So in Kazan I live on Yapeyev Street (goal: find out who Yapeyev is), near its intersection with Bolshaya Krasnaya Street (Big Red Street). I've already seen four types of signs for Bolshaya Krasnaya:
1. ул. Б. Красная

2. Большая Красная ур. / ул. Большая Красная

3. Зур Кызыл ур. / ул. Большая Красная

4. Bol'şaya Krasnaya ur. / ул. Большая Красная

Sign number one is straight-up Russian – ul. (for ulitsa – "street") Bolshaya Krasnaya.
Sign number two has both Tatar and Russian, but the words "Big Red" haven't been translated into Tatar – you can only tell it's Tatar because "street" is abbreviated as "ur." and comes after the street name.
Sign number three has both Tatar and Russian again, but the Tatar has translated "Bolshaya Krasnaya" to "Zur Kızıl."
Sign four is the weirdest one – they went to the trouble of putting Tatar in Latin script (a no-no in the Soviet era and therefore a big symbol of revived Tatar identity in the 1990's), but didn't bother to translate the Russian words, which are so easily translatable! What's with that? For the rest of my time here, I will be looking for the holy grail of street signs, of the form:
Tatar-in-Latin ur.
ул. Russian-in-Cyrillic
Pictures will follow if I find it.
Really interesting! Part of my thesis was on laws on orthography in Tatarstan. I looked desperately online for pictures of Tatar-in-latin street signs but couldn't find any. Here is a fun article on language politics in Tatarstan if you have time to kill... Language ideologies and the "purification" of post-Soviet Tatar: http://www.suzannewertheim.com/publications/Ab-Imperio.pdf
ReplyDeleteAwesome! Thanks, Julia!
ReplyDelete