Until recently, in our foreign passports, surnames were written according to the norms of the French language. Now we have started to receive new foreign passports, where the French spelling of surnames has been changed to English. Many people are interested in what consequences this can lead to.

There are language barriers that are invisible to the eyes. You will feel them when you get to some country where everyone says "not in our way". You find yourself as if isolated from the surrounding life, although there is no fence.

Language barriers and borders of languages do not necessarily coincide with state borders. Often, there is a band of transitional dialects between two related languages (for example, from Belarusian to Polish).

Based on the idea of a publicly accessible international language to overcome language barriers, many began to develop the basics of a special artificial language, knowledge of which would save humanity from the need to learn all other languages. So the languages ido, volapyuk, occidental and a number of others were created. The most vital of them was the Esperanto language, which today is studied not only in Europe and America, but also in Asia and Africa. There is even an Esperanto Language Academy.

In the modern world, there are concepts of West and East. They are not so much geographical as historical, and are mainly related to culture. A peculiar division into "west" and "east" is also found in the use of alphabets. The West uses the Latin alphabet. East -in Cyrillic. To the east of the Cyrillic alphabet is an area that uses Arabic graphics. Southeast Asia uses mainly hieroglyphs.

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The Latin alphabet was used by the ancient Romans. In a slightly modified form, it serves Western Europe and America to this day.

The Cyrillic alphabet is used in some countries of Eastern Europe and the former USSR.

The existence of a different alphabet among the neighboring people in everyday life does not bother anyone. This may be inconvenient in some exceptional cases, when several languages come under the spotlight at once. Catholic missionaries in Africa and Asia have seriously faced this problem. They translated the Bible into the language of the country in which they preached, and needed the appropriate dictionaries. They own the first dictionaries of languages of distant countries. Naturally, they wrote down other people's words using their own Latin script, introducing additional icons for the specific sounds of each language. They called this recording transliteration. Later it was called Romanization, or Romanization (Latin belongs to the Romance language family).

The next step towards the unification of foreign-language spellings was taken when cataloging books in Prussian libraries. The books were from all over the world. Placing them in a single alphabet required recording their names and surnames of authors using a single spelling system. Special instructions were drawn up for this purpose (May 10, 1899; second publication August 10, 1908). These instructions were used as a basis for creating the transliteration standard by the International Standards Organization (ISO).

As a result of all this activity, the West has long had unified systems for recording words for Asian and African languages, often very far from their true local pronunciation. For example, the name of the currency of Burma, known in some countries as kyat, the Burmese themselves pronounce ja. Geographical names of different countries were recorded using this system. However, our specialists had to redo a lot of things. If you focus on the Western recording system, the local population does not perceive these names by ear.

Thus, the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation is unavoidable, and you have to choose what to prefer: whether to follow the local pronunciation and get a discrepancy with the spelling of the names of the same objects in the Anglo-American system, or follow the latter and have discrepancies with the pronunciation of the same names in the field.

Note, however, this historical pattern: for the West, it has always been more important how to write, and for the East - how to pronounce. Moscow is east for the West, and west for Asia. In Moscow, both traditions met, from where-the desire to get a successful record while maintaining a more or less correct pronunciation.

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For Latin-writing Europe, where many countries with their own official state languages are located on a relatively small territory, it is important to have a single Latin spelling of a given name (surname, geographical name). Each country will read it differently. For example, the English surname Byron (Byron) is read by the French as Biron. As long as Latin was the international language in Europe, it was convenient. Moreover, some words and names were specially given a Latin form to make it easier to enter them into Latin, for example, Rene Descartes became Renatus Cartesius.

In Russia, there have long been two types of transmission of foreign-language names: practical transcription, which we use in the general press (newspapers, magazines), on geographical maps. We rewrite foreign-language names in Russian letters, trying to get as close as possible to the foreign-language pronunciation and, if possible, show the spelling features of the source language, where Schmit, Schmidt, Schmitt or Man come from with one or two n's at the end. At the same time, no additional spellings are entered in the Russian alphabet.

The second method of transmission is transliteration, in which the main focus is on spelling, it is possible to introduce additional symbols into the alphabet, and pronunciation recedes into the background. It was transliteration that gave the old Russian form Nevton to the English surname Newton. But this traditional form originated at a time when Latin was the international language of scholars. Newton wrote his works in Latin. M. V. Lomonosov spoke in Latin with his scientific colleagues.

When translating Russian names using foreign-language graphics, we often refer to transliteration: Kashin (KaSin), Chugunov (Cugunov). This transliteration system is based on the Slavic Latin alphabet, the same one that the Czechs began to write when they turned to Catholicism. Our system was developed by A. A. Reformatsky. Using this system, an Atlas of the World in Latin graphics was published in Moscow. The system was approved by Western scientists. They called it the second Russian spelling.

There are other transliteration systems, such as the one adopted by the International Organization of Standards (ISO). To represent Russian letters, they resort to a number of conditional spellings, for example, y is transmitted as and with a" cap " at the top and, e-as e with a dot e or with an accent sign at the top E. No one is interested in reading these signs.

Apparently, transliteration is not quite suitable for documentary records, since passports use practical transcription based on French or English. In the bibliography, on the contrary, transliteration is preferred, since it gives unambiguous correspondences and ensures accuracy.

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If you cross the Italian border by train, you are asked to take your seat in the compartment. Extremely polite, but extremely strict border guard, flipping through your passport, transmits on the intercom: Sorrento, Urbino, Piedmont, Roma, Ancona... At first, you wonder what geography has to do with it. Then you can guess: it spells your last name to enter it in the computer. In such cases, we use the following names: Semyon, Ulyana, Peter, Roman, Alexander...

If you have a more or less simple surname - Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov-it will remain unchanged according to both the French and English rules: Ivanov, Petrov, Sidorov. But if you are Ushakov, Zhukov, Koshkin, Chizhikov, Shishkin, your last name will change beyond recognition: in French-Ouchakov, Joukov, Kochkine, Tchijikov, Chichkin; in English-Ushakov, Zhukov, Koshkin, Chizhikov, Shishkin.

If you have come to another country once, how your last name is written does not matter significantly. But if you have repeatedly arrived on the old passport, and then on the new one, then your last name will get into the computer twice, in a different spelling. If you have booked a hotel based on the previous spelling of your last name, but you come with a new passport, you may not be allowed in. Even worse, if you have a deposit in some bank or a fee in some publishing house. Examples can be multiplied.

Even if the message about the new rules for writing Russian surnames is sent to the relevant authorities of different countries, identification of your identity can not always be carried out, because for the West it is important how to write...

So what a blow our modern bodies that issue foreign passports put their compatriots under, translating their surnames into a new spelling! How can they prove to a German or Swedish customs officer that Shchukin and Chtchukine are one and the same thing? After all, for a country like Finland or Sweden, writing seemingly the same name with one or two identical letters is different names: Aagpe and Ashe, Emilia and Emiilia. Who needs to create such a card with the names and surnames of Russian citizens and why?

Wouldn't it be better not to use the old spelling when exchanging a foreign passport and write in a new way (according to the rules of the English language) only the names of those who are traveling abroad for the first time, of course, if this is the time requirement? We should not forget, however, that not all people go to the countries of the English language and that the Russian pronunciation of the surname, which we are trying so hard to preserve by "improving" the spelling of it, does not interest anyone from the border services.

In the 17th century, French became the international language of diplomats, replacing Novolatinsk, which remained for some time in scientific treatises. The heyday of French literature, kul-

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tours made the public of many countries turn to it. The Academy of Sciences in France was created specifically for the development and protection of the French language. The names of world-famous people began to be pronounced as if they were French: Cromwell, Washington, Cardigan, Wellington. The French enlightenment, literature, and ideas of transforming society have gained fans in many countries. Even the Napoleonic wars, which caused damage to a number of states, did not reduce public interest in the French language and culture. And in the XX century, French is recognized as one of the international languages.

But times are changing, and we are changing with them. In the XX century, the first place in terms of international importance is occupied by the English language. Changing traditions and cultural orientations are always accompanied by major language changes. So it is now: the French orientation in diplomacy has been replaced by Anglo-American, and this is primarily reflected in proper names. If the international language of diplomats has become English, then they prefer to write names according to the norms of the English language, even if spelling is more important for the West than pronunciation. However, in the last century, the name in the French spelling was quietly included in the English text. For example, P. I. Tchaikovsky traveled to America, where he conducted performances of his works. The French spelling Tchaikovsky became traditional for the English, although the combination ch was enough for them to show the sound h.

Each language, mastering foreign words and proper names, "adjusts" them to its own standards. So, the French turn the name of Julius Caesar into Jules Cesar, the English-into Julius Caesar.

When people replace the French spelling with English in their passports, they don't think much about how the first or last name will be pronounced. So a person changes his last name without actually changing it, that is, its Russian form remains the same. But foreign pronunciation can change, especially in so-called open syllables. The English will read the name Burov Burov, Lapin-Leypin. The French spelling, to a certain extent, provided a more stable pronunciation. The very fact that it wasn't English warned Englishmen against pronouncing it in English. The cancellation of this provision will lead to the assimilation of Russian first and last names into English. I, for one, will be Supranskaya.

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