Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dr. Joel M. Hoffman" <joel AT exc.com>]

>> we should not draw any conclusions from it.  (In general,
>> transliterations are terrible guides to language, as I discuss at
>> length in my book, and as is well-known by linguists.  If people want,
>> I'll try to post the evidence on-line.)
>
>In general? Any problem with German or Russian names transliterated into 
>English?

Yes, oodles of them.  Consider the English word "Russia" itself.  The
English is bisyllabic, the Russian trisyllabic.

Table 6.2 from my book:

      http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman/Excerpts/ITB-p88.pdf

goes through some other examples.  (And Vadim, you should know this
--- you have my book.)  Going the other way, we find "Garvard" in
Russian for "Harvard" in English.  In Hebrew, we find LIN-KO-LEN for
English "Lincoln," even though the second "L" is silent in English.
Etc.

-Joel M. Hoffman
 http://www.exc.com/JoelHoffman