Volapuk encoding

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List of encodings
Translit.	Cyrillic	Volapuk
a	a	a
b	б	6
v	в	B
g	г	r, 2
d	д	D, g
e	е	e
yo	ё	e", e~
zh	ж	}\|{, >\|<, *
z	з	3
i	и	u, N
y	й	u~, u'
k	к	K
l	л	J\|, Jl, /\
m	м	M
n	н	H
o	о	o
p	п	n, II
r	р	p
s	с	c
t	т	T, m
u	у	y
f	ф	(\|), dp
kh	х	x
ts	ц	u_, U_, u, , U,
ch	ч	4
sh	ш	W, w, LLI
shch	щ	W, , LLI, , LLI_
"	ъ	~b, `b
y	ы	bl, b!, b1, 61
'	ь	b
e	э	~), E
yu	ю	I-0, I-O, I0, IO
ya	я	9, 9\|, 91, R, q

Volapuk encoding (Russian: кодировка "воляпюк" or "волапюк", kodirovka volapyuk) is a slang term for rendering the letters of the Cyrillic alphabet with Latin ones. Also sometimes called "Moldavskiy" (Moldavian) language, like in "Davay po moldavski" (Let's talk Moldavian, possibly due to Latin alphabet use in Moldavia.)

[edit] Origins

Volapuk has been in use since the early days of the internet to write e-mail messages and other texts in Russian in cases where the support of Cyrillic fonts was limited: either the sender did not have a keyboard with Cyrillic letters or the receiver was not necessarily expected to have Cyrillic screen fonts. In the early days the situation was aggravated by a number of mutually incompatible computer encodings for the Cyrillic alphabet, so that the sender and receiver were not guaranteed to have the same one. Also, the 7-bit character encoding of the early days was an additional upset.

Some Russian e-mail providers even included this encoding into the list of available options for the e-mails routed abroad, and their menu looked like, e.g.,

MIME/BASE64, MIME/Quoted-Printable, volapuk, uuencode

[edit] Etymology

The name comes from the Volapük constructed language, for two reasons. A Cyrillic text written in this way looks strange and often funny, just as a Volapük text may appear. At the same time, the word "Volapük" itself sounds funny to Russian ears, so the name stuck. It is worth pointing out here that Volapük is based on English vocabulary, but the resulting language is nothing like English.

Volapuk is not exactly a transliteration. There are no "standardized" rules. For example, some would use the "unused" Latin letters X and Y for Cyrillic Х (Kha) and У (U) that look the same. When written in a hurry, one may easily type, e.g., "P" instead of Р (Er) (R is normally expected). As a result, the text becomes even more funny and difficult to read.

[edit] History

By the late 90's, the encoding problem had been almost completely resolved, due to the constantly increasing number of internet users in Russia and subsequent development of support by software manufacturers and internet service providers. However, the rapid spread of cellphones, especially among young people, created a new home for Volapuk. Until 2000—2001, very few cellphones imported into Russia had support for Cyrillic characters in SMS messages. Over the following five years the situation improved dramatically, and now most of the mobile devices in Russia have full support for Cyrillic messaging. Nonetheless, Volapuk is still popular, especially among school and college students, because of the price (messages containing even one Cyrillic character cost twice as much as fully Latin messages; the explanation is that the standard message body can contain 160 Latin symbols, but Cyrillic letters are "coded" with two bytes, so that message size is limited to 70 Cyrillic symbols). This price difference made "volapukization" even more obscure, because people not only transliterate Russian words to Latin script, but also abbreviate them chaotically, and change Russian words to (generally shorter) English equivalents. This resulted in a vocabulary reminiscent of leetspeak (see example SMS message below).

[edit] Variants

Some consider it a kind of joke to systematically substitute Cyrillic letters with Latin ones that look the same, rather than sound the same. In certain cases it leads to collisions, e.g., in the case of P and R vs. Cyrillic П (Pe) and Р (Er).

The Latin letters that basically match the Cyrillic ones by look and sound are E, T, O, A, K, M, and sometimes C.
The Latin letters that only look the same are Y, P, H, X, B, and sometimes C.

Some tricks include 'b' for 'ь', 'q' for 'я', the digraph 'b!' for 'Ы', and the trigraph '}|{' for 'Ж'.

Volapuk encoding enthusiasts sometimes use digits to convey similar Cyrillic letters, reminiscent of leetspeak. For example, '4' looks similar to Ч (Che), '9' looks similar to Я (Ya), and '3' is almost ideal for З (Ze).

[edit] Examples

COBETCKIJ COIO3 ("advanced" volapuk)
СОВЕТСКИЙ СОЮЗ (Cyrillic)
SOVETSKIY SOYUZ (transliteration)
Soviet Union (English)

Example of a typical SMS message:

Xai Hat!skazu bcem 4to 9 ne npudy. Dabai bctpet cy6 7ve4era.9 lav tebya. ("advanced" volapuk—the goal was to compact the message down to 70 symbols!)
Привет, Наташа. Скажи всем, что я не приду. Давай встретимся в субботу в 7 вечера. Я люблю тебя. (Cyrillic, standard Russian)
Hi, Natasha. Skazhi vsem, chto ya ne pridu. Davay vstretimsya v subbotu v 7 vechera. Ya love tebya. (transliteration; notice occasional English)
Hi Natasha, tell everyone that I'm not going to come. Let's meet on Saturday, 7PM. I love you. (English)