Package [russian]{babel} seems to ignore quotation mark + comma

Question

I am experiencing some strange behavior of the Russian babel package: whenever there is a combination of '",' (quotation mark with following comma) it is simply ignored. Below is a minimum example:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english, russian]{babel}

\begin{document}
    English: "once upon a time", "there was a king".\\
    Русский: "жил-был царь", "в тридевятом королевстве".
\end{document}

(see image below for what I am getting). The error is in both English and Russian texts.

If I remove "russian" from {babel} in the header and the Russian line from the document, everything starts to work okay again, as in the code below:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}
    English: "once upon a time", "there was a king".
\end{document}

Does anybody know of a workaround to this phenomenon? I am using TexStudio 2.12.2 over MikTex 2.9, OS = Windows 10.

Answer 1

The " character is for babel the sign that it uses a shorthand at this place. You can prevent that shorthand by using "{}, but the better option would be to use the right opening and closing quotes (see first two lines in the picture).

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english, russian]{babel}

\begin{document}
    English: ``once upon a time'', ``there was a king''.\\
    Русский: ``жил-был царь'', ``в тридевятом королевстве''.\\
    English: "once upon a time"{}, "there was a king".\\
    Русский: "жил-был царь"{}, "в тридевятом королевстве".
\end{document}