One of the most common mistakes in English writing is always made by Petersburgers, describing their city or indicating the address in letters. The word "St. Petersburg" in English is written both with a hyphen and without it, with a mixture of transcription and transliteration and other errors that are made due to various factors. Let’s figure out how to write "St. Petersburg" in English.
Common spelling of a toponym
First you need to determine why and how to spell: Sankt Petersburg or Saint Petersburg.
St. Petersburg is one of the attractive cities for tourists from other countries. It is famous for palaces, theaters, gardens, vibrant history and pronounced culture. Tourists flock to it from all over the world, the city center is gradually becoming multilingual, in the cafe you can increasingly find a menu in English. After a wonderful trip to the Northern capital of Russia, enthusiastic foreigners leave a huge amount of reviews on the websites for travelers. Scrolling through them, you can see that they do not use a hyphen to write the word "St. Petersburg" in the international language of communication, but rather, write these two words with a space, while reducing the first.
In the American, Australian and British geographical atlases there are only two names for St. Petersburg, this is "St. Petersburg" or "Saint Petersburg". Sankt Petersburg, as has already been correctly noted, is an incorrect option. The fact is that in English there is no widespread use of hyphens and dashes. Therefore, the name of the city in this case is usually written with a space.
For example, the English word New York in Russian will be written as "New York" with a hyphen, New Hampshire - as "New Hampshire", New Jersey - as "New Jersey", Rhode Island turns into Russian "Rhode Island" and the famous Los Angeles - in "Los Angeles".
If we consider examples of translations of city names from Russian into English, then in them you can see Rostov-on-Don (Rostov-on-Don), hyphens in which are left because of a literal translation. Ulan-Ude is also customary to write with a hyphen (Ulan-Ude), as is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky).
Transcription and transliteration
Most often, transliteration is used to designate the names of cities and countries, and only then toponyms can acquire other forms in speech, over time.
So, what is right: Sankt Peterburg or Saint Petersburg? In the first case, transliteration techniques were used, when the name is written in letters, in accordance with the alphabet. This can also be called transcription, since this word is pronounced in the same way.
In general, transliteration is a linguistic method of transmitting characters from one language to another using certain characters of the alphabet that are equal in value. This is a very accurate transfer of names, not allowing the addition of additional characters to clarify sounds. Transcription also conveys the pronunciation of the name, it is customary to add additional language characters in it for a more accurate sound specification.
Title translation
Proper names are never translated, a mixed method of transliteration and transcription is used to transfer the name. The funny fact is that the name of the city of St. Petersburg is no longer native Russian, and although it was created in honor of St. Peter (St Petersburg - the city of St. Peter), but invited by Peter the First, foreign experts recorded and voiced in their own way. As a result, the name was fixed in the German version. Therefore, in English, to write St Petersburg or Saint Petersburg is correct, Sankt Petersburg as a German option remains for the Germans.
Such an interesting linguistic paradox happened with the name of this city.
