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Grex Language Item 55: The Russian Item (Po Russkij)
Entered by srw on Mon Jan 24 06:28:15 UTC 1994:

I have decided to learn Russian (again). I have a number of
textbooks and dictionaries left over from when I was a grad student.
This is so long ago that books were actually inexpensive. Anyway my
Russion is too weak for me to start posting much in it.

Also posting in Russian without Cyrillic is pretty hard to take in
any quantity. Nevertheless, it is possible (I think).

I have a Cyrillic font for my mac, but the keys are mapped so
randomly that it is really hard to get used to. It's sort of like
learning the Cyrillic Alphabet *and* Dvorak keyboard at the same
time.

Does anyone know where the keys ought to be on a Cyrillic keyboard?
Does anyone know how to transliterate the soft sign?

Spasibo.

-srw

15 responses total.

#1 of 15 by slappy on Fri Oct 28 03:45:49 1994:

I usually have seen the miyaki znak (soft sighn) transliterated by using an
apostrophe.

#2 of 15 by brighn on Fri Oct 28 17:18:10 1994:

I've seen a variety of ways to distribute to keys in Cyrillic; there doesn't
seem to be a standard, although for Americans the first priority seems to be
phonemic similarity and the second visual similarity.
e.g. Cyr. C on S, Cyr. 3 on Z, etc.
then shch (or sh, but not as often) on W, yu on H, etc.
then whatever's left over wherever it will fit -- ya on Q, for instance

#3 of 15 by srw on Sat Oct 29 01:46:49 1994:

The lack of a standard seems to be the theme here.
I have some Cyrillic fonts for my Mac, but the keyboard combinations seemed
random (no phonemic similarity). So I guessed that perhaps it was from the
kind of Cyrillic keyboard they use in Russia. A quick check with a friend at 
work who is fluent in Russian and had lots of experience typing on those old
Cyrillic typewriters proved that guess to be completely wrong. <sigh>

#4 of 15 by brighn on Sat Oct 29 04:42:24 1994:

Second that, Steve.  My experience with Cyrillic keyboards (a few hours 
here and there three summers back) was that they were fairly intuitive 
if you knew the American keyboard, and not a bit like the Mac font I was
using.

The best thing, of course, is to get KeyMapper or Fontographer (the latter
of which is overkill for this purpose) and rearrange the font the way you 
like.  Considering I use Ukrainian Cyrillic (4 extra characters, and missing
three or four), that's about the only choice I have anyway.

#5 of 15 by keesan on Mon Jan 12 02:25:17 1998:

Would anyone like older editions of Smirnitsky or Myuller, for $1.25 each?
(I just replaced them with slightly newer editions).  Cunning, do you actually
read Ukrainian well?  And even write it?  I translate Russian and sometimes
they send me Ukrainian by mistake, and I could use a bit of help.  Have you
met Kristina who sells vegetables at the farmer's market?

#6 of 15 by albaugh on Thu Mar 19 17:05:38 1998:

Can anyone provide some basic "chatty" kinds of Russian phrases, and show the
approximate phonetic pronunciation?  Some examples I'd like to see:

Hi!
How are you?
How's it going?
Bye.
etc.

#7 of 15 by srw on Mon Mar 23 03:43:20 1998:

Sindi should know.

#8 of 15 by albaugh on Tue Mar 24 15:13:28 1998:

I found a small, useful Russian tutorial program called "rustu15.zip".  You
may be able to find this many places, including the Simtel collection.  The
URL I used from Alta Vista search was
"http://www.bsoftware.com/v2/a19c85p1.htm"

#9 of 15 by keesan on Thu Mar 26 19:24:46 1998:

Steve Weiss got the Smirnitsky dictionary

Hello - zdravstvuytye
How are things - kak dela (stress the a)
Bye - Do svidaniya - pronounced dasvidaniya (stress second a)
        meaning see you again.
My name is - menya zovut, pronounced minya zavut (stress 2nd sylls)
Good day - dobry den', pronounced roughly dobree dyain.
I love you - Ya tebya lyublyu.  pronounced with all final syllables
  stressed, tibya, the u is like in tune.
Russia - Rossiya - pronounced rasiya (2nd syll stressed, i as in machine)

#10 of 15 by atticus on Fri Mar 27 12:16:56 1998:

Sindi, what does "raduga" mean? Is it "progress"? I am asking this 
because the publishing house which was known as "Progress Publishers"
changed their name to "Raduga Publishers" post-Perestroika.

#11 of 15 by keesan on Tue Mar 31 02:49:35 1998:

Rainbow.  Related words refer to iridescence, opalescence, or the presence
of many colors of the rainbow together.  What sorts of things do they publish?

#12 of 15 by atticus on Wed Apr 29 22:38:31 1998:

They used to publish Russian literature and a lot of translations into a 
number of Indian languages, including my mother tongue. The books used 
of very high quality and quite cheap (I guess the government was 
subsidizing them).

#13 of 15 by albaugh on Wed Aug 26 16:43:24 1998:

Aa 6 B |^ /| Ee E:e: >|<* 3 |/| |7| K JI M H Oo II Pp Cc T Yy (|) Xx II\
7 III III\ bI -) IO S|

Transliteration = TpaHcJIbIT-)pe|7|IIIaH  :-)

#14 of 15 by orinoco on Wed Aug 26 22:30:57 1998:

<rolls eyes>

#15 of 15 by albaugh on Thu Aug 27 16:09:38 1998:

poJI3 a|7|3  8-)

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