Talk:Federal subjects of Russia

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The content of List of federal subjects of Russia was merged into Federal subjects of Russia. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

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Map is missing Karachay-Cherkessia

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That: Karachay-Cherkessia. —Michael Z. 2019年11月10日 22:52 z

New Map

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Hi everyone, I noticed that there were a few issues with the map of federal subjects with the Kerson Oblast missing some of the territories that it claims from the Mykolaiv Oblast. On further inspection the map also had a range of different formatting issues to the point at which it would be easier to just create a new map, which I have done. I've also tried to make it colour blind freinds -though the current one appears to already be so as well. Hope this resource is useful. Kappasi (talk)

Diacritics

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Latest comment: 2 months ago 18 comments2 people in discussion

@Kwamikagami The diacritics present on the map are confusing and pointless and do not aid in pronunciation what so ever as reader cannot be expected to know what they mean, continuation of previous discussion on my talk page PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 11:30, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

You're welcome to your ignorance, but that's not reason to remove info so that other people don't have it. — kwami (talk) 11:47, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

This answer does not address my points. diacritics are not present in the English language so English readers will likely not know what they mean. this page doesn't even need a pronunciation guide anyway. most areas have pretty self explanatory pronunciations and the pages for states and territories of the United States, Provinces of China, and States and union territories of India don't include pronunciation guide so why should this be any different? and if we were to include one this wouldn't be a good way to do it because it could mislead readers into thinking it is the proper name of these provinces, a better solution would be a IPA column in the list section of this article if you insist that readers must know how to pronounce these. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 12:25, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

This is a system used by millions of people and makes perfect sense. We show tone for Chinese provinces, accent for Mexican states, etc. So why should this page be any different?

You're saying that pronunciation doesn't matter, that people can just say "horse" whenever they come across a Russian name. But some people come to these articles for information, including what the names should sound like in their head. If you find the idea of pronouncing a name confusing, you don't need to do it. But you don't need to stop other people from doing it.

These are the proper names.

We don't need IPA. Readers can always look up how to pronounce Russian, we have articles for that. But you can't read this article without basic pronunciation info. — kwami (talk) 12:43, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'm not sure what you mean by that first point because on the pages Provinces of China we don't actually include any tones on the map and List of states of Mexico only includes accents when the name of the states in English is directly borrowed from the Spanish name and accents are part of name but in the case of the Federal subjects of Russia Diacritics are not part of the English name in any case and thus these are not the proper names.

If you came to this page to learn how to say these name then a IPA column would be far more useful as not only is it more precise but there are also IPA guides on Wikipedia linked by templates while no such guide existent for this Diacritic system that seems to be used primarily in Russian dictionaries that use them with Cyrillic script and not Latin.

As for your last point it seems to directly contradict your argument, you said "We don't need IPA. Readers can always look up how to pronounce Russian" as I understand this your saying that IPA Isn't needed because Readers can look up how to pronounce Russian but Diacritics are needed so readers don't need to look up how to pronounce Russian but you can't have it both ways. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 13:20, 15 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

could I get a response, I don't think we are done with this conversation. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 21:33, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

When speaking English, it's necessary to assign stress. We don't assign tone, though we probably should have the tone marks too.

For Spanish, stress is predictable, so no extra stress marks are needed. Plus it's not transliterated.

We could remove the stress from Omsk, Tomsk etc. as redundant.

Yes, I think we're done here. Your only argument is WP:IDONTLIKEIT. — kwami (talk) 22:36, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

No I really don't think we're done, I'm not arguing that "I don't like it" I'm arguing that diacritics don't add anything of use and can even be a detriment and I was using my experience as an example. but it's clear we were not getting anywhere in this discussion and perhaps arbitration is needed. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 22:48, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

You can't pronounce the names without knowing where the stress lies, and the diacritics show you that.

This is a high-traffic article, and no-one else has had a problem with this. — kwami (talk) 22:50, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

but the readers don't need to know how it's pronounced, and an IPA column would be better for that anyway but I've said this before because we were not getting anywhere.

and while no one else had a problem with them, nobody had a problem with them being removed either, it's clear any other users watching this page are apathetic towards this issue with no option what so ever. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 23:00, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

IPA for what, Russian or English? I agree people don't need the IPA for Russian, but this article is in English, so we need that. Marking the stress is sufficient for that purpose. — kwami (talk) 23:02, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

I'm pretty sure the IPA is the same in all languages. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 23:06, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Yes, but Russian and English are different languages. For a Russian speaker to read "Edinburgh" or "Chicago" on Russian WP, they would need transliteration into Cyrillic plus stress marking, as English stress is not predictable. That would be enough. They wouldn't need the English IPA because they're not speaking English. — kwami (talk) 23:15, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

not sure I understand your point here. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 23:22, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

I don't know how to pronounce most Russian provinces, even in English. With the war, they come up every day, but I still don't know many of them. I use this article as a place to look them up. I suspect that I am not the only one who struggles with them.

If a name is anglicized, we can just use that. "Moscow" is an example. But most Russian provinces are not anglicized. Instead, we approximate the Russian name with English sounds. Transliteration is enough to accomplish that with one exception: stress assignment. With that one added bit of information, we can read this article in English.

We don't need the Russian IPA, because most readers are not going to need the intricacies of Russian pronunciation. Certainly not for English. It would be overkill and make the article less accessible. When readers do want them, they can look them up, but actually what we have is probably enough for anyone familiar with Russian. And it would be OR to add English IPA.

An encyclopedia is a place to learn things we don't know, not a place to limit others to our level of knowledge. — kwami (talk) 23:45, 24 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

how would the English IPA be OR? I'm sure there are tons of sources you can find that use IPA, and wouldn't the Diacritics also be OR by that definition? and IPA would make the article more accessible not less, because there are IPA templates that provide links to pronunciation guides, on the other hand the Diacritics are not explained in the article and readers have no intuitive way to know they represent stress so they make the article less accessible.

Once again this isn't going anywhere but we need to find a solution so I believe arbitration is needed. PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 01:47, 25 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Do you have a source for the English pronunciations of all Russian provinces, that would be the basis for English IPA? I'm not aware of one.

There are plenty of sources for the Russian pronunciations. That is not OR. OR would be if we guessed where the stress is. — kwami (talk) 02:01, 25 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

I have filed a request for arbitration to WP:Dispute resolution noticeboard PharaohCrab speak𓀁 works𓀨 02:26, 25 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 28 May 2026

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Latest comment: 2 months ago 3 comments3 people in discussion

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change Sergey Melikov to Fyodor Shchukin. Change Vyacheslav Gladkov to Alexander Shuvaev. Change Alexander Bogomaz to Egor Kovalchuk. Change Oleg Kuvshinnikov to Georgy Filimonov. Alekhine12 (talk) 07:05, 28 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want made. Day Creature (talk) 17:00, 28 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

The changes are indeed correct, the corresponding pages have already been updated with sources. I will do this now for this page. Ymblanter (talk) 20:48, 28 May 2026 (UTC) Reply

Request for Comments: Stress Marks on Subdivision Names

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Latest comment: 2 days ago 19 comments13 people in discussion

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Should stress marks on the map on the names of the subdivisions be used to aid in the pronunciation of the place names when reading the article in English?

Please answer Yes or No or the equivalent with an optional brief statement in the Survey.

This RFC is about whether there should be stress marks on the place names on the map. It is not about the place names anywhere else in the article. 18:14, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:14, 18 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Can you explain why there'd be a question as to whether or not this should be done?

CSGinger14 (talk) 20:20, 19 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

Survey

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Yes. I use this map as a general reference for Russian provinces. I like to know how to pronounce things when I read about them. All that is needed for that is knowing where the stress is. With the war, many of these names are repeatedly in the news, but I don't have them all memorized. — kwami (talk) 22:02, 18 June 2026 (UTC) Reply
Article contents, including non-prose content, should use articles titles per WP:GEONAME. Discussions to add or remove stress marks or other forms of diacritics should be handled on the talkpages of those articles. The RfC wording in its narrow scoping misses that there is a wider guideline about this. CMD (talk) 03:01, 20 June 2026 (UTC) Reply
(summoned by the bot) Yes. Clearly informative and useful, and I don't see any harm. I think it would take an unreasonably strict reading of the WP:GEONAME guideline to argue that that guideline prohibits this. The suggestion is not to use completely different names in this article, just to add a stress mark to the name. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 23:10, 20 June 2026 (UTC) Reply
Yes I think accent marks are very helpful, as the pronunciation is often not intuitive for an English speaker. Slava570 (talk) 17:17, 21 June 2026 (UTC) Reply
Adding to my comment:

Firstly, WP:Ignore all rules says If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it.

Rules and conventions are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. If the only reason we are following the convention is because it's a convention, then why do it? What's more important is to be helpful to readers.

MOS:DIACRITICS says The use of diacritics in non-English words is neither encouraged nor discouraged. Use generally depends on whether they appear in reliable English-language sources (emphasis added)

and

Use of diacritics is determined on a topic-by-topic basis; a small group of editors cannot prohibit or require the use of diacritics within a given class of articles.

so we do have some discretion here, and we can do what is most useful. Slava570 (talk) 12:05, 17 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
yes It would help a lot with the pronunciation of the names, but wouldn't it be hard to read, especially at smaller resolution, and in the mobile versions? Most readers use mobile for most things. Happypenguins82 (talk) 22:27, 21 June 2026 (UTC) Reply
No. This convention for indicating stress is not used in English. For example, searching on Google for "Yamálo-Nénets" yields 1 result (this page), whereas searching for "Yamalo-Nenets" yields 882,000 results. • jhvx talk edits 22:34, 7 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
No.This convention for indicating stress is not used in English. Including a pronounciation guide in articles themselves (for those who can and wish to read them), may be helpful, but adding stress marks on maps is out of place IMO, potentially misleading and possibly WP:OR.Pincrete (talk) 06:52, 16 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
No Per Pincrete, not the convention in English, so I don't see supporting it for English WP. JerryGraf (talk) 00:23, 17 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
No Per above. This convention for indicating stress for foreign language places is not observed elsewhere, such as on Japanese prefectures or Chinese provinces, as far as I know. The romanization of Russian is fairly accurate.LivinAWestLife (talk) 14:34, 17 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
Yes - Helpful for pronunciation of names and does not do any harm. (Original lister of RFC as resolution of DRN.) Robert McClenon (talk) 18:48, 23 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
No. There is a legitimate question because pronunciation assistance has to be balanced against map readability and normal cartographic practice. Stress marks may help some readers, but they are not commonly used in English-language map labels, may be unfamiliar to many users, and could make the map look cluttered. Pronunciation guidance is better provided in the article text, where it can be explained properly, rather than incorporated into the subdivision names on the map. Itliano355 (talk) 09:54, 28 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
No. If someone needs to know, the correct reference is a Russian-language dictionary. Stress marks can also be misleading for English speakers to think that Russian always writes accent marks, e.g. like French does, when it does not. This has caused issues on the English-language in Wikipedia in the past where this was misinterpreted. We are not a resource for language learning. ~2026-40695-31 (talk) 07:04, 30 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
So you expect English speakers to go to a Russian dictionary for this information? That's not feasible. The reality if this is not included, the vast majority of readers will simply never know how these words are pronounced. Slava570 (talk) 11:26, 30 July 2026 (UTC) Reply
- So? That's what the Russian dictionary is for. That's its job. If you really need to know, that is the correct resource. We just report what the name is and how it's transliterated. If you need to look up a specific name, you can also go to the article on that federal subject to see the Russian IPA, but even then, adding stress marks could imply something like "always writing them is orthographically correct", which it is not. Because of these concerns, I am in favor of omitting them to stay true to everyday Russian orthography. ~2026-40695-31 (talk) 00:20, 31 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

Discussion

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This is the most convenient way to provide the pronunciations of Russian provinces. AFAIK there is no reliable source for detailed pronunciations of all provinces in English; I doubt that many of them even have established pronunciations. Thus it would be OR to provide English IPA. — kwami (talk) 22:05, 18 June 2026 (UTC) Reply

The names of most of the federal subjects are of course borrowed from Russian, so Russian norms apply. There are very few exceptions, like Moscow, St. Petersburg, the JAO, and perhaps a few others I am not thinking of. A few have established English usage like Kamchatka, or cities where the name matches like Volgograd and Irkutsk. But most are not like this. Yamalo-Nenets is one of them. We write Yamalo-Nenets because Russian writes Ямало-Ненец (strangely, the English Wikipedia page uses accent marks and seems to be a bit of an outlier). The accent marks are mostly for dictionaries or "wait, how exactly is this said", but the IPA also solves this problem, roughly /jəˈmɑlə ˈnɛnɪts/ if we were to adapt this to English. If too much OR, we can write the Russian pronunciation as /jɪˈmaɫə ˈnjenjɪts/ or similar. This solves the problem of "how is this said". Compare the entry in Russian Wiktionary Ямало-Ненецкий. We have a sister project which does this for us. Why spend the effort here? ~2026-40695-31 (talk) 01:38, 31 July 2026 (UTC) Reply

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