Re: "New World": Little Russia (Malaja Rus'), Texas

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Danny Wier wrote:

> > That's nice... I like the old orthography :)
>
> I wouldn't have it any other way.  If I were a Russian, I'd want to go
> back the old orthography.  Well maybe except for all the final
> hard-signs.
The final hard signs are the least of it.  The worst part is all those
pointless jat' characters, the locations of which just have to be
memorized, and then the random contrasts like "mir" and "mIr" (with
Ukrainian-style "i").

> > For what sounds, I wonder?
>
> The umlauted vowels result from German and French influence, as back
> vowels are fronted in a form of umlaut paralleling both languages.  I
> also separate the two e's, the one that makes soft consonants and the
> one that makes hard ones.  (I reckon the former is accomplished with
> the letter Yat... ¿verdad?)
The reversed "e" already does that, unless I don't understand your point.

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"