Re: OT: Russian in ASCII?

On Wed, 7 Jan 2004, John Cowan wrote:

> Jan van Steenbergen scripsit:
>
> > NB You can often easily recognise the source(s) of a writer's text
> > by simply looking at the transcription(s) used. Sometimes you can
> > distinguish Gorbatschow(German), Khrushchev (English), and Tsjernenko
> > (Dutch) in one text!
>
> Not always.  The conventional English spelling of the composer is any
> of Tchaikovsky, Tschaikovsky, or even straight German Tschaikowsky,
> though Chaykovsky would be more suited to the general run of English
> transcriptions.
>
> Back when I used to play Botticelli (a variant of Twenty Questions in
> which the first letter of the subject's name is given), I always used
> to insist that no Russians be used as subjects because of transcription
> problems.
Reminds me of a show I once watched, can't remember what it was though. A
young girl was playing a game like that, and they'd established that
(among other things) the person the girl was thinking of was an English
(!) composer who's name started with C. They gave up and she announced it
was Tchaikovsky.

--
Tristan