CHAT: Malenkaya Rossiya, Texas (NOT Malaya), and DubYa/DuBBa/DaW

--- John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:

> On Sat, 19 Aug 2000, Danny Wier wrote:
>
> >  The Cyrillic script used is not much different from the
> > pre-Soviet alphabet (it still has the letters i, jat, izhitsa and
> > fita), except umlauted a, o and u are also used, along with an sz
> > ligature: ß(which is rarely used actually since Cyrillic has
> letters
> > for /s/, /z/ and /ts/ already).
>
> I'm trying to imagine what a Cyrillic ligature for "sz" would look
> like, and how it would be written.  I think in handwriting especially
> it would be absolutely indistinguishable from the two-letter
> sequence,
> and so would not be felt as a proper letter, but more like the
> "typesetter's ligatures" fi, fl, etc. which are totally subconscious.
sz ligature would be practically identical to German es-zet, if you
make Cyrillic s (which looks like Latin c) into an elogated letter,
which too would be identical to Latin long s).  The sequence is
unnecessary since Cyrillic has letters for /s/ and /z/, while German s
has the value of either [z] or [s] depending on position in word, while
German z is always pronounced [ts].  The addition of es-zet is
necessary since you have single and doubled /s/, and the latter already
required a double-s.

Unicode only has individual presentation ligature forms only for Latin
(fi and fl are most common) and Armenian (mostly Cn sequences), but
Unicode has A TON of Arabic ligatures.

> > DubYa.
>
> Is this a reference to the would-be U.S. president, your
> fellow-countryman?
Naw, just the first letter of my last name.  My signatures differ
according to my mood.

DaW.


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