Comm on Coll and pre-Coll Russian data base

[Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji]

Dear Max,
One thing that particularly fills me with joy is your eternal
claim that Ukraina is not Russia. People in the West often
don't see the difference between Russia and the previous Soviet
Union simply because Russia dominated. While few confuse
Eastern Europe with Russia, the word 'Cyrillic characters' is always
confused with modern Russian typeface, which is Latinized though
not so completely as in Polish. Why not just say 'Russian characters' or
Ukrainian characters? That will be simpler to understand.
People say 'English letters', but not 'Latin letters' because they
know even the most recent Latin characters that had the lower case as well
didn't distinguish U,V,W, for example. And in the same vein people don't
call Latin characters Greek because they know that whatever the origin
they are different. Therefore, whatever the origin, let us call Russian
characters Russian and not Cyrillic (let the term 'Cyrillic letters' refer
to the hand-written script of the Middle Ages).

Incidentally, most Japanese are not sure whether America is USA or
North, Central and South Americas.

Cheers,
Tsuji