Comm on Coll and pre-Coll Russian data base

[Bohdan Peter Rekshynskyj]

At 1:50 1/23/96, Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji wrote:

>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
I don't think there is much of a difference - the "soviet" union
was a Russian empire - another brutal continuation of the tsarist
empire.  It still exists under the moniker of "federation'.  But, this
is not the forum for such items and I shan't continue this thread.

>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).

Actually, when I have to explain this alphabet to others I use the terms
"Ukrainian Cyrillic" and "Russian Cyrillic".  I think this is better since
both languages use a *VARIANT* of the cyrillic alphabet.  The differences
(such as Ukrainian having more letters than the Russian) betwixt both
systems generally to not appear to be of interest to those unfamiliar with
these languages.

>Incidentally, most Japanese are not sure whether America is USA or
>North, Central and South Americas.
I'd be surprised if most Americans could find Japan on the map, knowing
our (lack of) educational system - but, oops, wrong forum again for this
thread, chuckle!

                                Regards,

                                                Bohdan Peter Rekshynskyj

>
>Cheers,
>Tsuji