Re: Russian

The Russian alphabet is really neat. It is phonemic if not entirely
phonetic. It is based on the Greek alphabet although Peter the Great
reformed it to make it look more European, hence the backwards R. etc. l
don't know if I can give the sound equivialents, however, without being able
to display the alphabet. I'll try with my cyrillic fonts and who knows if
they will display.

Let's start with vowels. Russian vowels are divided into "hard" and "soft"
pairs. "Soft" means that the vowel palatalizes the preceding consonant.

Hard     Soft
A,a  -ah     Я, а -yah
Э, э -eh     E, e -yeh
Ы, ы [į] ? barred “I”    И, и -yee
О, о -oh     ё [no cap. in my font-set] -yoh
У, у -oo     Ю, ю -yoo
Й, й has the value of IPA [j]

These consonants have about the same value as the Roman alphabet: К, М, Т,.
Б - B     П - P
В - V   С - S
Г - G   Ф - F
Д - G   Х - KH
Ж - ZH  Ц - TS
З - Z   Ч - CH
Л - L   Ш - SH
Н - N   Щ - SHCH
Ь has no phonetic value, but signifies that the preceding consonant is
palatalized.
Ъ signifies that the preceding consonant is NOT palatized even though it is
followed by a “soft” version of the vowel.

I am sending this as nicode. If these symbols don't display, I am so sorry
for presenting a page of gibberish.

----- Original Message -----
From: Colin Halverson <CHalvrson@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 1:26 PM
Subject: Russian


> I just downloaded a Russian font, and 1) I was wondering if anyone knew
the
> sound equivilants of all the letters and 2) if any one knew where I could
> download the "official Russian font"  Thanx
>