Tsar or Czar???

[Mirc]

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. I know how to read in Cyrillic but spelling in it is a completely different story, even for words I know how to pronounce.

 

[Perfection]

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)

 

[Bugfatty300]

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

Czech, eczema?

 

[gnome]

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)

 

[say1988]

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.

 

[CivLuvah]

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"????

 

[Dachs]

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.

 

[Souron]

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

 

[Mirc]

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.

 

[CivLuvah]

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.

 

[Mirc]

The [wiki]affricate[/wiki] 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).

 

[Padma]

"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.

 

[Sharwood]

"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.

Is the average American also dumber than a box of rocks? And if so, what kind of rocks?

 

[Padma]

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. )

 

[say1988]

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

 

[Sharwood]

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.

@say1988: t-sah.

 

[Lone Wolf]

@say1988: t-sah.

WTH? 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".

 

[TheLastOne36]

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

 

[Mirc]

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.

 

[say1988]

I always had problems pronouncing those R's.