Re: Russian orthography (was: A perfect day ...)

Vasiliy Chernov wrote:

> - I think YERY (or JERY) is a more correct spelling than YERU. It is
> usually transcribed with 'y', and its more common name in Russian is
> simply 'Y'.
Certainly true for Russian, but capitalized letter names in my postings
are the names used by the Unicode Standard/ISO 10646, and
"CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER YERU" (and corresponding "SMALL") it is.

These names are *never* changed no matter how inappropriate
they may be.

> - Add ZHE (always hard, except for some special cases).
Ah, I knew I was leaving something out.

> TSE can also
> combine with 'Y', mainly before flectional endings and in the roots of
> a couple of words.
Didn't know that.

Odd historical note:  Why does U look like Latin "Y", but YU like
Latin "IO" with a ligature between?   Peter the Great.  Originally
the sound /u/ was written OY, as in mediaeval and modern Greek
(omicron upsilon), and /ju/ was the same with an I ligatured
in front:  I-OY.  When Peter reformed the alphabet, he shortened
I-OY to just I-O, and OY to just Y.

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