way that Latin is the base for the Romance languages - Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. The root for the word "Tsar" is from the Latin "Caesar." Please remember that the Roman Empire's capitol moved in the 4th century to Constantinople - the Eastern Rome. The early Russian rulers were fascinated with the idea that they were the inheritors to the "Roman Empire," and wished to impress this on their subjects by taking the title, "Emperor" from the Romans, by way of Constantinople. The Tsars thought of Moscow as the "Third Rome" . . .
My apologies for the length of the post, but inaccuracies that are consistently repeated in the West, for whatever reason, have done enough damage . . . :king:

Old Church Slavonic is not a root of all slavic languages at all, and the comparison to latin is silly. Old Church Slavonic was a church language based on a specific (macedonian) slavic dialect, located at the very margin of a slavic world, already stretching crom Peloponnesus to the northern edges of Europe. It was used in the orthodox slavic areas, and, for some time, in the Great Moravia.
It didn't give birth to all slavic languages, it merely infleunced several of them.

"Zar" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YmMNpbFjp0)

"Zar" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YmMNpbFjp0)
Not really, given that it butches the pronunciation of the actual word. There's a reason that British English prefers the phonetic "Tsar" over the literally transliterated "Czar", after all.

Czar and Tsar are the same word but with different spelling, I personally like Tsar be cause it looks more like it is pronounced.