From dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu  Tue Oct  1 17:44:33 1996
From: dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu (Devin P Browne)
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 13:44:33 -0400
Subject: consultant positions
Message-ID: <TUE.1.OCT.1996.134433.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 96 01:47:10 EDT
From: Center for Civil Society International <ccsi at u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list <civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu>
Subject: media viability fund (fwd)


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 13:53:59 -0400
>From: Jim Cashel <jim at cashel.com>
Subject: ST Consulting Positions with Media Viability Fund

************

Media Viability Fund Consulting Positions

The Media Viability Fund (MVF) is a joint project of The Eurasia Foundation
and the Media Development Loan Fund. The MVF will support independent media
in the NIS through the integrated use of loans and technical assistance. The
MVF will begin by focusing on three to four pilot projects in Russia,
Ukraine and, if resources permit, another NIS country.

The MVF is currently seeking three consultants to undertake a comprehensive
evaluation of regional media in Russia and Ukraine. Potential candidates
should be available for a three-month period, beginning in mid October. The
purpose of the evaluation is to provide an objective, external analysis of
the viability of independent newspapers in select regions of Russia and
Ukraine, and make specific recommendations to the MVF for the most effective
methods for working with regional media organizations.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Extensive travel (up to a four-week period for Russia, three weeks for
Ukraine) to several regions of Russia and/or Ukraine to meet with
independent newspapers, local print houses, and other relevant organizations.

3. Following the directives outlined in a scope of work, draft an evaluation
report to be reviewed by the MVF Program Coordinator and Management Team.

4. Revise evaluation report and produce a final draft.

5. Be able to work as a team player with other consultants, MVF staff and
field staff of Eurasia and Soros Foundations.

Qualifications:

Education: A four-year university degree, preferably in the area of
journalism, business, or international relations.

Experience: Work experience in the NIS essential. Experience in print media
in the West and in the FSU is required. Experience with the business as well
as journalistic side of print media is preferred. Familiarity with technical
assistance, training and/or loan programs for media in the FSU is preferred.
Prior project evaluation experience preferred.

Other: Fluency in written and spoken English is required. Fluency in Russian
is required. Strong writing, analytic, and inductive reasoning skills a must.

Send resume and expression of interest to:

Department of Administration
The Eurasia Foundation
1527 New Hampshire Ave, NW
Washington, DC 20036
Fax: 202-234-7377
e-mail: nmadarang at eurasia.org

Please no phone inquiries.

*********


From jrouhie at pop.uky.edu  Tue Oct  1 23:58:41 1996
From: jrouhie at pop.uky.edu (J. Rouhier-Willoughby)
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 19:58:41 EDT
Subject: High School and Public Relations Survey and Webpage
Message-ID: <TUE.1.OCT.1996.195841.EDT.>

As most teachers in the field can attest, Slavic languages across
the country have been suffering from a severe drop in enrollment in this
decade. Two years ago, a group of Slavic linguists, all members of AATSEEL,
met to discuss the issues related to this decline for the profession as a
whole. At that time, the Slavic Linguistics Task Force was created. It is
our hope that the task force will be able to gather data that will be used
to boost interest in Slavic and Slavic linguistics in North America. The
Committee on High School Enrollment and Public Relations is one of the
committees that makes up the task force and respectfully submits this
questionnaire to you in the hope that your insights and input will help us
rebuild the profession. The information will be presented at the AATSEEL
conference in December 1996 and will be available on the Slavic Linguistics
Task Force Web Page. We invite you to join with us at the conference to
discuss these issues. The results of the questionnaire will also be
forwarded to the leadership of AATSEEL, in the hopes that they will act
upon your suggestions. All material on the web page and forwarded to
AATSEEL will be anonomous unless you give us permission to use your name.
        While those in academia have taken steps to increase our enrollment
from within the university, there are groups of people that have been more
or less ignored in the attempts to improve enrollments. These include:
        high school teachers of Slavic languages, culture, etc.;
        Slavic heritage groups;
        non-academicians or those in non-teaching related academic
positions (librarian,
        administrator, etc.) who hold degrees in Slavic.
        .
The following questionnaire is addressed to members of these groups. If you
are a high school teacher, have a job outside of academia and/or have a
non-teaching academic position and hold a degree in Slavic, or are a member
of a Slavic heritage group, we would appreciate your cooperation and
assistance in filling out this questionnaire. If you are not a member of
any of the above groups, but know of someone who is, please pass the
questionnaire on to that person. PLEASE NOTE THAT this is the one of two
questionnaires to be released by the task force. The second survey was
released last week, and focuses specifically upon enrollment data at the
high school and college levels and on issues related to institutions of
higher learning.

Please return the questionnaire by October 30, 1996. If you would like to
return the survey via email, please send it to: jrouhie at pop.uky.edu
If you prefer U.S. mail, send the survey to: J. Rouhier-Willoughby, Dept.
of Russian and Eastern Studies, 1055 Patterson Office Tower, University of
Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506

A) Biographical Information:

Name:

Mailing Address:

email address:

Profession:

Number of Years in this or similar positions:

Institution (school, heritage group, non-academic institution, etc.):

Educational Background (institution, degree):

Prefer to remain anonymous:  Yes    No


B) HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS:

1) What Slavic language do you teach or have you taught?

2) Is that language still offered at your school?

3) If no, when was the class cancelled? What was the reason for its
cancellation?

4) How many years has it been or was it taught?

5) How many levels of that language are/were offered?

6) Are any other Slavic languages offered (or have they been offered) in
your school or in other schools in your district?

7) Could you provide enrollments in your Slavic language class(es) for the
last 5 years (or for as long as you have information)?

8) How have you attempted to solve the enrollment problems, if any, in your
classes?

9) If you have not had enrollment reductions, to what do you attribute this
fact (large number of heritage speakers, public relations, or other
factors)?

10) Is your position full-time in Slavic or do you teach other languages? If so
what languages?

11) Could you provide enrollments in non-Slavic classes for the last 5
years? If you do not have specific figures, could you please give a general
idea if the
y have fallen or risen in that time?

12) Do you (or does another teacher) teach any non-language Slavic-related
classes, such as history, folklore, culture, etc.?

13) If yes, does this course help interest in the study of the language?

14) Have you attempted any particular community outreach, public relations
or marketing strategies (such as cooperative work with heritage groups,
promoting Slavic language study to guidance counsellors, going to middle
schools to recruit, etc.)?

15) Of these attempts, which have been the most successful in your opinion? Why?

16) What suggestions do you have to increase the visibility and success of
Slavic language teaching in North American high schools (such as lobbying
of political officials, public relations in the community, involvement by
national organizations in these areas, etc.)?

17) How can university language teachers can help high school language
teachers increase the visibility and success of Slavic language teaching in
North American high schools? How can University language  teachers help you
motivate High School students continue their studies in the university
Slavic programs?

Additional comments:


C) HERITAGE GROUP MEMBERS:

1. Do you know if there is any cooperative work between your heritage group
and the University/College/High School teachers of Slavic languages that is
directed towards maintenance and promotion of your heritage language in
North America? If yes, give details.

2. Do you think that public lectures about your heritage language and
language culture (its history, development, etc.) read by University
teachers will help you in its promotion in North America?

3. Do you think that it will be a good idea if the local newspapers and
radio programs include some information about your heritage language?

4. What are your suggestions for improvement the contacts between your
heritage group and the university (college/school) teachers which are
directed towards the promotion of your heritage language in North America?

5. What are your suggestions for improvement the Slavic language teaching
in North America (such as courses, contacts between students and heritage
grioups, student (undergraduate/graduate) representatives, etc.)?

6. How can members of the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and
East European languages help you in promoting your heritage language and
culture?

7. Have you had any formal courses on your heritage's language or culture?
What and where?

8. How did you find out about the courses in 2.?

9. Were the courses in 2. what you were expecting? If not, why not?

10. Did you complete the courses in 2.? If not, do you have any suggestions that
might have helped you continue with the course(s)?

Additional comments:


D) INDIVIDUAL SLAVISTS (currently working outside academia or in
non-teaching areas of academia, such as libraries, administration, etc.)

1) What areas of Slavic and/or Slavic linguistics did/do you specialize(d) in?

2) How enthusiastic are you in promoting Slavic Linguistics as a
worthwhile subject of study? Please answer this question even if you were
not trained as a linguist.

3) What is your main Slavic language?

4) Do you feel comfortable in other Slavic languages, and if so, to what
extent?

5) Have you been able to apply your knowledge/skills outside the area
of academia/or in non-teaching related pursuits?

6) If the answer to 4) is yes, please comment - specifically from the
point of view of using your knowledge of one Slavic language plus your
skills in Slavic Linguistics to tackle work in another Slavic language.

7) If you haven't come across the ideas expressed in 5), please comment.

Additional comments:


E) EMPLOYEES OF NON-ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS:

1) Does your institution need any sort of language work?

2) If the answer to 1) is yes, which languages?

3) Are you aware of linguistics (specifically in this case, Slavic)?

4) How much skill and education do you think is required for  a
linguist/translator/interpreter?

5) If the answer to 1) is yes, would be useful to have a linguist on
staff, or for part-time /contract work?

Additional comments:

*********************************************************
Jeanmarie Rouhier-Willoughby           telephone:  (606) 257-1756
Department of Russian and Eastern Studies      fax:  (606) 257-3743
1055 Patterson Office Tower                email:  jrouhie at pop.uky.edu
University of Kentucky           URL: http://www.uky.edu/~jrouhie/
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
*********************************************************


From gfowler at indiana.edu  Wed Oct  2 02:05:52 1996
From: gfowler at indiana.edu (George Fowler)
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 21:05:52 -0500
Subject: Journal of Slavic Linguistics vol. 4, no. 1 and new WWW page
Message-ID: <TUE.1.OCT.1996.210552.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

The Journal of Slavic Linguistics announces the publication of vol. 4,
no. 1 (the first 1996 issue). Contents are given below, followed by
subscription and contact information.

We are also pleased to announce a new URL for our WWW page:

<http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~jsl/index.html>

(The old URL still works, but it contains the old WWW page. We suggest
you set a bookmark to the new URL.)

New content there includes an updated version of the Billings and Maling
bibliography originally published in JSL 3, 1-2, the latest Reflections
piece, and

CONTENTS: JOURNAL OF SLAVIC LINGUISTICS 4,1

Steven Franks
  Reflections: Building Bridges                                        1

ARTICLES

Alina Israeli
  Discourse Analysis of Russian Aspect: Accent on Creativity           8

James S. Levine and Charles Jones
  Agent, Purpose, and Russian Middles                                 50

Rosemary Kuhn Plapp
  Russian /i/ and /y/ as Underlying Segments                          76

Tom Priestly
  On the Etymology of the Ethnic Slur Tschusch                       109

Michael Yadroff
  Modern Russian Vocatives: A Case of Subtractive Morphology         133

REMARKS

Vladimir Orel
  Slavic *mo,do 'Testicle'                                           154

Oscar E. Swan
  An Exercise in Ghost Forms: The Declension of OCS
  vepr" ~ vepr'" 'Boar'                                              159

REVIEW

Martina Lindseth
  Uwe Junghanns. Syntaktische und semantische Eigenschaften
  russischer finaler Infinitiveinbettungen                           167

Subscriptions: $30 individuals ($27 standing order or by Jan. 31 of the
current year), $20 students or (gift subscriptions to E. Europe/xUSSR),
$40 institutions. Back issues (vol. 1-3) available from Indiana University
Linguistics Club (iulc at indiana.edu).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Journal of Slavic Linguistics                       [email] jsl at indiana.edu
Dept. of Slavic Languages                              [tel] 1-812-855=2624
Ballantine 502                                         [fax] 1-812-855-2107
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405       <http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~jsl/index.html>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


From schaeken at let.rug.nl  Wed Oct  2 07:26:25 1996
From: schaeken at let.rug.nl (J. Schaeken)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 09:26:25 +0200
Subject: Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics 23
Message-ID: <WED.2.OCT.1996.092625.0200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Abstracts of the contributions to "Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics,
vol. 23: Studies in South Slavic and Balkan Linguistics",
Rodopi: Amsterdam-Atlanta 1996 (in print), are already available at
http://www.let.rug.nl/~schaeken/ssgl23.html.

Jos Schaeken
***********************************************************
Dr. J. Schaeken, Slavic Department, University of Groningen
P.O.B. 716, NL-9700 AS Groningen, The Netherlands
Tel.: + 31 50 3636065/5264945, Fax: + 31 50 3634900
Web: http://www.let.rug.nl/~schaeken/
HOME: Brinklaan 17, NL-9722 BA Groningen
***********************************************************


From N.Bermel at sheffield.ac.uk  Wed Oct  2 12:55:35 1996
From: N.Bermel at sheffield.ac.uk (Neil Bermel)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 13:55:35 +0100
Subject: Research Fellowship, Bakhtin Centre, University of Sheff
Message-ID: <WED.2.OCT.1996.135535.0100.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD

RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

in the

BAKHTIN CENTRE

Applications are invited for the above post, funded
initially under the British Academy Humanities Research
Board/Funding Councils Institutional Research Fellowships
scheme, and tenable for at least seven years from 1
January 1997 or as soon as possible thereafter. The Fellow
will work, under the direction of Professor David
Shepherd, on the project 'The Russian and European
Contexts of the Works of Mikhail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin
Circle'. Applicants should possess an excellent knowledge
of Russian, extensive research experience in the field of
literature and/or critical/cultural theory, and good
computing skills (familiarity with multi-media
applications may be an advantage).

Initial salary according to experience up to stlg21519 p.a.

Further particulars, quoting reference number R984, from
the Director of Human Resource Management, The University
of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, tel. 0114 279 9800.

http://www.shef.ac.uk/genref/univ/jobs/acadjobs/
http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/A-C/bakh/bakhtin.html
*******************************************
Neil Bermel
Sheffield University
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies
Arts Tower, Western Bank
Sheffield S10 2TN United Kingdom
telephone 0114 282 4886
fax 0114 282 4955
(from the U.S. dial 011 44 114 instead of 0114)
n.bermel at sheffield.ac.uk


From 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM  Wed Oct  2 15:10:30 1996
From: 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM (Jerry Ervin)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 11:10:30 EDT
Subject: AATSEEL '96:  Preregistration
Message-ID: <WED.2.OCT.1996.111030.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

IMPORTANT PREREGISTRATION NOTE:

AATSEEL requires that all conference presenters and panelists (including
Chairpersons and Secretaries of panels) be paid-up members of AATSEEL and
register for the conference.  While dues payment and registration will be
possible at the conference itself, only those who have paid 1996 dues and have
preregistered _by November 1, 1996_ will be included in the official conference
program.

(The preregistration form will be found in the October AATSEEL Newsletter, which
should ship in a few days; if you have not received yours by mid-November,
please contact me to ensure that we have your correct address and/or to clarify
your membership status, if necessary.)

Thank you for your cooperation,

--Jerry Ervin

*  *  *  *  *
Gerard L. Ervin
Executive Director, AATSEEL
1981 N. Evelyn Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85715 USA
phone/fax:  520/885-2663
email:  76703.2063 at compuserve.com


From 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM  Wed Oct  2 15:10:24 1996
From: 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM (Jerry Ervin)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 11:10:24 EDT
Subject: AATSEEL membership renewals
Message-ID: <WED.2.OCT.1996.111024.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

To all AATSEEL members and potential members:

Please be advised that the summer of 1996 now being past, we are sending further
issues of SEEJ and the AATSEEL Newsletter only to those whose memberships are
current (i.e.,who are paid up through 1996 or beyond).  Within the next month
current members will be receiving SEEJ 40,2 and the October AATSEEL Newsletter
(which contains important AATSEEL '96 conference information).  If you do not
receive these publications by 1 November 1996, please contact me to be sure we
have your correct mailing address and/or to clarify your membership status.

Thank you,

--Jerry Ervin

*  *  *  *  *
Gerard L. Ervin
Executive Director, AATSEEL
1981 N. Evelyn Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85715 USA
phone/fax:  520/885-2663
email:  76703.2063 at compuserve.com


From anon at example.com  Thu Oct  3 00:05:18 1996
From: anon at example.com (anon at example.com)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 00:05:18 GMT+2
Subject: AATSEEL membership renewals
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.000518.GMT2.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

How does one join AATSEEL?

Yours, 
"...a knife time."
        Attila Jozsef


From TWC78 at cnsvax.albany.edu  Thu Oct  3 03:48:54 1996
From: TWC78 at cnsvax.albany.edu (Toby Clyman)
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 22:48:54 -0500
Subject: AATSEEL '96:  Preregistration
Message-ID: <WED.2.OCT.1996.224854.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Gerard Ervin,
Could you please make sure that I receive the AATSEEL Newsletter. I do not
recall getting one last year. I am sure I paid my dues.
Sorry to trouble you with this matter, but I would like to get the information
given in the Newsletter.
   Toby W. Clyman
State University of New York at Albany
l400 Washington Ave. Albany, N.Y. l2222
email: twc78 at rachel.albany.edu


From MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu  Thu Oct  3 22:48:23 1996
From: MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Emily Tall)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 17:48:23 -0500
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.174823.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

A Russian from Kirov, educated at the Univ. of Lviv with a degree in
Russian, tried to tell me that saying "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke" is
just as good as "ia govoriu po-russki" (and the same with "chitat'").
My 2 MGU native informants told me she is wrong. Could she have been
contaminated by Ukrainian, or perhaps the provinces? I am trying to
figure out how she could be using incorrect Russian. Is it some
kind of substandard variant? Thanks! Emily Tall


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Thu Oct  3 21:54:25 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 15:54:25 -0600
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <01IA7QQQ11768XTBQ9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.155425.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Emily Tall wrote:

> A Russian from Kirov, educated at the Univ. of Lviv with a degree in
> Russian, tried to tell me that saying "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke" is
> just as good as "ia govoriu po-russki" (and the same with "chitat'").
> My 2 MGU native informants told me she is wrong. Could she have been
> contaminated by Ukrainian, or perhaps the provinces? I am trying to
> figure out how she could be using incorrect Russian. Is it some
> kind of substandard variant? Thanks! Emily Tall

Your question has a lot of underlying assumptions. What do you mean
by 'substandard variant'? I was under the impression that in linguistics
the whole concept of 'substandard' has been abandoned (at least in the
context of native speakers). Secondly, why would the Russian spoken
(or better, taught) anywhere in the former S.U. be 'contaminated' and
in what way? If anything, the process was usually perceived to be the
other way around (Ukrainian grammar, vocabulary, changing under influence
of Russian).

Certainly, in Ukrainian, one can say 'ia hovoriu ykrainskoiu movoiu'.
Not being an expert, I can't say for certain whether this is the
analogous construction. On the other hand, though it is correct, it
isn't as common as 'hovoriu po-ukrainskomu'.

This information, by the way, comes from a native speaker of both
Ukrainian and Russian, with training in language, linguistics and
considerable experience teaching both languages at university level.

And btw, having just spoken with the same source, "ia govoriu na russkom
iazyke" *is* just as good - just not as common.

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu  Thu Oct  3 22:11:42 1996
From: zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu (Zev bar-Lev)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 15:11:42 -0700
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <01IA7QQQ11768XTBQ9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.151142.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>A Russian from Kirov, educated at the Univ. of Lviv with a degree in
>Russian, tried to tell me that saying "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke" is
>just as good as "ia govoriu po-russki" (and the same with "chitat'").
>My 2 MGU native informants told me she is wrong. Could she have been
>contaminated by Ukrainian, or perhaps the provinces? I am trying to
>figure out how she could be using incorrect Russian. Is it some
>kind of substandard variant? Thanks! Emily Tall

This looks like prescriptivism run wild.  While "ya govoryu na r. ya." may
be a little more complex -- and might therefore raise the question of why
such extra complexity is being used -- I also wouldn't be surprised to hear
the "MGU native informants" themselves saying "ya govoryu na r. ya."
unsuspectingly.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
          zev bar-Lev (prof.)
          dept. of linguistics & oriental languages,
          san diego state university, san diego CA 92182
          e-mail ZBARLEV at mail.sdsu.edu
          tel. (619)-594-6389
          fax: (619)-594-4877
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


From dumanis at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU  Fri Oct  4 01:07:06 1996
From: dumanis at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU (Edward M Dumanis)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 21:07:06 -0400
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <01IA7QQQ11768XTBQ9@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.210706.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Emily Tall wrote:

> A Russian from Kirov, educated at the Univ. of Lviv with a degree in
> Russian, tried to tell me that saying "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke" is
> just as good as "ia govoriu po-russki" (and the same with "chitat'").
> My 2 MGU native informants told me she is wrong. Could she have been
> contaminated by Ukrainian, or perhaps the provinces? I am trying to
> figure out how she could be using incorrect Russian. Is it some
> kind of substandard variant? Thanks! Emily Tall
>
I think that "ia govoriu na russkom yazyke" is less common by a very
good reason. Its meaning  corresponds more to the Present Continuous Tense
rather than to the Present Indefinite. Meanwhile, "ia govoriu po-russki"
can be used in both situations. So, "ya govoriu po-russki" is used. As to
the dynamics of the language development, I don't remember that "ia
govoriu na russkom iazyke" was ever used twenty years ago in Moscow.
Maybe, it is in use there now but I don't know.
However, I am not trying to persuade anybody to teach Russian following
Moscow usage. If someone prefers to teach Russian as they use it in
Brooklyn, or LA, why not? It depends on what one tries to accomplish.


Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>


From MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu  Fri Oct  4 02:18:30 1996
From: MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Emily Tall)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 21:18:30 -0500
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.211830.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Thank you so far for your comments on my query. Please keep them coming.
Keep in mind that I am not a linguist. I do believe there can be a "right"
and "wrong" way of saying something, at least as far as teaching goes, i.e.
I would teach people to say he isn't, rather than"he ain't," etc. Also,
I hope the replies will be calm. I do not mean to denigrate any
nationality. Thanks again, Emily Tall
mllemily at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Fri Oct  4 01:20:19 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 18:20:19 -0700
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.182019.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Mr. Buryanyuk,
Let's put it this way:  for a Russian, Ukrainian, by definition, is
something else again.  For a Ukrainian, Russian is something else again.
One is one thing and one is another.  Do not confuse issues by
taking umbrage at terminology like "substandard,":  that is what they
are to each other. Each language has its own standards, and,
substandards. The world has  enough trouble without the insistence that
one's own is godsent. gg
PS:  Physics has the advantage of being less tainted by emotion.
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From boyle at accessone.com  Fri Oct  4 03:25:14 1996
From: boyle at accessone.com (Eloise M. Boyle)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 20:25:14 PDT
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.202514.PDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I have to second Emily's request and Genevra's exhortation to keep emotions
out of this; let's not allow yet another innocent query to turn into a
flaming match.

Eloise


From mitrege at mail.auburn.edu  Fri Oct  4 03:52:54 1996
From: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu (George Mitrevski)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 22:52:54 -0500
Subject: Links to personal web pages
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.225254.0500.>

If you would like to have a link included under your name in the AATSEEL
membership list to your personal home page, please send me the URL.

George.
***************************************************************
Dr. George Mitrevski            office: 334-844-6376
Foreign Languages                  fax: 334-844-6378
6030 Haley Center               e-mail: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5204

List of my WWW pages: http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/index.html
***************************************************************


From asosnow at cc.UManitoba.CA  Fri Oct  4 05:35:31 1996
From: asosnow at cc.UManitoba.CA (Alexandra Sosnowski)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 23:35:31 -0600
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <01IA7Y3J1LA68XRU0G@ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.233531.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Emily's question about the correctness of "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke"
reminded me of my late father who always encouraged me to use precisely this
form rather than "ia govoriu po-russki".  His argument was - "Sachen'ka, a kak
by ty sprosila?"  Obviously "Na kakom iazyke vy govorite" and not "Kak vy
govorite?"  Stories apart, as far as I know both forms are grammatically
correct, only one is used more frequently than the other.

Alexandra Sosnowski
Dept. of German and Slavic Studies
University of Manitoba
Winnipeg, Canada
(asosnow at cc.umanitoba.ca)


From vac10 at columbia.edu  Fri Oct  4 05:36:35 1996
From: vac10 at columbia.edu (Vitaly A. Chernetsky)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 01:36:35 -0400
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <9610040325.AA10302@pulm1.accessone.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.013635.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers,

I believe that if there was a case of emotionality here (of which several
of you had complained), it was in the series of knee-jerk responses of a
number of list members to Michael's quite legitimate objection (in the
most unfortunate tradition of stereotyping anyone Ukrainian as a
ultra-nationalist bugaboo). Perhaps Emily did not think of the pejorative
connotations borne by the wording of her original query. On the other
hand, I would caution against using Moscow/MGU as a standard against which
to measure the Russian language. The Moscow variant of Russian is just as
marked as the English of New York or London (not to mention that it is
frequently the butt of jokes among native Russian speakers elsewhere). As
for the authority of norm, I still vividly remember my own arguments with
some of my teachers back in my MGU filfak years (during exams, no less!)
over points of grammar and--particularly--phonetics.  There was also a
trace of bias in the assumption that the informant in question (a native
speaker of Russian who got her degree in Russian philology at a university
in [mind you, Russified Soviet-ruled] Ukraine) would not be as good on
grammatically correct Russian. I wonder if my colleagues would jump to
similar assumptions in the case of say, someone from the University of
Tartu?

Just some "meta" reflections on the otherwise happily resolved exchange.

Sincerely,

Vitaly Chernetsky


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Fri Oct  4 05:37:21 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 22:37:21 -0700
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.223721.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Eloise napysala:
  >I have to second Emily's request and Genevra's exhortation to keep emotions
  >out of this; let's not allow yet another innocent query to turn into a
  >flaming match.

I disagree.  This is not the time to sweep this "thing" under the rug.

I found the the first statement posted by Emily Tall to be questionable at
best.  I saw the same undercurrent of dismissive arrogance and disdain for
Ukraine and Ukrainian matters that I often see from Russian scholars, students
of Russian, and many others.  Am I overreacting?  Was Emily Tall's intent to
slander and insult?  Maybe: maybe not.  But that had yet to be determined, and
those who feel they were publicly insulted have a *right* to speak up and
ask for a clarification.  Moreover, those who are not affected by the comments
directly, but interpret them as insults nevertheless, have a moral
responsibility to respond as well.  After all, you/your group/gender/
nationality/sexual orientation could be next.

In my opinion Michael Burianyk posted a very measured, polite, rational
response.  To my utter amazement he was replied to by Genevra Gerhardt with
a post that included a comment which seemed to infer that Michael considers
"his own to be godsent"*, something "the world has seen enough of"*.  Where
did this come from?  Was this the author's intent?  If so, how arrogant and
presumptuous!  If not, what was the point of making this comment at all?
I read the post again and again, and cannot see any point other than to
imply that Michael is some kind of ethno-centric zealot.  He's making a
mountain out of the proverbial mole-hill.  And I disagree with this
characterization (which I feel was implied). I have found Michael to be
nothing of the sort in my dealings with him in cyber-space.

The follow-up letter, which I have included above in-toto, chimes in against
one person's (Michael's) reasoned response, and cries "flame war".  Where is
the flame war?  I only see this as an attempt to silence someone with a valid
gripe: a request for an explanation of some questionable statements.

I'd suggest that the best way to avoid such problems, such unpleasantries,
in the future is to avoid using terms like "contaminated by language/people
X, or their provinces".  Be a little more sensitive.  And if you offend, have
the courtesy to acknowledge the miffed party and apologize, rather than
pooh-pooh his objections as overreaction to an "innocent" comment.

-- Stephen Bobick

* these are paraphrased, not direct quotes (I deleted the original)


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Fri Oct  4 05:40:31 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1996 22:40:31 -0700
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <THU.3.OCT.1996.224031.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELangers,

   My post bounced back to me in triplicate.  I have no idea why.  If you
also received three copies, I apologize.

Z poshanoyu,

Stephen Bobick


From dumanis at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU  Fri Oct  4 06:52:37 1996
From: dumanis at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU (Edward M Dumanis)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 02:52:37 -0400
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <199610040431.XAA02235@electra.cc.umanitoba.ca>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.025237.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Alexandra Sosnowski wrote:

> Emily's question about the correctness of "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke"
> reminded me of my late father who always encouraged me to use precisely this
> form rather than "ia govoriu po-russki".  His argument was - "Sachen'ka, a kak
> by ty sprosila?"  Obviously "Na kakom iazyke vy govorite" and not "Kak vy
> govorite?"  Stories apart, as far as I know both forms are grammatically
> correct, only one is used more frequently than the other.
>
> Alexandra Sosnowski
> Dept. of German and Slavic Studies
> University of Manitoba
> Winnipeg, Canada
> (asosnow at cc.umanitoba.ca)
>

With all respect to your late father, "Na kakom iazyke Vy govorite?"
can correspond to a slightly offensive situation, when one perfectly
knows that the person to whom his question was addressed had been speaking
Russian but the reason for the question was to call attention to the
pronunciation, or to a not very intelligent style.  And in this case the
response "Ia govoriu na russkom iazyke!" is absolutely correct.  It
emphasizes the name of the language used. But normally you do not
emphasize this. So, the response "Ia govoriu po-russki" is also absolutely
correct in this situation but does not carry any emotional stress.  As you
can see from this example, your father was not correct teaching you what
form to use, but normally his approach is a good one, it just does not
work here. As you know, a very rigid mechanistic approach is not the best
way to describe the rules of any natural language including Russian.
However, many grammar rules are based on this method, and as they like to
say it in Russian, there is an exemption for any rule.  Probably, we are
dealing with one of those exemptions right now.


Edward Dumanis <dumanis at acsu.buffalo.edu>


From nobum at gol.com  Fri Oct  4 10:10:09 1996
From: nobum at gol.com (Nobukatsu Minoura)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 02:10:09 -0800
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.021009.0800.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

At 3:54 PM 10/3/96, Michael Burianyk wrote:
> Certainly, in Ukrainian, one can say 'ia hovoriu ykrainskoiu movoiu'.
> Not being an expert, I can't say for certain whether this is the
> analogous construction. On the other hand, though it is correct, it
> isn't as common as 'hovoriu po-ukrainskomu'.

A long time ago in the Soviet time, I used to catch Radio Kyjiv in Tokyo,
Japan.  It used to start with:

Hovoryt' Kyjiv.  Pochynajemo peredachu ukrajinskoju movoju zarubizhnym
slukhachim.  A zaraz novyny.....

I was a Russian major, but I deviated ever since into Native American
languages.  So my Russian is pretty rusty now.  But I was always fascinated
by Ukrainian too.

Nobu

---------------------------------------------
Nobukatsu "Nobu" Minoura
<in the middle of moving from Alaska to Japan>
snail mail address:
     Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
     Nishigahara 4-51-21
     Kita-ku, Tokyo
     JAPAN   114
phone #:
     (Oct. 5 -)
     +81-471-54-4369 (phone/fax at home)
     +81-3-5974-3550 (phone at work)


From nobum at gol.com  Fri Oct  4 10:10:33 1996
From: nobum at gol.com (Nobukatsu Minoura)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 02:10:33 -0800
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.021033.0800.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

At 11:35 PM 10/3/96, Alexandra Sosnowski wrote:
> Emily's question about the correctness of "ia govoriu na russkom iazyke"
> reminded me of my late father who always encouraged me to use precisely this
> form rather than "ia govoriu po-russki".  His argument was - "Sachen'ka, a kak
> by ty sprosila?"  Obviously "Na kakom iazyke vy govorite" and not "Kak vy
> govorite?"  Stories apart, as far as I know both forms are grammatically
> correct, only one is used more frequently than the other.

My Russian-Japanese dictionary lists "po-kakovski."  (I forgot which
dictionary and I cannot verify with it because I'm on the road now.)  Is it
ever used?

Nobu

---------------------------------------------
Nobukatsu "Nobu" Minoura
<in the middle of moving from Alaska to Japan>
snail mail address:
     Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
     Nishigahara 4-51-21
     Kita-ku, Tokyo
     JAPAN   114
phone #:
     (Oct. 5 -)
     +81-471-54-4369 (phone/fax at home)
     +81-3-5974-3550 (phone at work)


From CLEMINSO at ceu.hu  Fri Oct  4 11:28:59 1996
From: CLEMINSO at ceu.hu (Ralph Cleminson)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 12:28:59 +100
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.122859.100.>

This is what comes of relying of native informants, who in my
experience rarely answer the question one has actually asked.  I well
remember, a propos of a plate of salted almonds, trying to establish
whether nowadays one would be more likely to ask "khochesh'
mindalja?" or "khochesh' mindalju?", only to receive a long
explanation that in Russia they are generally sugared rather than
salted.  Of course "ja govorju na russkom jazyke" is perfectly good
Russian; only in certain contexts, no doubt totally different from
the one in which it was uttered by the original informant, it is not
what one is likely to say.

Incidentally, if there is a standard form of the language, then ipso
facto there may be non-standard forms, and one of the ways in
which these arise is through interference (the proper term -
interferencija in both Ukr. and Russ.) with other languages, so the
original query was quite legitimate, even if expressed in non-
standard terminology.
R.M.Cleminson, M.A., D.Phil.
Dept of Mediaeval Studies, Central European University
Post: H-1245 Budapest 5, P.O.B.1082
Phone: +361 327 3024   Fax: +361 327 3055
http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/ralph.htm


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Fri Oct  4 16:08:36 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:08:36 -0600
Subject: language query
In-Reply-To: <32546653.755D@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.100836.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, Genevra Gerhart wrote:

> Mr. Buryanyuk,
> Let's put it this way:  for a Russian, Ukrainian, by definition, is
> something else again.  For a Ukrainian, Russian is something else again.
> One is one thing and one is another.  Do not confuse issues by
> taking umbrage at terminology like "substandard,":  that is what they
> are to each other. Each language has its own standards, and,
> substandards. The world has  enough trouble without the insistence that
> one's own is godsent. gg

Please, let the linguists correct me if I'm wrong. 'Sub-standard' is not
a currently used term. Would it not, as was noted in a previous post, be
'non-standard usage'? 'Sub-standard' is a loaded term, in English anyway,
with a lot of negative connotations. And, how can something in Ukrainian
be considered 'sub-standard' or even 'non-standard' in Russian? As you
so eloquently pointed out, Ukrainian and Russian are different. A
Ukrainian grammatical structure, used in the context of Russian is a
calque, correct? Its a mistake - plain and simple. It isn't 'sub'-Russian
at all.

By the way, no flame intended. I really want to be corrected (by real
linguists) whether 'sub-standard' is proper terminology these days, and
whether my analysis above is wrong-headed or not. Despite my profession,
I have a real love of language and linguistics (especially slavic) and
my whole purpose to subscribing to this list is to learn something.

> PS:  Physics has the advantage of being less tainted by emotion.

You know little of Physics then ;-)


--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From OKAGAN at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Fri Oct  4 18:41:34 1996
From: OKAGAN at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (Olga Kagan)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:41:34 PST
Subject: russian scientists
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.104134.PST.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I hope this information is of interest to the profession even though it
doesn't concern seelangers directly.  Olga Kagan

>SCIENTISTS PROTEST STATE DEBTS. Dozens of Russian scientists have
>threatened to join two of their colleagues already on a hunger strike
if the government does not pay its debt to scientific institutions by 10
>October, ITAR-TASS reported on 1 October. Representatives of the trade
>union of the Russian Academy of Sciences said scientists are also
>planning to rally in Moscow and several other cities in mid-October.
>Director of  United Institute of the Physics of the Earth
>Vladimir Strakhov and senior research Igor Naumenko-Bondarenko went on
>a hunger strike on 30 September. According to Deputy Prime Minister
>Vladimir Fortov, the government debt to the scientific sector totals 3
>trillion rubles. He said that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin had
>agreed that the state would pay 250 billion rubles to the Academy by
the
>end of the year.
>

_________________________________________________________________
Keith K. Nakanishi              510-422-3923 (office)
L-205, PO Box 808               510-423-4077 (fax)
Livermore, CA 94551             nakanishi1 at llnl.gov (internet)


From zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu  Fri Oct  4 17:35:37 1996
From: zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu (Zev bar-Lev)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:35:37 -0700
Subject: the arbitrariness of language structure
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.3.91.961004100020.4440i-100000@probe>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.103537.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Yes, non-standard is a linguistic term, sub-standard is not.  One can say
"prestige dialect" and "non-prestige dialect" to describe the subjective
attitudes without paticipating in them.

What is non-standard in a given language is completely arbitrary, just as
the structure of a language is.  The same for levels of style.

For example, contractions are often a sign of colloquial English -- but the
contractions 'tis and 'twas are signs of "literary/poetic", highly elevated
style.

An example my students find interesting from a wholly nother language:
Which do you think is most literary, which most colloquial, of the
following 3 ways to say "Jacob's house"?

     a) ha-bayit shel yaaqov   "the house of Jacob"
     b) bet-o shel yaaqov      "house-his of Jacob"
     c) bet yaaqov             "house Jacob" (with contracted form of "house")

In fact, c is literary/archaic "the house (family, offspring) of Jacob", a
is colloquial, b modern literary.

Back to language in general, things do get complicated in that, for
example, some foreign speakers of a language may unwittingly enter
non-prestige dialects.  For example, Spanish speakers may substitute /t/
for /theta/ (as in "think"), thus falling into a non-prestiage dialect of
English.  French speakers, substituting /s/ for /theta/, may be harder to
understand, but are less stigmatized.

Further confusion comes from the fact that some other languages may have
more prestige than others in the eyes of speakers, bringing us back to the
Russian and Ukrainian situation.  As an embattled minority language,
Ukrainian is obviously fighting an up-hill battle, and is in some danger,
while perhaps not of being swallowed whole by Russian, certainly of being
nickel-and-dimed to death, with lexical and other encroachments.  Some
linguists take an "ecological" approach of trying to save every endangered
language;  but others have wondered whether it doesn't make more sense to
take a laissez-faire, "Darwinian" approach, letting speakers preserve their
language if they wish.

Let's recall that English was not swallowed up by French:  As an English
speaker (or writer), one can have various attitudes towards particular
latinate words, but it's far too late to worry about English losing its
original Germanic "character" (including words like "telephone" vs.
"far-speaker" or the like, as is done in other Germanic languages -- most
interestinbgly Icelandic).

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
          zev bar-Lev (prof.)
          dept. of linguistics & oriental languages,
          san diego state university, san diego CA 92182
          e-mail ZBARLEV at mail.sdsu.edu
          tel. (619)-594-6389
          fax: (619)-594-4877
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Fri Oct  4 17:46:40 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 11:46:40 -0600
Subject: the arbitrariness of language structure
In-Reply-To: <v03007802ae7a86b3b891@[130.191.121.65]>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.114640.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Fri, 4 Oct 1996, Zev bar-Lev wrote:

> ... the following 3 ways to say "Jacob's house"?
>
>      a) ha-bayit shel yaaqov   "the house of Jacob"
>      b) bet-o shel yaaqov      "house-his of Jacob"
>      c) bet yaaqov             "house Jacob" (with contracted form of "house")

I'm guessing this is Hebrew (or at least a semitic language)?

> Further confusion comes from the fact that some other languages may have
> more prestige than others in the eyes of speakers, bringing us back to the
> Russian and Ukrainian situation.  As an embattled minority language,
> Ukrainian is obviously fighting an up-hill battle, and is in some danger,
> while perhaps not of being swallowed whole by Russian, certainly of being
> nickel-and-dimed to death, with lexical and other encroachments.

The statement above, juxtaposed to a (supposed) statement in Hebrew,
brings up some questions about the state and future of the Ukrainian
language.

Didn't Hebrew also fight an up-hill battle for acceptance as an everyday
language? Didn't it win? If so, how did it? Can those of us with a more
'ecological' bias learn anything from the Israeli experience that can
help the situation for Ukrainian? Are there other examples of embattled
minority languages that have become viable?

I have my own ideas on how this should be done (basically, through the
forceful creation of high quality junk - popular literature, movies, tv,
etc - that the population cannot get in other languages as readily - note
that I am *not* in favor of linguistic censorship) but I would like to
hear from real experts on any case studies of 'ecological' successes.


--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From zaitseva at is.nyu.edu  Fri Oct  4 17:54:09 1996
From: zaitseva at is.nyu.edu (Valentina Zaitseva)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 13:54:09 -0400
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.135409.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>Mr. Buryanyuk,
>Let's put it this way:  for a Russian, Ukrainian, by definition, is
>something else again.  For a Ukrainian, Russian is something else again.
>One is one thing and one is another.  Do not confuse issues by
>taking umbrage at terminology like "substandard,":  that is what they
>are to each other. Each language has its own standards, and,
>substandards. The world has  enough trouble without the insistence that
>one's own is godsent. gg
>PS:  Physics has the advantage of being less tainted by emotion.
>--
>Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/
>
>2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
>Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com

Dear SEELANGers,
Allow me to share some thoughts about this new potentially explosive
discussion. I find all the discussions of this type absolutely fascinating
and actually collect them as important data on interpersonal communication
failures. The most amazing thing about language is that it is able to
encode not only info about reality, but also the speaker's
perspective/attitude. If we compare, for example, "substandard" with
"non-standard" it becomes clear that the former does not convey negative
attitude, while the latter does. The substitution of one for another seems
harmless enough but probably not to people who believe that thier norms are
different but not any worse for that. Another point - and this is something
I currently work on- is that the addressee holds the speaker responsible
for the choice of a linguistic exression, so that no matter how impersonal
the subject of the discussion is, there is always something going on
between {I and YOU}. Is it possible to talk about a description of a
linguistic system not related to its use (including the description of the
difference between po-russki vs. na russkom jazyke)?
And the last point: if we teach normative variant of a language (and then
there is a wrong and right way to use it), we, I think, should not mix up
"normative" with "right."

Best regards,
Valentina Zaitseva


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Fri Oct  4 17:35:55 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 10:35:55 -0700
Subject: russian scientists
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.103555.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  >>I hope this information is of interest to the profession even though it
  >>doesn't concern seelangers directly.  Olga Kagan

  >SCIENTISTS PROTEST STATE DEBTS. Dozens of Russian scientists have
  >threatened to join two of their colleagues already on a hunger strike
  >if the government does not pay its debt to scientific institutions by 10
  >October, ITAR-TASS reported on 1 October
  [...]

I recently saw a similar report about the Ermitage and other museums in
Russia that have received only a fraction of promised maintenance/upkeep
funds and are in danger of being closed.  This is from memory and may be
inaccurate.  Perhaps someone else has the information handy?  As stated above,
I hope this information is not "off topic"...

-- Stepan Bobyk


From zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu  Fri Oct  4 19:48:07 1996
From: zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu (Zev bar-Lev)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 12:48:07 -0700
Subject: language revival and stabilization (Hebrew, Ukrainian)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.3.91.961004112809.4440m-100000@probe>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.124807.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Sorry for not mentioning that the example was (indeed) Hebrew.

As for reviving:  Hebrew did have continuous speakers, in particular in
Israel, throughout the ages -- but just as certainly it was a secondary,
very minority language even there until its "rebirth".  It had a great
disadvantage in this respect as compared with Ukrainian.  Even today, with
Russian immigration to Israel, a huge part of the Israeli citizenry is
non-native-speaking in Hebrew.

But its disadvantage is also an advantage, in that once it took hold, it
arrived fully, and remains in an upward trend -- although threatened on the
specific ("nicvkel and dime) level by international English.

Among suggestions I would have (as also expressed in a thesis just written
on Ukrainian by one of my students) is to beef up courses in the US -- not
the traditional course, leading to grammatical expertise, but rather a
shorter and more popular course, leading to communicative confidence (NB:
confidence) in speaking, for as wide a population as possible -- ethnic
Ukrainians and their spouses and children, and others, amateurs, who just
happen to get interested.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
          zev bar-Lev (prof.)
          dept. of linguistics & oriental languages,
          san diego state university, san diego CA 92182
          e-mail ZBARLEV at mail.sdsu.edu
          tel. (619)-594-6389
          fax: (619)-594-4877
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


From MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu  Fri Oct  4 21:36:59 1996
From: MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Emily Tall)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 16:36:59 -0500
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.163659.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

As the author of the original query that started this discussion, let me
be more precise as to what exactly I wanted to know. The point was that
a language instructor was having students practice the construction "ia
govoriu na russkom iazyke" (they were doing chapter 3 in "Golosa), and I
thought they should be saying "ia govoriu po-russki." Thus my question
was not meant to be some abstract inquiry as to whether "na russkom iazyke"
could ever be used with "ia govoriu" but whether, in the concrete situation
of two people asking what foreign languages the other knows, so that
they can decide which one to use for communication, they would say
"na russkom iazyke" or "po-russki" with the phrase" ia govoriu". From a
pedagogical point of view, one does not teach every possible variant of
something to students in their first month of Russian. One teaches the
usual possibilities. That seems obvious to me! As for the word "substandard"
or "nonstandard," how, then, does one name what Russians call "prostorechie"
? I know the word "popular" is sometimes used. What about people who say
"oni khodiut"? Isn't that substandard - or nonstandard? And shouldn't our
students know that it is? Emily Tall


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Fri Oct  4 20:16:37 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 14:16:37 -0600
Subject: language revival and stabilization (Hebrew, Ukrainian)
In-Reply-To: <v03007804ae7aa2bf4f51@[130.191.121.65]>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.141637.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Fri, 4 Oct 1996, Zev bar-Lev wrote:

> Sorry for not mentioning that the example was (indeed) Hebrew.

No need to! Your example was clear enough.

> Among suggestions I would have (as also expressed in a thesis just written
> on Ukrainian by one of my students) is to beef up courses in the US

Canada too? :-)

> -- not the traditional course, leading to grammatical expertise, but rather a
> shorter and more popular course, leading to communicative confidence (NB:
> confidence) in speaking, for as wide a population as possible -- ethnic
> Ukrainians and their spouses and children, and others, amateurs, who just
> happen to get interested.

This, from experience (not my own, but my wife's) is a hard sell, even
here in Edmonton (commonly known as 'Edmonchuck'). It *is* a good idea in
any event. The question then becomes how does one fund and market it?
These days, no one is interested in learning for the sake of learning.
And business opportunities in Ukraine are not yet that rewarding. :-(

BTW, I would really appreciate it if you could give the title and author
of the thesis.

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From rdelossa at HUSC.BITNET  Fri Oct  4 23:11:48 1996
From: rdelossa at HUSC.BITNET (Robert A. De Lossa)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 18:11:48 -0500
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.181148.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Heigh, ho!

1) I was taught that ia govoriu na russkom iazyke is iterative,
underscoring the implied Na kakom iazyke vy govorite? Also, n.b., use of
zhe with na russkom iazyke phrases vs. po-russki (I'll let the Russianists
talk about that...)

2) No influence from the instrumental construction in Ukrainian is possible
there; it's usage in Ukrainian varies.

3) Leonid Kravchuk (West Ukrainian, former President of Ukraine) has much
"better" (i.e., closer to textbook CSR) than Mykhail Gorbachov. Go figure.
The latter learned it as a foreign language, probably, and then sharpened
it up as he rose through the Party structure. Ukrainian Russian is as
varied as Russian Russian (awkwardness intended)--just as American English
is as varied as British English.

Happy weekend to all. Rob De Lossa

____________________________________________________
From:
Robert De Lossa
Director of Publications
Ukrainian Research Institute
Harvard University
1583 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
617-496-8768 tel. 617-495-8097 fax.
"rdelossa at fas.harvard.edu"


From zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu  Fri Oct  4 22:40:59 1996
From: zbarlev at mail.sdsu.edu (Zev bar-Lev)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 15:40:59 -0700
Subject: language revival and stabilization (Ukrainian)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.3.91.961004141018.4440v@probe>
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.154059.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>> Among suggestions I would have (as also expressed in a thesis just written
>> on Ukrainian by one of my students) is to beef up courses in the US
>
>Canada too? :-)

Sure, even Europe!

>
>> -- not the traditional course, leading to grammatical expertise, but
>>rather a
>> shorter and more popular course, leading to communicative confidence (NB:
>> confidence) in speaking, for as wide a population as possible -- ethnic
>> Ukrainians and their spouses and children, and others, amateurs, who just
>> happen to get interested.
>
>This, from experience (not my own, but my wife's) is a hard sell, even
>here in Edmonton (commonly known as 'Edmonchuck'). It *is* a good idea in
>any event. The question then becomes how does one fund and market it?
>These days, no one is interested in learning for the sake of learning.
>And business opportunities in Ukraine are not yet that rewarding. :-(
>


In general, I have found it easy to "fund" and "market" very short adult-ed
courses introducing various languages.  In this context I have taught small
amounts of Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and even Macedonian (not to mention
Russian) -- altho not yet Ukrainian (or Polish), as it happens.


>BTW, I would really appreciate it if you could give the title and author
>of the thesis.

Sonya Frank, "Ukrainian as a Less Commonly Taught Language"

>
>--
>Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
>Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
>Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
>University of Alberta
>Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
          zev bar-Lev (prof.)
          dept. of linguistics & oriental languages,
          san diego state university, san diego CA 92182
          e-mail ZBARLEV at mail.sdsu.edu
          tel. (619)-594-6389
          fax: (619)-594-4877
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////


From dlhorne at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu  Sat Oct  5 02:24:14 1996
From: dlhorne at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (dianna horne)
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 22:24:14 -0400
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <FRI.4.OCT.1996.222414.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>As the author of the original query that started this discussion, let me
>be more precise as to what exactly I wanted to know. The point was that
>a language instructor was having students practice the construction "ia
>govoriu na russkom iazyke" (they were doing chapter 3 in "Golosa), and I
>thought they should be saying "ia govoriu po-russki." Thus my question
>was not meant to be some abstract inquiry as to whether "na russkom iazyke"
>could ever be used with "ia govoriu" but whether, in the concrete situation
>of two people asking what foreign languages the other knows, so that
>they can decide which one to use for communication, they would say
>"na russkom iazyke" or "po-russki" with the phrase" ia govoriu".

Emily Tall wrote:

>>From a
>pedagogical point of view, one does not teach every possible variant of
>something to students in their first month of Russian. One teaches the
>usual possibilities. That seems obvious to me! As for the word "substandard"
>or "nonstandard," how, then, does one name what Russians call "prostorechie"
>? I know the word "popular" is sometimes used. What about people who say
>"oni khodiut"? Isn't that substandard - or nonstandard? And shouldn't our
>students know that it is? Emily Tall

This thread reminds of being a beginning Russian student in a class which
continually pestered the teacher to teach us slang (at the time, we were
apparently more interested in being able to swear effectively than in
learning how to form grammatically correct sentences), and being told that
we were being taught to speak Russian "as educated Russians speak," and
that if we didn't understand the 'standard', then we wouldn't be able to
understand what was 'non-standard'.

This isn't directly related to the thread, although the general question of
prescribed linguistic norms vs. actual language usage is.  While we
linguists (and others) might find issues of how language reflects (and is
indeed a primary means of marking) membership in all types of social groups
such as socio-economic class and/or ethnic or geographic group (the 'Moscow
norm' vs. others for example), what the student in a beginning foreign
language class really needs to learn is how to express him or herself most
appropriately in a given social/linguistic context.  This means that the
foreign language teacher consciously or unconsciously chooses to teach
variants of a language which s/he believes most accurately reflect the
current norms of usage of the target language/culture.  Questions of
'correctness' or of 'standard usage' in the context of language pedagogy
should be understood as attempts to understand what these norms are, not as
means of trying to determine what is a 'right' or 'wrong' way of speaking.

Dianna Murphy
Graduate Student, Slavic Linguistics
The Ohio State University


From CLEMINSO at ceu.hu  Sat Oct  5 13:55:04 1996
From: CLEMINSO at ceu.hu (Ralph Cleminson)
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 14:55:04 +100
Subject: language query
Message-ID: <SAT.5.OCT.1996.145504.100.>

On Fri, 4 Oct 1996 at 16:36:59 -0500, Emily Tall asked:

> As for the word "substandard"
> or "nonstandard," how, then, does one name what Russians call "prostorechie"
> ? I know the word "popular" is sometimes used. What about people who say
> "oni khodiut"?

If one has any sense, one doesn't attempt to use the category of
prostorechie at all.  It is a peculiarly East Slavonic concept,
though my dictionary shows that it has been borrowed by Bulgarian as
well.  (Any Bulgarians listening, I would welcome your impressions as
to what extent it represents a linguistic fact in Bulgarian.  Also,
are prostorichchja and prastamowe anything more than Russian imports
in Ukr. and Bel.?)  The problem is, that although the term is freely
used by Russians, it is never defined.  Is it the colloquial register
used by speakers of standard Russian, or is it the usage of speakers
of non-standard Russian (not, however, identifiable as a specific
regional dialect), or one or more other registers (slang,
professional jargon, etc.) that differ from the literary norm?  It
has certainly been used to refer to all of these, but there is no
consensus at to whether it covers all of them, and if not, which.
For scholarly purposes, therefore, it is best avoided, though of
course one is aware that it exists and covers some form(s) of non-
standard Russian.  Inache govorja, termin "prostorechie" mozhet
upotrebljat'sja v kachestve jazykovedcheskogo prostorechija, no ne
dolzhen vchodit' v normu uchenogo jazyka.

As for the people who say "oni khodjut", a good many of them would
never dream of writing it, and would certainly refrain from saying it
outside certain very informal contexts.  As Ms Horne so rightly
points out, the point of language instruction is to enable
communication, and communication is effected by paralinguistic
factors as well as by language.  (As, for example, a letter, even if
linguistically correct, if not set out according to the accepted
forms might be taken to convey a lack of education on the part of the
writer - or a lack of respect for the recipient.)  Since, to quote Ms
Horne again, what we are teaching is "how to express oneself
appropriately in a given social context", we must teach the standard
language, as this is appropriate for every context (certainly when
used by a foreigner, particularly one not yet perfectly fluent),
whereas the use of non-standard forms can lead to highly
inappropriate, and unintended, communication.

To return to the original question, the answer to the question "Na
kakom jazyke vy govorite?" is of course "Na russkom," without a verb.
Has this whole debate therefore been based on a misapprehension?

I must say I like "po-kakovski" from the Japanese dictionary, but I
have to admit I've never heard it.  I have however heard "Po ako
rozpravate?" in Slovak, though I doubt whether this is standard
(spisovna slovencina).  Any other examples?

R.M.Cleminson, M.A., D.Phil.
Dept of Mediaeval Studies, Central European University
Post: H-1245 Budapest 5, P.O.B.1082
Phone: +361 327 3024   Fax: +361 327 3055
http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/ralph.htm


From sipkadan at hum.amu.edu.pl  Sat Oct  5 16:40:17 1996
From: sipkadan at hum.amu.edu.pl (Danko Sipka)
Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 17:40:17 +0100
Subject: language querry
Message-ID: <SAT.5.OCT.1996.174017.0100.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

R.M.Cleminson wrote:

> If one has any sense, one doesn't attempt to use the category of
> prostorechie at all.

This rests on two propositions neither of which should,
as far as I am concerned, lead to such conclusion:

Proposition A:

> It is a peculiarly East Slavonic concept

Yes, but it means only that one should use it when referring to that
linguistic material and/or scholarly tradition.

Proposition B:

> It has certainly been used to refer to all of these, but there is no
> consensus at to whether it covers all of them, and if not, which.

Most terms used in linguistics or social sciences are like that. I
think that this quote from Lipka's "An Outline of English Lexicology",
Niemeyer, 1992, p. 5 makes it clear:

"...both terms, lexicon and dictionary, have been used as technical
terms in the literature, and there is no single "correct" use
of lexicon or dictionary. To take up the last point first, I claim
that such words are "notational terms". I here follow Enkvist (1973:17),
who points out that style "is a notational term rather than a linguistic
prime" and can be defined differently in different frameworks."

Or take the term 'attitude' in psychology. William McGuire made an
extensive search of the literature on attitude change, and reported
(in 1985) that more than 500 definitions of attitude have been used by
social psychologists in their research on the subject.

So, if we follow your suggestion, we should resign from most of the
terms we use.

> For scholarly purposes, therefore, it is best avoided, though of
> course one is aware that it exists and covers some form(s) of non-
> standard Russian.  Inache govorja, termin "prostorechie" mozhet
> upotrebljat'sja v kachestve jazykovedcheskogo prostorechija, no ne
> dolzhen vchodit' v normu uchenogo jazyka.

This is not only wrong, but also offensive to such works of excellence
as Zaliznjak's Grammaticheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, Russkij jazyk,
M., 1987(3), who uses 'prostorech.' as one of the labels.
In the footnote 3 on the page 9, he explains it:

"Iskljuchenie sostavljajut formy, pomechennye kak prostorechnye. Pometa
<<prostorech.>> wystupaet v takix sluchajax v roli predupreditel'noj.
Zaliznjak is anything but "jazykovedcheskoe prostorechie".

------------------------------------------------------------------
Danko Sipka, Visiting Professor
Slavic Department, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences
Translation Experts Poland
------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail: sipkadan at hum.amu.edu.pl (or sipkadan at plpuam11.amu.edu.pl)
Web: http://www.amu.edu.pl/~sipkdan/ja.htm
phone: ++48-61-535-143
mail: ul. Strzelecka 50 m. 6, 61-846 Poznan, Poland
------------------------------------------------------------------
I think where I am not, therefore I am where I do not think

                                                    Jacques Lacan
------------------------------------------------------------------


From yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp  Sun Oct  6 06:28:08 1996
From: yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp (Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji)
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 15:28:08 +0900
Subject: help: hyphenation rules.
Message-ID: <SUN.6.OCT.1996.152808.0900.>

Hello,
I have been having trouble with my publisher about the way how
Russian words should be split across lines.

The de facto state standard says:
    Pri nabore dolzhny byt' sobljudeny vse grammaticheskie pravila
    perenosov. Ne dopuskajutsja neblagozbuchnye i perenosy, iskazhaju-
    shchie smysl.
         -- Khudozestvennoe i tekhnicheskoe redaktirovanija ...

However, the details are not clear enough. G. Glazunova's Spravochnik
po orfografii i punktuacii (Riga, 1982) says in the first place:
    a) slovo perenositsja po sloram.
    ...

Well, then, what is the "slog"? This is what I would like to ask
you, the professional linguists.

A. V. Dudnikov in his 'Russkij Jazyk' (Moskva, 1983, page 27) enumerates
  pra-vo-na-ru-she-ni-e mle-ko-pi-ta-ju-shchi-e mi-ro-zda-ni-e be-re-za
  ban-ka Vol-ga ver-shi-na tum-ba poj-te shaj-ka
  vo-da pe-re-ska-zy-va-ju a-pte-ka la-psha po-chta i-zba pra-vda po-do-shva
  to-skli-vo by-stro
  lam-pa ka-kom-stvo ban-da kon-sti-tu-ci-ja pal'-to kor-zi-na chaj-ka
  boj-cy

If we look at how syllables ending with a hyphen, we find that the last
sounds are either vowels (including "j") or resonants (soft and hard
"l, m, n, r").

Well, then, why do some people think it right to say
    Pet-ro-grad te-at-ral'-nyj sek-re-tar' pub-li-chnyj bib-li-o-te-ka
    dis-cip-li-na fab-ri-ka lik-vi-da-ci-ja re-gist-ra-ci-ja
    a-lek-sandr ? (I often hear people say "Alek". Is that "Oleg" or
    "Alek" as in English?)

Some of these may be based on hyphenation rules of foreign language (
one of the absurdest ideas of Grot was exactly this. Who will
bother about whether Schwarzen-egger or Schwarze-negger when set in
the English language?), but it looks they think two consecutive consonants
are better split whatever they are. To which I seriously disagree.

I would like to hear your comments very much. Thank you.

With best wishes,
Tsuji

P.S.
M. Vulis once commented that only Ukrainians said "sest-ra". Taking
his word literally, I asked my proof-reader whether she was
Ukrainian and also asked my Ukrainian friends if they said "sest-ra"
in stead of "se-stra". They told me that Vulis used the word "Ukrainian" as
a pejorative, not meaning anything real.

P.S.
I am not talking about the division of word into etymological units
like prefixes, stems, suffixes, etc.


From nobum at gol.com  Mon Oct  7 01:26:40 1996
From: nobum at gol.com (Nobukatsu Minoura)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 10:26:40 +0900
Subject: Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.102640.0900.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

At 6:11 PM 10/4/96, Robert A. De Lossa wrote:
> 3) Leonid Kravchuk (West Ukrainian, former President of Ukraine) has much
> "better" (i.e., closer to textbook CSR) than Mykhail Gorbachov. Go figure.
> The latter learned it as a foreign language, probably, and then sharpened
> it up as he rose through the Party structure. Ukrainian Russian is as
> varied as Russian Russian (awkwardness intended)--just as American English
> is as varied as British English.

While Misha was still the head of the former Union, the Radio Russian
Course on the public radio station (NHK)  used his speeches as teaching
materials because they thought his pronunciation was very good.  I always
thought that wasn't true because he has a voiced fricative "g" instead of a
voiced stop "g."  Russian textbooks in Japan say Russian "g" is a stop.
But does any authoritative documents from Russia support that too?  Or do
they say both the fricative "g" and the stop "g" are standard?

Nobu (udarenie na "o" i bez akanija)

P.-S.:  I also noticed in my student years that the late Dr. Sakharov had a
uvular "r."  Is that an influence from Yiddish?  Or is it from French which
was supposedly used in the "high society" in the past?

---------------------------------------------
Nobukatsu "Nobu" Minoura
snail mail address:
     Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
     Nishigahara 4-51-21
     Kita-ku, Tokyo
     JAPAN   114
phone #:
     +81-471-54-4369 (phone/fax at home)
     +81-3-5974-3550 (phone at work)
email:
     nobum at gol.com (This IS my email address in Japan!)


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Mon Oct  7 05:39:57 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 22:39:57 -0700
Subject: Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation
Message-ID: <SUN.6.OCT.1996.223957.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Gorbachev has a distinct southern accent in Russian... He also makes
grammmatical and stress mistakes that make him the object of jokes.
Sakharov's problem is different.  Despite a lifetime of effort I have
not been able to establish for certain that the uvular R (kartavaniye)in
Russian is a problem due to nature or nurture.  Further, I have not
heard of parallels in other languages.  The following are true:
1. "Kartavaniye" is often attributed to Jews in Russia.
2. Many people who are not Jews "kartavyat";  some of these people do
consider that it is an elegant thing to do. Consider "grassirovat'"
3. Both French and German use the uvular R, and both at one time or
another were doubtless considered worthy of imitation.
4. In any case, those so afflicted insist that they cannot help
themselves.
gg
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com

--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp  Mon Oct  7 06:37:00 1996
From: yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp (Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 15:37:00 +0900
Subject: Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation
In-Reply-To: <325897AD.414C@wolfenet.com> (message from Genevra Gerhart on
 Sun, 6 Oct 1996 22:39:57 -0700)
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.153700.0900.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Gerhart is quite right. Gorbachev is Russian,  with a broad provincial
accent and lots of dialect. I was flabbergasted by hearing
"za" instead of "o" meaning <about> from a person from  Odessa
this summer...

As to the once-fashionable R sound, I would like to add
  1. In Tolstoj's War and Peace, General Kutuzov is conspicuous by
    speaking G instead of R. This means other aristos did not say so.
  2. Lenin's recorded speech is a good sample of an educated accent of
     the last century. It is high pitched, fast, equipped with German R...
     It is rather funny, indeed.
  3. My acquaintance with Russian aristocratic accent is limited (heard
     emigres speak it in Paris and Oxford fifteen -- twenty years ago),
     but I say none of them spoke like Lenin. They tend to speak very fast,
     with lots of neutral vowels instead of a very open AH for "o", with
     very clear emphasis, in a word, in a dramatic way.
  4. Some Russians (I haven't personally heard non-Jews do) pronounce
     R like Germans, but their accent is usually very flat compared with
     aristos or some drama characters. Thus they never give any impression
     of superiority or educatedness, at least to me. That accent is simply
     a sign of a particular group of people in society.
  5. Though in Soviet days everyone was encouraged to speak and write the
     way Moscow does, defective accent (from Moscow point of view) never was
     a serious problem. Remember that Stalin, Khrushchev, Gorbachev
     were heads of Russia in spite of their accent.
     Russia has become very plebian since 1917, anyway.

Just a word for foreigners learning Russian: it is best to stick to a
single accent whatever it is. It would be terrible if one spoke one word in
Moscow way, another in Leningrad way, yet another in Southern way in
a single sentence. This is inevitable when teachers came from various
backgrounds and the pupil is not good enough to distinguish them. It
may be allowed at a beginner's level, but not at the advanced level where
awareness of style is taken care of.

Cheers,
Tsuji


From ajw3 at psu.edu  Mon Oct  7 15:37:07 1996
From: ajw3 at psu.edu (Adrian J. Wanner)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 11:37:07 -0400
Subject: Panel on French-Russian Literary Relations
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.113707.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers,
I am toying with the idea of organizing a panel on French-Russian literary
relations for the 1997 AAASS conference in Seattle.  Is there anybody out
there who would like to participate?  Please respond to me directly rather
than to the list.
Best regards--  Adrian

Adrian J. Wanner
Department of Slavic and East European Languages
The Pennsylvania State University
214 Sparks Building
University Park, PA 16802

Tel. (814) 863-8964 (o)
                 234-1289 (h)


From fsciacca at itsmail1.hamilton.edu  Mon Oct  7 19:46:13 1996
From: fsciacca at itsmail1.hamilton.edu (Franklin A. Sciacca)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:46:13 -0500
Subject: Breaking glasses
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.144613.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Does anyone know the origin of the tradition of smashing glasses after
toasting?  Is this a specifically Russian custom?  Is it still done, or
just the stuff of novels?

Frank
Franklin A. Sciacca
Department of German and Russian
Program in Russian Studies
Hamilton College
198 College Hill Road
Clinton, NY  13323
fsciacca at hamilton.edu


From katsaros at AC.GRIN.EDU  Mon Oct  7 20:16:20 1996
From: katsaros at AC.GRIN.EDU (Elena Katsaros)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 14:16:20 -0600
Subject: Breaking glasses
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.141620.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>Does anyone know the origin of the tradition of smashing glasses after
>toasting?  Is this a specifically Russian custom?  Is it still done, or
>just the stuff of novels?
>
 I know from my Greek relatives, that the Greeks also do that. Since
Russians adopted many Greek religious and other ceremonies, I see the
connection in the glass breaking custom as well.

Elena Katsaros

Russian Department
Grinnell College
Katsaros at ac.grin.edu


From aisrael at american.edu  Mon Oct  7 19:24:52 1996
From: aisrael at american.edu (Alina Israeli)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 15:24:52 -0400
Subject: Russian non-standard (??) pronunciation
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.152452.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>
>While Misha was still the head of the former Union, the Radio Russian
>Course on the public radio station (NHK)  used his speeches as teaching
>materials because they thought his pronunciation was very good.  I always
>thought that wasn't true because he has a voiced fricative "g" instead of a
>voiced stop "g."  Russian textbooks in Japan say Russian "g" is a stop.
>But does any authoritative documents from Russia support that too?  Or do
>they say both the fricative "g" and the stop "g" are standard?

His final L's as u's were even better (from normative point of view).

>P.-S.:  I also noticed in my student years that the late Dr. Sakharov had a
>uvular "r."  Is that an influence from Yiddish?  Or is it from French which
>was supposedly used in the "high society" in the past?


Just a common speech defect. R's and L's are hard, and those are most
common speech defects.
Alina Israeli


From sipkadan at hum.amu.edu.pl  Mon Oct  7 22:24:19 1996
From: sipkadan at hum.amu.edu.pl (Danko Sipka)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 23:24:19 +0100
Subject: Breaking glasses
In-Reply-To: <01IAD4MEG59E8ZEFRU@AC.GRIN.EDU>
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.232419.0100.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Mon, 7 Oct 1996, Elena Katsaros wrote:

> >Does anyone know the origin of the tradition of smashing glasses after
> >toasting?  Is this a specifically Russian custom?  Is it still done, or
> >just the stuff of novels?
> >
>  I know from my Greek relatives, that the Greeks also do that. Since
> Russians adopted many Greek religious and other ceremonies, I see the
> connection in the glass breaking custom as well.
>

Smashing glasses is still alive on the Balkans. There are different
techniques of doing that, some of them being very unpleasant. Thus in
the cult movie by Aca Petrovic called "Skupljaci perja" the main character
at one point smashes two glasses, and then cuts his hands with it. But
this is an extreme case. Normally, you smash it either behind your
back or by your foot, and keep drinking from another glass. It is
normally a short and resolute movement. These are the most common
techniques, but I have also seen people who were throwing their glasses
to the wall, those who first put their glass on the table and then
simply push it down...

It can be at any time you feel like doing it, not only after the
toast.

Aren't Greeks supposed to smash saucers rather than glasses?

Danko Sipka


From keenan at HUSC.BITNET  Mon Oct  7 23:08:53 1996
From: keenan at HUSC.BITNET (Edward Keenan)
Date: Mon, 7 Oct 1996 19:08:53 -0400
Subject: Breaking glasses
Message-ID: <MON.7.OCT.1996.190853.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Very old.  See naive but unquestionably authentic descriptions by English
travellers in 1589 (or later) edition of Hakluyt's "Principal Navigations...."

>Does anyone know the origin of the tradition of smashing glasses after
>toasting?  Is this a specifically Russian custom?  Is it still done, or
>just the stuff of novels?
>
>Frank
>Franklin A. Sciacca
>Department of German and Russian
>Program in Russian Studies
>Hamilton College
>198 College Hill Road
>Clinton, NY  13323
>fsciacca at hamilton.edu
>
>


From yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp  Tue Oct  8 07:14:57 1996
From: yamato at yt.cache.waseda.ac.jp (Dr Yoshimasa Tsuji)
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 16:14:57 +0900
Subject: Russian short alphabet sentences wanted.
Message-ID: <TUE.8.OCT.1996.161457.0900.>

Hello,
I wonder if you know of a Russian language equivalent of
 "A quick brown fox hastily jumped over a lazy dog"? (I couldn't remember
           the right one.)
Thanks,
Tsuji


From paburak at summon.syr.edu  Tue Oct  8 04:42:06 1996
From: paburak at summon.syr.edu (Patricia A. Burak (OIS))
Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 09:42:06 +0500
Subject: (Fwd) Continuation of the discussion: "prostorech'e"
Message-ID: <TUE.8.OCT.1996.094206.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
From:          Self <SUMMON2/PABURAK>
To:            SEELANGS at CUNYVM
Subject:       Continuation of the discussion: "prostorech'e"
Date:          Tue, 8 Oct 1996 09:17:58 +0500

Dear Colleagues:
I have enjoyed the recent postings/discussion concerning "popular" or
"substandard" language, especially as a Ukrainian-American (western
Ukrainian no less!). Very interesting contributions, overall, and
intellectually stimulating.

This morning, while preparing to teach my class on Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn
 (in English), I came across yet another iteration of the discussion which I
 felt
impelled to share with any interested colleagues! In a critical essay
entitled "Solzhenitsyn in English: An Evaluation", author Alexis
Klimoff writes: "To any reader of S's works in the original, the
writer's concern with language is as obvious as the moral and social
thrust of his narrative.  More consistently and more imaginatively
than any other contemporary Soviet writer, S. has attempted to eschew
the ubiquitous cliches that have long ago spilled over from the pages
of PRAVDA and IZVESTIIA and inundated Soviet writing. S's fiction
represents a conscious endeavor to offer an alternative.  For this
purpose he has mobilized the full resources of the Russian language;
especially bold use has been made of what the grammar books call
'popular' or 'substandard' speech (prostorech'e)." {as cited in
SOLZHENITSYN: A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS.
 Ed. Kathryn Feuer. Prentice-Hall, Inc. New Jersey, 1976, with
further citation of this essay footnoted on page 130}.

There you have it: even Solzhenitsyn (!) uses the much maligned
"substandard" speech  for literary integrity and impact!

Hope you enjoy this contribution to the discussion.
Patricia A. Burak, Director
Office of International Services
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York 13244-2380


From ggerhart at WOLFE.net  Wed Oct  9 18:14:31 1996
From: ggerhart at WOLFE.net (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 14:14:31 EDT
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <WED.9.OCT.1996.141431.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

OK, ladies and gentlemen.
Check out today's New York Times.  Student population in Russian is
less than 25,000.
So what are you, personally and specifically going to do to double that
number?
Me? I'm going to try to convert the Ukrainians.
gg
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From KER4 at PSUVM.PSU.EDU  Wed Oct  9 18:31:00 1996
From: KER4 at PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Karen E. Robblee)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 14:31:00 EDT
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <WED.9.OCT.1996.143100.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Subject:  DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION


                DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Tenurability as Professor or advanced Associate Professor in any of
the degree-carrying languages at Penn State (i.e. French, Spanish,
German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Italian), but with a preference
for one of the first three.

Presumed specialty in second language acquisition theory/applied
linguistics and computer-assisted instruction. Ph.D., strong record of
publications appropriate to rank, evidence of teaching effectiveness,
native or near-native proficiency in English and one target language,
and experience working with computer-assisted language learning
required. Willingness to teach at graduate and undergraduate levels
expected. Some administrative experience preferred.

Applications received by November 29, 1996 will be assured of
consideration.  However, applications will be considered until
position is filled.

Send vita & complete file to:

                  Chair, CLA Search Committee
                  Box A, 316 Burrowes Building
                  Penn State University
                  University Park, PA  16802

An Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and minorities
are encouraged to apply.

*************************************************************************
Karen E. Robblee                         E-mail: ker4 at psu.edu
Slavic and East European Languages       Office: (814) 863-8963
207 Sparks Building                      Home: (814) 237-7046
The Pennsylvania State University        Department: (814) 865-1352
University Park, PA 16802                FAX: (814) 863-5561
*************************************************************************


From vac10 at columbia.edu  Wed Oct  9 19:05:06 1996
From: vac10 at columbia.edu (Vitaly A. Chernetsky)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 15:05:06 -0400
Subject: Alarm
In-Reply-To: <325BC1F9.76C3@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <WED.9.OCT.1996.150506.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Genevra Gerhart wrote:
> OK, ladies and gentlemen.
> Check out today's New York Times.  Student population in Russian is
> less than 25,000.
> So what are you, personally and specifically going to do to double that
> number?
> Me? I'm going to try to convert the Ukrainians.
> gg
> --
> Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

How and into what, may I ask? All potential smileys aside, I don't see how
"converting" students from one Slavic language to another could be in any
way beneficial for Slavic studies as a profession. If anything, trying to
be more flexible and reaching out to those interested in other Slavic
languages and cultures might help us out, not the propagation of a
"monokul'tura." It is in statements like this that the unfortunate
Russocentric "zashorennost'" of American Slavic studies displays all its
ugly implications.

Vitaly Chernetsky


From MLLEMILY at UBVMS.BITNET  Wed Oct  9 21:03:40 1996
From: MLLEMILY at UBVMS.BITNET (Emily Tall)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 16:03:40 -0500
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <WED.9.OCT.1996.160340.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Sometimes successes can be "harmful": a star Russian 101 student of mine
likes Russian so much she wants to transfer to another school that has
a Russian major (we have only a minor)! So it will look as if she
"dropped" Russian, at least as far as the bean counters are concerned...
Alas! Emily Tall


From dziwirek at u.washington.edu  Thu Oct 10 05:09:15 1996
From: dziwirek at u.washington.edu (Katarzyna Dziwirek)
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 22:09:15 -0700
Subject: Alarm
In-Reply-To: <325BC1F9.76C3@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <WED.9.OCT.1996.220915.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Sorry, Don't have time to read the newspaper with the new quarter and a
toddler who doesn't sleep at night... Did the article mention enrollments
for other Slavic langs? Here at UW, our 1st year Polish class has 18
students (plus one who just comes from time to time). It is the most
students we have had in Polish in the 3 years that I have been here. My
colleague teaching Czech reports a similar number of students in first
year Czech. I wonder if this is a pattern outside of Washington as well?
IF so, maybe the solution is not to convert anyone to Russian, but to hire
more teachers of other Slavic languages?
kat


************************************************************
Katarzyna Dziwirek
dziwirek at u.washington.edu
Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, box 353580
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
tel. (206) 543-7691
************************************************************


From gl2187 at exmail.usma.army.mil  Thu Oct 10 09:16:21 1996
From: gl2187 at exmail.usma.army.mil (Mansour, L. DR DFL)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 05:16:21 EDT
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.051621.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Friends,

Am I wrong or was Genevra referring to the futility of some of the
discussion on this list.  Can we claim to be keeping our eye on the
ball, when our stats are such as were reported in the Times article?

Larry Mansour
USMA Russian

>
>On Wed, 9 Oct 1996, Genevra Gerhart wrote:
>> Me? I'm going to try to convert the Ukrainians.
>> gg
Then V. Chernetsky wrote:
>
>How and into what, may I ask? All potential smileys aside, I don't see how
>"converting" students from one Slavic language to another could be in any
>way beneficial for Slavic studies as a profession.


From escatton at cnsvax.albany.edu  Thu Oct 10 13:23:33 1996
From: escatton at cnsvax.albany.edu (Ernest Scatton)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 08:23:33 -0500
Subject: Alarm
In-Reply-To: <Pine.A41.3.95b.961009220310.162534A-100000@homer33.u.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.082333.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Surprisingly, Polish and Ukrainian (the latter offered as a regular
course for the first time) this fall are very good (relatively speaking):
about 25 in first, about 20 in second. Russian enrollments picked up too
in comparison to last year...but they're still a matter for concern,
considering the continued increase in Spanish and Chinese. Interesting
article on today's Chronicle Higher Ed web site.

ES

*****************************************************************************
Ernest Scatton                                       Germanic & Slavic Hum254
518-442-4224 (w)                                               UAlbany (SUNY)
518-482-4934 (h)                                                    Albany NY
518-442-4217 (fax)                                                      12222
                  http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~alin220/slav_dept (WWW)


From mitrege at mail.auburn.edu  Thu Oct 10 13:59:56 1996
From: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu (George Mitrevski)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 08:59:56 -0500
Subject: AATSEEL web page
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.085956.0500.>

I've been getting numerous requests from non-SEELANGers who have
stumbled onto our home page and who would like more information on one
subject/topic or another. I would like to encourage anyone who happens
to have a bibliography on any subject to consider posting it on a web
page, or let us post it on the AATSEEL page.

Also, encourage your students (graduate and undergraduate) to consider
posting bibliographies (or entire papers). At the moment there are
several people waiting for more information on icons, iconography and
Orthodoxy.

Cordially,

George.

PS. Please take another look at the main AATSEEL page and see if there
is anything that you have on any of the subjects that you would like to
contribute for posting.
***************************************************************
Dr. George Mitrevski            office: 334-844-6376
Foreign Languages                  fax: 334-844-6378
6030 Haley Center               e-mail: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5204

List of my WWW pages: http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/index.html
***************************************************************


From brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu  Thu Oct 10 14:29:47 1996
From: brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu (Benjamin Rifkin)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 09:29:47 -0500
Subject: enrollments alarm
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.092947.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Katarzyna Dziwirek wrote:

>Sorry, Don't have time to read the newspaper with the new quarter and a
>toddler who doesn't sleep at night... Did the article mention enrollments
>for other Slavic langs? Here at UW, our 1st year Polish class has 18
>students (plus one who just comes from time to time). It is the most
>students we have had in Polish in the 3 years that I have been here. My
>colleague teaching Czech reports a similar number of students in first
>year Czech. I wonder if this is a pattern outside of Washington as well?
>IF so, maybe the solution is not to convert anyone to Russian, but to hire
>more teachers of other Slavic languages?
>kat



The article to which Genevra made reference (in the NY Times on 10/9/96)
had no special category for other Slavic languages, but did have a category
for other languages (excluding the ones cited specifically -- French,
German, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Hebrew,
Latin, among others) and that category showed a modest increase.  That is
consistent with what I have heard (anecdotally) about increases in
enrollments in Polish and Czech around the country.  I think that we should
consider diversifying our departments to attract enrollments in these and
other languages and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe while continuing
to work on attracting students to the study of Russian language and culture
(including literature).  At UW-Madison we've had great success in keeping
students enrolled once we get them in the door of first-semester Russian
(our attrition rates have dropped significantly), but we continue to have
problems in getting students to sign up for 101.  Last year we tried
offering a section of Russian with 5 contact hours (the standard for the
course) in only 4 days (the fourth day had two contact hours), with Fridays
off.  (This strategy had had significant impact on enrollments in
Portuguese at our institution.)  It didn't work for Russian.  One of the
4-day sections had robust enrollment, but when asked, students in that
section said that chose it because the time of day was attractive to them.
The other 4-day section had very poor enrollment.  When all students in
first-semester Russian were polled about the 4-day sections, the
overwhelming majority (95%!) said that they would not sign up for that kind
of section for second semester unless the time the section met was the best
time of the day for them or all the other sections were closed.
Accordingly, we dropped the 4-day plan like a hot potato.  This year we
tried marking one of our first-semester sections in the timetable as
specifically for students with an interest in business, and scheduled the
class to meet in the Business School's building.  The section had robust
enrollment, but only 5 of the 19 students indicated any interest in
business.  The others signed up because they decided that that was the best
time for them to take Russian.  In total, our enrollments are slightly down
from last year at this time (65 this year, 70 last year in first-semester)
and we are still looking for ways to get students in the door.  We will
continue to offer "Read Russian in an Hour" in the spring semester (a week
before registration for the following fall) and we will continue to conduct
"Russia Day" for high school students from across Wisconsin and Northern
Illinois in the hope of attracting students to our first-semester course.
We also send faculty and students to area studies courses to publicize
language offerings and distribute flyers.  (If you like Russian history,
why not try learning Russian?  It's FUN!)  Any other ideas out there?

I agree with Genevra that this is the CENTRAL issue facing our profession
now.  We MUST stimulate interest in our target culture and we MUST get the
word out that students who study Russian language and culture can use the
skills they learn in our classes to get good jobs in Russia and in the USA.
(Remember when we had high enrollments but job prospects were poor?)  We
should also publicize the fact that students who study Russian have a very
high rate of going on to graduate school, so that if students want to go to
graduate school, studying Russian might improve their chances.  Perhaps
their applications stand out among those of students who have studied only
more commonly taught languages.  Perhaps our students pick up study skills
useful for preparing for the LSATs or the GREs or the MCATs or other such
exams.  Or perhaps they pick up study skills that help them improve their
overall GPAs.  Or perhaps they're just brighter to begin with:  students
seeking additional challenge.

Whatever the case, if the trend for declining enrollments continues, our
profession and our mission will suffer greatly.  We MUST focus on
enrollments and we must focus our attention on strategies for success in
enrollment building.

Anyone out there have some success stories to share?

Ben Rifkin


**********************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI  53706
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu


From brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu  Thu Oct 10 15:27:39 1996
From: brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu (Benjamin Rifkin)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 10:27:39 -0500
Subject: corrections on data in previous posting
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.102739.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers:

I apologize for misquoting the NY Times article to which Genevra Gerhardt
referred.  In fact, "other languages" experienced a whopping 42% increase
in enrollments, from 17,544 in 1990 to 24,918 in 1995, compared to a 36%
increase for Chinese, a 28% increase for Arabic, a 14% increase for
Spanish, a 5% increase for Portuguese, a 1% increase for Hebrew and
decreases in Ancient Greek (1%), Japanese (2%), Latin (8%), Italian (12%),
French (25%), German (28%) and Russian (45%).  According to these
enrollment figures, the most popular languages and their enrollments in
1995 are:

Spanish                  606,286
French                    205,351
German                   96,263
Japanese                  44,723
Italian                      43,760
Chinese                   26,471
Latin                        25,897
Russian                   24,729 (down from 44,626 in 1990)
Ancient Greek      16,272
Hebrew                  13,127
Portuguese             6,531
Arabic                      4,444

Other languages registered enrollments of 17,544 in 1990 and 24,918 in 1995.

In 1990, Russian was the 6th most popular foreign language (after Spanish,
French, German, Italian and Japanese, in that order).  In 1995, Russian was
the 8th most popular foreign language.  Chinese passed Russian and Russian
fell behind Latin (which also experienced a decline in enrollment, but a
relatively slight one.)

The article is on p. B8 of the NY Times for 10/9/96 and the data are from
the MLA's survey of foreign language enrollments in 1990 in 2,772 two- and
four-year colleges in the US.



Ben Rifkin


**********************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI  53706
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu


From kaiserd at U.Arizona.EDU  Thu Oct 10 16:46:16 1996
From: kaiserd at U.Arizona.EDU (David W Kaiser)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 09:46:16 -0700
Subject: NYT figures
In-Reply-To: <v02110100ae827e58a73e@[144.92.181.167]>
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.094616.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Regarding the NYT article in which a 45% drop in enrollment was mentioned,
how does enrollment look compared to historical trends? Specifically, did
we get a "spike" in the late 80s due to the heady days of glasnost, only
to return to historically normal levels in the 90s? Or is this a true
decline in enrollment and not a correction (to use the economists' term
for such things)?


Dave Kaiser
Master's Candidate,
Department of Russian and Slavic Languages
University of Arizona


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Thu Oct 10 16:59:54 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 09:59:54 -0700
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.095954.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Note:  Please interpret the "you" as a "rhetorical you" everywhere it
appears below.  No ad-hominem attacks are intended.


  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >I think that we should consider diversifying our departments to attract
  >enrollments in these and other languages and cultures of Central and
  >Eastern Europe while continuing to work on attracting students to the study
  >of Russian language and culture (including literature).

I agree.  If you (rhetorical you) truly are members of "Departments of Slavic
Languages" and not members "Departments of Russian", then your departments
should offer a significant number of quality courses in languages other than
Russian.  I've done a bit of web surfing to "Slavic" language departments
around the US and don't find this currently to be the case, k sozhaleniyu.

  [...]
  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >I agree with Genevra that this is the CENTRAL issue facing our profession
  >now.  We MUST stimulate interest in our target culture and we MUST get the
  >word out that students who study Russian language and culture can use the
  >skills they learn in our classes to get good jobs in Russia and in the USA.
  >(Remember when we had high enrollments but job prospects were poor?)

And it is this attitude about the centrality and ultimate importance of
Russian, which I as an outsider to your field find so offensive and
annoying about so-called "Departments of Slavic Languages".  Is this a
misnomer?  Are you not really "Departments of Russian" or "Departments of
Russian (with a few token 1st and maybe 2nd year courses in other languages)"?
Or, to borrow from my profession (computer programming):  "Departments of
Russian++"?  Why do you need a *target* culture, and why is it *Russian*?
Why must you focus on *Russian* enrollments?  If you are truly departments of
*Slavic* languages, perhaps you should be focusing on aggregate enrollments
in all languages taught at your respective departments.  Perhaps you should
focus on increasing this *aggregate* enrollment -- even if that means that
Russian-language enrollments must drop in order to have a net increase in
*total* enrollments.

In my personal *opinion*, Russian has been overemphasized and overfunded in
US education, and what you are seeing now is a correction for this due to
changing "market forces".  The inflated supply of Russian exceeds its demand,
and, unless some major developments occur in Eastern Europe to change this
situation (like a totalitarian/imperial/confrontational government in Russia)
I think this trend will continue.

  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >We should also publicize the fact that students who study Russian have a
  >very high rate of going on to graduate school, so that if students want to
  >go to graduate school, studying Russian might improve their chances.

Why should such an advertisement uniquely specify Russian?  If you diversify
your departments, examine opportunities abroad in fledging transitional
economies, etc, are there not many opportunities for those studying Polish,
Czech, Ukrainian, etc?  And is it not the case that all Slavic languages offer
a similar level and quality of intellectual challenges for students?

  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >Perhaps their applications stand out among those of students who have
  >studied only more commonly taught languages.  Perhaps our students pick up
  >study skills useful for preparing for the LSATs or the GREs or the MCATs or
  >other such exams.  Or perhaps they pick up study skills that help them
  >improve their overall GPAs.  Or perhaps they're just brighter to begin with:
  >students seeking additional challenge.

Again, why should this be unique to Russian?

  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >Whatever the case, if the trend for declining enrollments continues, our
  >profession and our mission will suffer greatly.  We MUST focus on
  >enrollments and we must focus our attention on strategies for success in
  >enrollment building.

Agreed, but *aggregate* enrollments in the Slavic languages should be the
number you are seeking to maximize -- even to the possible detriment of
Russian language enrollments.

-- Stephen Bobick


From Barry.P.Scherr at Dartmouth.EDU  Thu Oct 10 17:16:31 1996
From: Barry.P.Scherr at Dartmouth.EDU (Barry P. Scherr)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 13:16:31 EDT
Subject: NYT figures
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.131631.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

In response to David Kaiser's inquiry, here are some MLA figures, rounded to
the nearest 1000,  from earlier surveys:

1960:   31k
1968:   41k
1970:    36k
1974:   33k
1977:   28k
1980:   24k
1983:   30k
1986:   34k
1990:   45k
1995:   25k

Russian enrollments in 1995 were still slightly above their historic low in
1980, but the recent decline over just five years is much steeper than the
12-year decline from 1968-1980. Also, the 1995 enrollments are well below the
average over the last 35 years, when they were most often in the low to
mid-30's.

--Barry Scherr


From jak209 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu  Thu Oct 10 18:26:43 1996
From: jak209 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu (john kieselhorst)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 12:26:43 -0600
Subject: Enrollment alarm?
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.122643.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

        The recent article in the NY Times (Oct 9, p.B8) indicating a 45%
decline in Russian enrollments (1990 vs. 1995) has caused "Alarm" on the
SEELANGS lines.  For my part, I wonder that we academics sometimes fail to
understand that our own efforts are often only an exceedingly small part of
the larger world in which we live.

        The Times article  shows Russian to have suffered the greatest
enrollment decline of all foreign languages.  We do well to ask ourselves
if there is anything that we can do to raise enrollments.  However, I think
we really need to take MLA executive director Phyllis Franklin's comments
in that article seriously.  "The foreign languages chosen for study by
students have always fluctuated, and they have always reflected
international developments."  I would suggest that certain national trends
here at home have also contributed to the decline. The following are some
random thoughts on the why the figures are what they are, and some
suggestions about what to do about it.

        1) I do not have statistics at hand, but I would be willing to bet
my graduate student stipend that the 1990 Russian enrollments (the base
used in the Times comparison) were unusually high by comparison with
previous years. As we all know, rapid changes in the (then) Soviet Union
and East bloc countries led to increased ease of travel, wild political
speculation, and excitement about newly-opened markets in a population of
over 260 million.  Enrollments were bound to increase dramatically in the
wake of such developments. However, Russia's disappointing political and
economic progress in recent years, I would venture, has soured the
enthusiasm of many potential new students.

        2) Perhaps more notable than the decline in specifically Russian
enrollment was the decline in all European languages other than Spanish and
Portuguese.  This is notable, though not surprising. The klichka
"eurocentric" has become as damning on our campuses today as the brand
"counter-revolutionary" was during the Russian Civil War. Whether or not we
accept Russia as "European" really matters little; in the perception of our
potential new students, this is merely another language spoken by the "dead
white males" society.  Few outside of our field are familiar with Russian
literature beyond Tolstoevsky, perhaps Chekhov, and the film version of
Pasternak; Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Ginsburg, Gippius, and others, have yet to
become common coin with the American reading public.

        Having identified some sources of our enrollment woes, the question
remains, "chto delat'?"  On the international, front, we should emphasize
that the opportunity to travel to Russia still remains.  While successful
markets continue to be a thing of the future, the excitement of visiting a
nation in the process of nation building (or perhaps reconstruction is more
appropriate) is worth emphasizing to prospective students. In the main,
however, we should perhaps recognize our own powerlessness over
international events that cause fluctuations in our student populations,
and stop wasting energy trying to address issues that lie beyond our
control.

        It seems to me a more productive approach would focus on the home
front. Slavists are generally less inclined to the kind of europe-bashing
that floats enrollments in English, French and comparative literature
courses (these always find a way to invite students into their European
tents under the rubric of "colonialism"). We need to look for positive
solutions.
        One way to encourage study of a foreign language is to encourage
interest in poetry, since poetry cannot fully be experienced in
translation. Russian poetry provides a wealth of joy and challenges to
prospective students. Since much of our great poetry is written by women,
poetry can also be a vehicle for changing the perception of Russian letters
as "phallocentric".

        We might also remind our students, who find themselves increasingly
enticed by sexy courses that emphasize "anti-hegemonic" cultural ideas,
that Russian literary history is a story of continual cultural struggle
against multiple hegemonies.  It seems to me we have become too accustomed
to think of writers like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as bastions of the boringly
conventional realist tradition. Nothing could be further from the truth, as
a review of contemporary criticism plainly reveals. Their works were
revolutionary and provocative, in form and content, defying the demands of
civic and utilitarian critics of their day.  Likewise, symbolist and
decadent poets rejected the call to civic duty that had been demanded by
the second censorship, the dominant cultural force of the utilitarians. The
Futurists vocal revolt against their cultural forebears, the "Red Hot"
20's, and the underground literature from Bulgakov and Lidia Ginsburg
through Siniavsky and Solzhenitsyn all scream the excitement of cultural
upheavals against various forms of repression.

        Perhaps I am suggesting that we need to become historians for our
students in order to make this literature come alive. Surely to some extent
our field, like any that deals with history, suffers from Zamiatin's
entropy.  "When the flaming, seething sphere (in science, religion, social
life, art) cools, the fiery magma becomes coated with dogma--a rigid,
ossified, motionless, crust." We need to try to restore the fire -- to
remind students that the cold "classics" they hold in their hands were once
molten culture.  We need to restore the sense of life these once had by
recreating a context.  Read Pisarev's article on realism with students, or
Chernyshevsky's "anthropological principle," or Zamiatin's articles on
literature, Blok's, Bely's, Trotsky's.  Encourage the sense of excitement,
significance and urgency of art in Russia, that these (read alongside the
artistic works) provide. Students will become energized, sense the
excitement of another era, and draw analogies to their own.

        It seems to me that the greater sense of history will ultimately
benefit our field as well. We will become more attuned to the fluctuations
of culture that have effected Russian literature, and perhaps become more
aware that we, too, live in a world of change and variance. Students will
be more likely to see the study of Russian culture as an end in itself,
rather than as a "plus" on a job application with a multi-national
corporation, thus boosting enrollment. We in the field will be less likely
to panic or rejoice every time our enrollments swing one way or the other.
We would also be likely to recognize the value, excitement, and currency of
our heritage,  which is probably our best defense  against critical trends
that would leave us for dead.



John Kieselhorst                              tel:847-570-0790
CTEC Project Manager                          e-mail jak209 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu
Office of the Provost                         fax: 847-467-1317 ATTN: CTEC Mgr
Northwestern University


From brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu  Thu Oct 10 17:52:53 1996
From: brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu (Benjamin Rifkin)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 12:52:53 -0500
Subject: response to Mr. Bobick
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.125253.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I understand Mr. Bobick's point and agree with him in many ways.  However,
I disagree about the idea that Russian language enrollments exceed the
country's need for speakers of Russian.  (See Brecht et al.'s report, for
instance, or the classified ads in magazines like the Economist or the
newspaper Moscow Times.)  Our students of Russian get jobs ... they get
numerous job offers.  Our responsibility is to track this better so we can
attract students who will fill these jobs.

I also want to make it clear that while I heartily support the teaching of
all the languages and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, many of us in
AATSEEL are faculty members in Slavic Departments in which the bulk of
appointments are in Russian language and literature.  We may, in time,
change this state by training and hiring tenure track faculty in other
Slavic languages and cultures, but as presently configured, many of the
departments are simply not prepared to teach full programs in some of the
languages.  Our own department offers Serbo-Croatian and Polish and Czech,
but offerings are limited on both the undergraduate and graduate level
because each of these languages/cultures is represented by one (Polish and
Czech) or two (Serbo-Croatian) faculty members who teach a variety of
courses beyond the language itself.  Given the current state of funding for
higher education, we are not likely going to be allowed to hire another
faculty member in Polish (even though our Polish enrollments are robust)
anytime soon.  (The film program, for instance, has 300 majors, but the
same number of full time teaching employees:  the program has been
requesting additional hires for years, but the budget has not allowed this.
Our program, with declining enrollments, is in no position to ask for more
positions.)

My argument is simply that we MUST work together, all of us, Russianists
and non-Russianists, to increase enrollments in our field.

Ben Rifkin


******************************************************************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Assistant Professor of Russian,
Coordinator of Russian-Language Instruction & Teacher Training
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706

e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu
telephone:  608/262-1623, 608/262-3498
fax:  608/265-2814


From aisrael at american.edu  Thu Oct 10 18:17:32 1996
From: aisrael at american.edu (Alina Israeli)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 14:17:32 -0400
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.141732.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>Sorry, Don't have time to read the newspaper with the new quarter and a
>toddler who doesn't sleep at night... Did the article mention enrollments
>for other Slavic langs?

No, just the major European languages, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic
and some passing mention of Vietnamese and Korean, I believe (heritage
learning).

You can also get the article on Internet.
Alina


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Thu Oct 10 18:27:01 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 11:27:01 -0700
Subject: alarm
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.112701.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Benjamin Rifkin writes:
  >I understand Mr. Bobick's point and agree with him in many ways.  However,
  >I disagree about the idea that Russian language enrollments exceed the
  >country's need for speakers of Russian.  (See Brecht et al.'s report, for
  >instance, or the classified ads in magazines like the Economist or the
  >newspaper Moscow Times.)  Our students of Russian get jobs ... they get
  >numerous job offers.

But, are the jobs attractive to students selecting a major in college?  If
not, then perhaps the supply of jobs does exceed the demand.  Or is the
arguement that the students simply don't know about the (attractive) jobs
that are available to them?

  >Our responsibility is to track this better so we can
  >attract students who will fill these jobs.

Has there been any tracking of the supply of jobs for students of other Slavic
Languages?  Poland and Ukraine are significantly large countries with fledging
economies and a huge potential (for success or failure).  Are there not
opportunities in these (and other) countries for students of these non-Russian
Slavic languages?

  >I also want to make it clear that while I heartily support the teaching of
  >all the languages and cultures of Central and Eastern Europe, many of us in
  >AATSEEL are faculty members in Slavic Departments in which the bulk of
  >appointments are in Russian language and literature.  We may, in time,
  >change this state by training and hiring tenure track faculty in other
  >Slavic languages and cultures, but as presently configured, many of the
  >departments are simply not prepared to teach full programs in some of the
  >languages.  Our own department offers Serbo-Croatian and Polish and Czech,
  >but offerings are limited on both the undergraduate and graduate level
  >because each of these languages/cultures is represented by one (Polish and
  >Czech) or two (Serbo-Croatian) faculty members who teach a variety of
  >courses beyond the language itself.  Given the current state of funding for
  >higher education, we are not likely going to be allowed to hire another
  >faculty member in Polish (even though our Polish enrollments are robust)
  >anytime soon.  (The film program, for instance, has 300 majors, but the
  >same number of full time teaching employees:  the program has been
  >requesting additional hires for years, but the budget has not allowed this.
  >Our program, with declining enrollments, is in no position to ask for more
  >positions.)

Yes I understand the situation is complex.  But isn't it possible to hire
lecturers on a year-by-year basis (with maybe only MS or BS degrees) to
support instruction in other Slavic Languages that seem to be enjoying robust,
increasing enrollments.  Conceivably, programs could be incrementally
developed and expanded for those languages which enjoy consistent enrollments.

  >My argument is simply that we MUST work together, all of us, Russianists
  >and non-Russianists, to increase enrollments in our field.

I'm speaking as an outsider to the field.  I have a personal interest and
desire to develop fluency in *both* Ukrainian and Russian.  I have plenty of
opportunities in the latter, but few for the former.  As a graduate student
in Computer Science at the University of Washington, I would have gladly
embraced an opportunity to study Ukrainian during my two years there as
an "enrichment class".  It was never offered.  I also would have taken
extension courses in Ukrainian through the University if they existed.  They
do not.  So, I pay for private tutoring with 6-7 other fellow students from
the Seattle area.  Some would probably be adverse to a rigorous "academic"
type course, but some probably would consider taking an extension course,
if it existed at a reasonable cost.  I'm fairly sure. there is *some* demand
here in Seattle for Ukrainian language studies, but could not accurately say
how much.  I can only say that the University of Washington lost the potential
of one Ukrainian-language student for 2+ years.

-- Stephen Bobick


From omalley at hawaii.edu  Thu Oct 10 18:20:42 1996
From: omalley at hawaii.edu (Lurana OMalley)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 08:20:42 -1000
Subject: Research on Women's Lit in Russia
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.082042.1000.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGS:

In reflecting on my own research on Catherine the Great's plays, I have
decided to seek the opinions and stories of other researchers.  I would
like to hear from any of you who are doing research (analysis, editing,
translating) on women's literature in Russia, particularly those of you
who might employ feminist methodologies.

I have a short and informal questionnaire, which asks basic questions
about your experiences in doing work on Russian Women Writers or on
Feminist Approaches to Russian Literature, and the challenges of such
work.   Please respond to me PERSONALLY at

omalley at hawaii.edu

if you are interested in commenting on these issues, and I will e-mail
you the questionnaire.

Many thanks,


Lurana O'Malley

******************
Lurana Donnels O'Malley
Associate Professor
Department of Theatre and Dance
1770 East-West Road
University of Hawai'i
Honolulu, Hawai'i 96822
Tel. 808-956-9609
Fax  808-956-4234
omalley at hawaii.edu


From paburak at summon.syr.edu  Thu Oct 10 10:12:25 1996
From: paburak at summon.syr.edu (Patricia A. Burak (OIS))
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 15:12:25 +0500
Subject: Video/Film: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.151225.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Colleagues:
Does anyone have this video which I could borrow immediately? I
showed it to my class in 1991 (the last time I taught this course on
Pasternak and Solzhenitsyn), and when I went to my university
resources to order it again for this year, they no longer had it. I
was referred to TLA Video Management and they have been looking for
it for me to buy (only $20) but to no avail. The manager says he just
cannot find it!

If anyone has any ideas, or could loan me your copy for one showing
(I would gladly pay Fed Ex shipping costs to me and back to you),
please let me know. Thanks.
Patricia A. Burak, Director
Office of International Services
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York 13244-2380


From 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM  Thu Oct 10 19:39:05 1996
From: 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM (Jerry Ervin)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 15:39:05 EDT
Subject: AATSEEL conference & membership info
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.153905.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers:

Please share this information with colleagues and other bulletin boards and
lists as appropriate; I've been receiving many questions about these matters
lately.

Thanks!

--Jerry Ervin

*****

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION - $50
        All attendees must be current members (see rates below) and must also
register for the conference.  Preregistration and on-site registration are
available (with preregistration encouraged).  Preregistration by November 15 is
essential for presenters (panel chairs, secretaries, panelists) who wish to have
their names appear in the official, printed conference program.

MEMBERSHIP and SUBSCRIPTIONS:
        Membership and subscriptions cover the calendar year (January-December).
SEEJ and Newsletter address labels show the year through which one is paid; all
memberships and subscriptions expire in December.  Early renewals are
encouraged, and will extend the paid-up period through the following December.
(Multiple year renewals are also accepted.)  New and reinstated memberships and
subscriptions will be credited to the year in which received; in these cases,
back issues of SEEJ and the Newsletter for that year will be sent.

MEMBERSHIP RATES FOR INDIVIDUALS
Administrators, Full & Associate Professors (AFA) - $40
Non-Academic Members (NAM) - $40
Assistant Professors, Instructors and Lecturers (AIL) - $30
Secondary School Teachers (SST) - $25
Joint Members (1 address, 1 set of publications) (JOI) - $45
Students & Unemployed (S&U) - $20
Affiliate (Newsletter only) (NLO) - $20
Emeritus (EME) - $20
Sustaining Members (SUS) - $55
Friend (FRN) - $100
Special Friend (SPF) - $200
Benefactor (BEN) - $500

SUBSCRIPTION RATES FOR INSTITUTIONS (all prices include shipping)
Domestic, SEEJ and NL - $55
International, SEEJ & NL - $65
Newsletter only, domestic - $30
Newsletter only, international - $35

BACK ISSUES OF SEEJ (all prices include shipping)
Domestic - $15/issue
International - $17/issue

You don't need a form to register for the conference or enter a membership,
subscription, or back issue order.  A letter will do; just be sure to include
all relevant information:
1.  WHAT you are requesting (e.g., conference preregistration only?
Membership--in what category?  Both conference preregistration and membership?
Back issues--if so, which volume and number?  Etc.).
2.  Current MAILING ADDRESS (AATSEEL must pay for publications returned by the
Postal Service).
3.  CONTACT information (such as phone, fax, or email--for office follow-up, if
needed).
4.  AFFILIATION as you would like to have it appear on your conference
registration.

Please make all checks payable to AATSEEL, Inc., in US dollars.  Send orders,
payments, or other inquiries to:

Gerard L. Ervin
Executive Director, AATSEEL
1981 N. Evelyn Ave.
Tucson, AZ 85715 USA
phone/fax:  520/885-2663
email:  76703.2063 at compuserve.com


From paburak at summon.syr.edu  Thu Oct 10 10:50:49 1996
From: paburak at summon.syr.edu (Patricia A. Burak (OIS))
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 15:50:49 +0500
Subject: Film/Video: ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.155049.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Colleagues:
Thanks! Someone has helped me already. My class will see it after
all!
Patricia A. Burak, Director
Office of International Services
Syracuse University
Syracuse, New York 13244-2380


From Nonna.Danchenko at vuw.ac.nz  Thu Oct 10 21:15:22 1996
From: Nonna.Danchenko at vuw.ac.nz (Nonna Danchenko)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 10:15:22 +1300
Subject: Call for Papers
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.101522.1300.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Can you please resend your information re  Call for Papers Roman Jakobson
conference in Moscow, as we appear to have lost it.
Thanks very much.
nonna at matai.vuw.ac.nz


From spelton at irex.org  Thu Oct 10 17:58:18 1996
From: spelton at irex.org (Susan Pelton)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 17:58:18 +0000
Subject: US Fellowship Opportunities for NIS Citizens
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.175818.0000.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

         **************************************************
                                     OPEN COMPETITION
                   FOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS IN THE USA
  FOR SCHOLARS, UNIVERSITY FACULTY, NGO REPRESENTATIVES,
                 JOURNALISTS, AND OTHER PROFESSIONALS
                   FROM THE NEWLY INDEPENDENT STATES
          **************************************************

                 APPLICATION DEADLINE:  DECEMBER 2, 1996

The Government of the United States of America announces an open
competition for fellowships in the United States through the United
States Information Agency Regional Scholar Exchange Program with the
Newly Independent States and Freedom Support Act Fellowships in
Contemporary Issues.

The Regional Scholar Exchange Program and Freedom Support Act
Fellowships in Contemporary Issues are developed, funded, and
supervised by the United States Information Agency with funds
allocated by the Congress of the United States.  Both programs are
administered by the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX)
and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies. A total of
one hundred and seventy five (175) fellowships for research projects in the
humanities and the social sciences will be awarded in this open competition.

The Regional Scholar Exchange Program and Freedom Support Act
Fellowships in Contemporary Issues provide opportunities to qualified
citizens of all twelve Newly Independent States (Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova,
Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan)
to conduct research, write studies, and deliver lectures in the
United States with the goal of contributing to the further
development of higher education, scholarship, public policy, the
economy and society in the New Independent States.

All Regional Scholars and Contemporary Issues Fellows are affiliated
with U.S. host institutions (i.e. universities,research institutes,
NGOs, and government agencies) that have resource materials and
specialists in the fellows' field and are placed with a host advisor
who guides their research projects and professional development.
Fellowships are for a period of either three months, six months,or
eight months.

All applicants must demonstrate a critical need to conduct their
research in the U.S., cite resources that are not available in the
home country, but would be required to advance their research,
address how their research will make a significant contribution to
their fields in their home countries, and how they will apply their
research and disseminate the knowledge, skills, and insights gained
during their U.S. fellowship upon return to the NIS.

Applicants must demonstrate a high level of proficiency in written
and spoken English, be over age 25 but under age 60 at the time of
application, be eligible to receive and maintain a U.S. visa, and
must not have participated in another United States Information
Agency-sponsored academic exchange program of more than six weeks
after June 1994.

The Regional Scholar Exchange Program and Freedom Support Act
Fellowships in Contemporary Issues provide round-trip travel from
fellows' home cities in the NIS to the U.S. host institution,
medical insurance, a monthly stipend for housing and living
expenses, a small allowance for educational materials and
professional conferences, membership in one U.S. professional
association, and access to and training in e-mail and Internet at
U.S. host institutions.

APPLICATION DEADLINE:  Monday, December, 2, 1996.

All semi-finalists will be interviewed in person in their home countries
in February 1997.

All applicants will be notified of their status by March 1997.

Successful applicants are expected to begin fellowships in the United
States in either April 1997 or September 1997.

Applications for the Regional Scholar Exchange Program and Freedom
Support Act Fellowships in Contemporary Issues can be obtained from
and submitted to IREX offices in the NIS (Almaty, Bishkek, Irkutsk,
Kiev, Moscow, Rostov-na-Donu, Tashkent, Tbilisi, Vladivostok,
Yerevan) the Kennan Moscow Project, and Educational Advising Centers
located in all Newly Independent States.

FOR APPLICATIONS, MORE INFORMATION AND A COMPLETE LIST
OF CONTACT INFORMATION IN THE NIS, SEND A MESSAGE TO:

irex at info.irex.org

In the subject line, type:

RSEP/CI INFO REQUEST

The application is also available via the Internet at the following URL:
http://www.irex.org/grants/intl/rsepciapp.htm  or at
http://www.irex.ru (based in Moscow)

If you are interested in hosting a NIS Fellow at your US institution
(university, institute, NGO, think tank, or government office),
please send a message to Sean Holloway at:

shollowa at irex.org


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Fri Oct 11 01:12:23 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 18:12:23 -0700
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.181223.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

A thought just occurred to me regarding "advertisement" of Slavic languages.

I attended Universities (undergrad and grad) with language requirements.
During my freshman orientation of my undergrad years (way back in 1987...),
the importance of planning to take care of this requirement was a part of the
material covered in my orientation, and I took a placement test at that time
(for German).  At the time I never even considered doing anything *but*
finish my German -- a language I had invested 5 years of time in (I started
in Jr. High).

I also recall receiving bundles of information about school organizations,
fraternities, etc. both in my dormitory room after I had arrived in school,
and even at home before I left to start school.  I even received a letter
2/3 of the way through my freshman year which encouraged me to change my
major to mathematics because of my performance in first year calculus.

Perhaps Slavic Languages could be advertised in a similar manner:  mailings
to incoming freshman, flyers included in orientation and information packets
in dorm rooms, flyers handed out during freshman orientation, posters and
flyers plastered all over campus at appropriate locations, etc.  I think
some of thses approaches would be especially effective for schools with
a language requirement.

Now I'll admit that many students operate under the premise of "the path of
least resistance" with respect to satisfying their language requirement.  I
did.  However, if I had received an eye-catching flyer about studying language
X I might have seriously considered it.  Why?  Well, personally I had lost
interest in German and was only continuing it because 1) I wanted to "get it
out of the way" as quickly as possible 2) I had no desire to start from
ground zero with a language like Spanish, or French, that interested me no
more than German.  Other languages hardly came to mind.  And I was bewildered
enough with other choices and decisions.  However, who knows what would have
happened had I seen a flyer that caught my interest.  For example, at the
University of Washington, I recall receiving 2 letters from the Japanese
language program about an opportunity they were extending to MS students in
Engineering to get a dual MS with the second degree in Japanese (this
information is from memory, so I may be getting the details of the program
wrong).  Now, I had never thought about taking Japanese before, but, in all
honesty, I really did stop and seriously *think* about it when I received the
initial letter and its follow-up.  True, I decided in the end *not* to take
Japanese, but had I seen an advertisement for *Ukrainian* as a freshman 5
years earlier, things may have been different.

-- Stephen Bobick


From hermberg at falcon.cc.ukans.edu  Fri Oct 11 01:49:52 1996
From: hermberg at falcon.cc.ukans.edu (LUNDBERG GRANT H)
Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 20:49:52 -0500
Subject: research in Slovenia
Message-ID: <THU.10.OCT.1996.204952.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Seelangs Subscribers,

I am working on a dissertation in Slovene dialectology at the University
of Kansas with Prof. Marc Greenberg. I am going to Slovenia in Dec. to do
field work. I will be in the country for at least nine months, and I will
have my wife and two children with me. I am hoping to find a place to
stay in either Ljubljana or Maribor that I can afford on a grad. student
budget. Does anyone have any ideas?

Grant Lundberg
e-mail: <hermberg at falcon.cc.ukans.edu>


From vakarel at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU  Fri Oct 11 08:54:03 1996
From: vakarel at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (c. vakareliyska)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 00:54:03 -0800
Subject: Polish enrollments
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.005403.0800.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

      The University of Oregon also has had an unexpected increase this
fall in first-year Polish -- up from 2 students last year to 8 this year.
       Polish and all other Slavic language enrollment figures for this
term and the past five years, from each department responding to the recent
rolling enrollments survey (posted over SEELANGS on September 30), will be
available soon on the webpage of the AATSEEL-associated Slavic Linguistics
Task Force. This should make comparisons easier. If your department has not
yet submitted this data, there is still time to do so now (contact off-line
either Katya Krivinkova  (kk50 at cornell.edu) or me). An announcement will be
posted over SEELANGS as soon as the figures are on the web.

Cynthia Vakareliyska
Chair, Subcommittee on Intra-University Promotion
Slavic Linguistics Task Force

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
C. Vakareliyska                                 vakarel at oregon.uoregon.edu
Asst. Professor of Slavic Linguistics           tel. (541) 346-4043
Department of Russian                           fax  (541) 346-1327
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-1262


From rbeard at bucknell.edu  Fri Oct 11 12:45:14 1996
From: rbeard at bucknell.edu (Robert Beard)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 08:45:14 -0400
Subject: 1001 Common Russian Terms
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.084514.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I was contacted by email this past summer by an engineer-poet, Valerii
Bashevoj, from Dubna who is looking for a way to make a contribution to the
WWW.  He suggested a dictionary of 1001 Familiar Russian Words which
speakers of Russian need to know, but which are not included in
dictionaries.   For example, these are the terms he has so far gathered
under the letter "G"

(Under "G")

Tretyakovskaya Galary, Yuri Gagarin, Alexander Galish, Iliya
         Glazunov, Mikhail Glinka, Nicolay Gogol, Boris Godunov, Mikhail
         Gorbachev, Vyacheslav Gordeev, Maxim Gorky, Teophanes the
         Greek, Yuri grigorovich, GRU, Gulag, Gusary, Gzhel,


I encouraged him to continue with the project and made a few suggestions,
promising to help as much as I could.   He has divided the project into two
tasks:  deriving the list of terms to be included and defining them.  Right
now he is gathering the terms and needs our help.   Since he does not teach
Russian, he needs to know which non-dictionary words (and phrases) our
students need defined. If we will help him draw up the list, he will define
them (we'll probably have to help with the editing, too).

The project is certainly a useful one.  Once it is up and running, Valerii
will maintain the dictionary.  I suspect it will become a vital tool in the
language-teaching arsenal and probably useful to historians, tourists, and
other folks, as well.   If the project is one you and/or your students will
find useful, contact Valerii and add to his growing list of terms.  His web
site is at:

http://sungraph.jinr.dubna.su/valeri/1001.html

Take a look, see what he has already collected and add to his list of
terms. You might also help him with his English where necessary.

--Bob


From adrozd at woodsquad.as.ua.edu  Fri Oct 11 09:25:44 1996
From: adrozd at woodsquad.as.ua.edu (Andrew M. Drozd)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:25:44 +0000
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.092544.0000.>

Stephen Bobick wrote:

>
> Perhaps Slavic Languages could be advertised in a similar manner:  mailings
> to incoming freshman, flyers included in orientation and information packets
> in dorm rooms, flyers handed out during freshman orientation, posters and
> flyers plastered all over campus at appropriate locations, etc.  I think
> some of thses approaches would be especially effective for schools with
> a language requirement.
>

Stephen is quite right here: advertising during freshman orientation
helps greatly with enrollments. Here at University of Alabama we did
not experience the big drop in enrollments in Russian until this
year. In previous years one of our instructors had been allowed to
talk to the incoming freshman at their orientation sessions and our
enrollment remained high. However, we were excluded from the
sessions this year and enrollment dropped greatly.
  Although Stephen's suggestion is a great idea, it will probably be
very difficult to implement due to resistance from the powers that
be. The faculty here has tried for years to get some type of
handout/flier distributed to the incoming freshman as part of their
information packets. A blunt "no" has always been the answer. We are
usually given the excuse that if this is done for Russian then all
the other languages will insist on equal treatment. There have been
some attempts in the past to put up a united front for all
languages, but as is to be expected, French and Spanish, generally
got all the publicity and the benefit.

--
Andrew M. Drozd
adrozd at woodsquad.as.ua.edu

Dept. of German and Russian
Box 870262
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0262

tel (205) 348-5055
fax (205) 348-2042


From asosnow at cc.UManitoba.CA  Fri Oct 11 15:25:23 1996
From: asosnow at cc.UManitoba.CA (Alexandra Sosnowski)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:25:23 -0600
Subject: Russian/Polish enrollments
In-Reply-To: <v01540b03ae83a47da3bd@[128.223.150.109]>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.092523.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Hello,

I should also let you know that at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada)

this year our enrollment figures in both Russian and Polish courses are up.
First year Russian has 21 students and second year - 9.  First year Polish also
has 28 students.  These numbers are on the average 25% up in comparison to last
year.

P. S.  I have also heard that enrollments in Polish this year at the University
of Toronto are up (e.g. first year over 50 students).

Alexandra Sosnowski (asosnow at cc.umanitoba.ca)
Dept. of German and Slavic Studies
University of Manitoba


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Fri Oct 11 15:47:02 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 09:47:02 -0600
Subject: Language requirements (was: Advertising Slavic Languages)
In-Reply-To: <9610110112.AA14970@olympus.darwin.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.094702.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Thu, 10 Oct 1996, Stephen Bobick wrote:

> A thought just occurred to me regarding "advertisement" of Slavic languages.

And a fine thought it was :-)

It leads me to think about another factor. How many universities and
colleges have language (other than English) requirements? Here at the
University of Alberta, undergrads in the Faculty of Arts are required
to take only one (1) 6 credit (i.e. two semesters) course in a language.
In the Faculty of Science, there is *no* such requirement (18 credits
only are required from the humanities in general). Also, in the
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, there is *no* such
requirement (though individual departments can make their own
requirements, I don't know how prevelent it is among the non-
language departments).

I know that a similar situation exists at the University of Saskatchewan
and I don't think that things are too different from any other university
in Canada.

Personally, I do not see how anyone can call themselves 'educated' without
at least two years of studying a foreign language (and this is a minimum).
Without getting into the question of why this situation has developed (I
believe that many years ago, the requirements were more stringent), is
there any possibility that Universities might start requiring more
rigorous language study?

This would help all language departments, and the slavic languages would
get their share.

Anyone have any ideas on how to convince University/College administrations
that this is a good idea?

BTW, just to show how far out in left field I am, I also believe that a
Bachelor's degree should require at least 5 years of study - allowing
plenty of time for at least 3-4 language courses. :-)

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Fri Oct 11 17:03:12 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 10:03:12 -0700
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.100312.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Andrew M. Drozd wrote:
  >  Although Stephen's suggestion is a great idea, it will probably be
  >very difficult to implement due to resistance from the powers that
  >be. The faculty here has tried for years to get some type of
  >handout/flier distributed to the incoming freshman as part of their
  >information packets. A blunt "no" has always been the answer. We are
  >usually given the excuse that if this is done for Russian then all
  >the other languages will insist on equal treatment. There have been
  >some attempts in the past to put up a united front for all
  >languages, but as is to be expected, French and Spanish, generally
  >got all the publicity and the benefit.

Perhaps the powers that be would at least permit your department to set up
a booth in a suitably visible location during orientation.  They certainly
permit certain student organizations to do this (at least at the schools I
have been to).  You could even have a big pot of borshch simmering away and
loads of piroshki to give out free as an extra incentive to draw students to
your booth.  :-)

-- Stephen Bobick


From d-powelstock at uchicago.edu  Fri Oct 11 17:48:14 1996
From: d-powelstock at uchicago.edu (David Powelstock)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 12:48:14 -0500
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.124814.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

> Stephen is quite right here: advertising during freshman orientation
> helps greatly with enrollments.

Our experience at Chicago bears this out.  We held an informational session
during freshman orientation for the first time this year and doubled our
1st-year Russian enrollments over last year!  Sometimes students (like
everyone else) don't think of options until you point that they exist.  I
would urge any department that does not already do this to do it.  It
helps!  An additional factor in our increase was that we are offering a
course "Russian Through Pushkin" (Based on Henry Cooper's materials), which
promises to cover as much grammar as the regular 1st-year course.  The
response to this course has been excellent.

Our enrollment numbers are still small compared to 1990 figures, but the
improvement is encouraging.  As John Kieselhorst aptly pointed out, many
factors affecting enrollments are beyond our control, but we should be
doing our best to keep the figures as strong as possible.

I would also add here a comment regarding all the recent discussion of "the
market" for Russian speakers.  Indeed, there are more jobs for someone with
Russian than ever before, mostly in the Former SU.  There are also
opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe for speakers of the relevant
languages.  As this news spreads, I think we will see improvements in
enrollments.  (So spread the news!)  At the same time, we should not fall
into the trap of selling our wares entirely on the basis of JobsJobsJobs.
Many students take a language with an eye toward improving their employment
potential.  There are many others, however, who have intellectual
interests, who can become caught up in the fascinating process of
interacting with and understanding another culture.  (And the latter
motivation does not preclude the former.)  I am sure that many of you, like
me, experienced the study of Russian in this way, and we have students here
who are drawn to it for similar reasons.  Russian literature (and other
Slavic literatures) offer their own unique and fascinating perspectives,
perspectives undergraduates will not get from studying, say, English
literature.  (I have in mind, as an example, the ethical authority of
Russian literature.)  Places like Prague, Krakow, Warsaw, Kiev, and others
in the area, are exciting places to be.  The study of a Slavic language
(and literature, society, culture, history, politics) can greatly enrich an
undergraduate education, or even stand at its center.  College is more than
a job-training program.

Incidentally, my Russo-centrism above is not meant to exclude other
languages and cultures.  I myself teach Czech literature as well, and our
department prides itself on being a *Slavic* department, not just a Russian
one.  Nevertheless, we should not forget which side our bread is buttered
on: many of our Slavic Departments would not exist if it weren't for
Russian.  It is absurd to confuse this with actual historical imperialism
in Eurasia.  Studying (and teaching) Russian doesn't make one an oppressor
any more than studying Italian or German makes one a Fascist.


Best,
David Powelstock


From MLLEMILY at UBVMS.BITNET  Fri Oct 11 21:13:16 1996
From: MLLEMILY at UBVMS.BITNET (Emily Tall)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 16:13:16 -0500
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.161316.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I wanted to make a flyer saying "Are you tired of French and Spanish?Do
you want to try something new? etc..." My chair made me delete the
first sentence... Emily Tall SUNY/Buffalo


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Fri Oct 11 20:33:47 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 13:33:47 -0700
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.133347.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

David Powelstock's letter was so good it should be posted to a new
heading entitled Enrolments (or like that) and what can be done about
them.  Barry Scherr's figures should go there, too.
gg
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From beyer at panther.middlebury.edu  Sat Oct 12 02:18:56 1996
From: beyer at panther.middlebury.edu (Thomas R. Jr. Beyer)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 22:18:56 EDT
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
In-Reply-To: <9610110112.AA14970@olympus.darwin.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.221856.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Advertising can never hurt. Here at Middlebury we sent a personal letter
including a letter from a satisified student who had spent a year in Russia
to all incoming first year students.  We began our year with twenty
seven students in first year Russian, dramatically more than in the past
four
years.
I think the simple fact is that students and parents are unaware of the
extraordinary exciting opportunities in all of the countries of eastern
Europe and the former Soviet Union.
In addition, you must reach out to kids while they are still in high
school. At the end of last year Vermont (that's the entire state) was no
-longer offering Russian at the high school level.  I volunteered to teach
via interactive television and thirty students from eight schools go to
video studios five days a week at 7:00AM. The time for complaining has
passed. The time for personal involvement and action is already here.
One historical note as I show my age.  Many will remember similar cries
around 1974-75 and 1980.


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Sat Oct 12 03:20:41 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 20:20:41 -0700
Subject: Ukrainian and Russian Wordlists (was Re: 1001 Common Russian
 Terms)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.202041.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Robert Beard wrote:
  >I was contacted by email this past summer by an engineer-poet, Valerii
  >Bashevoj, from Dubna who is looking for a way to make a contribution to the
  >WWW.  He suggested a dictionary of 1001 Familiar Russian Words which
  >speakers of Russian need to know, but which are not included in
  >dictionaries.
  [...]

I think word lists of high-frequency, commonly-used words would be another
useful resource to have on-line.  For example, I noticed a mention of
"the Moscow University minimum list of 3000" words in some Russian readers I
purchased from "The Russian Packet/Friends School".  This list was also
referred to as "The Lexical Minimum used in Soviet Universities for foreign
students (3300)".  Perhaps this list could be typed in and thrown up on a
web-page somewhere?  Such a list would be a great resource to have on-line,
IMO.  Indeed, smaller word lists could be designed (maybe they already
exist?).  For example a list of 1000 or so words that a student of language X
should learn (first), then the next set of 1000 words, etc.  Of course the
size of each list could be tweaked to whatever size makes sense.  If the
specific set of words in the lists are carefully selected to match frequency
of usage from a variety of sources (newspapers, conversational situations,
poetry, etc.) they could really facilitate getting up to speed fast.

On a related note, I have created several hundred flashcards for both
Ukrainian and Russian verbs.  Specifically I have about 150 Ukrainian verbs
with 150 more close to completion, and about 400 Russian verbs with 100 more
close to completion.  The verbs fit 15 to a page.  The flashcards are
available on postscript documents which can be printed out and copied from
one-sided to two-sided copies (onto card-stock for more durable flashcards).
These two-sided documents can then be cut out using a paper cutter (each card
is 7.2 cm by 5.0 cm).  If anyone is interested using them, drop me a private
note and I'll forward a sample for you to take a look at.

-- Stephen Bobick


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Sat Oct 12 03:55:44 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 20:55:44 -0700
Subject: Advertising Slavic Languages (was Re: alarm)
Message-ID: <FRI.11.OCT.1996.205544.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  David Powelstock:
  [...]
  >I would also add here a comment regarding all the recent discussion of "the
  >market" for Russian speakers.  Indeed, there are more jobs for someone with
  >Russian than ever before, mostly in the Former SU.  There are also
  >opportunities in Central and Eastern Europe for speakers of the relevant
  >languages.  As this news spreads, I think we will see improvements in
  >enrollments.  (So spread the news!)  At the same time, we should not fall
  >into the trap of selling our wares entirely on the basis of JobsJobsJobs.
  >Many students take a language with an eye toward improving their employment
  >potential.  There are many others, however, who have intellectual
  >interests, who can become caught up in the fascinating process of
  >interacting with and understanding another culture.  (And the latter
  >motivation does not preclude the former.)  I am sure that many of you, like
  >me, experienced the study of Russian in this way, and we have students here
  >who are drawn to it for similar reasons.  Russian literature (and other
  >Slavic literatures) offer their own unique and fascinating perspectives,
  >perspectives undergraduates will not get from studying, say, English
  >literature.  (I have in mind, as an example, the ethical authority of
  >Russian literature.)  Places like Prague, Krakow, Warsaw, Kiev, and others
  >in the area, are exciting places to be.  The study of a Slavic language
  >(and literature, society, culture, history, politics) can greatly enrich an
  >undergraduate education, or even stand at its center.  College is more than
  >a job-training program.

I'd offer a couple more good reasons to studying a Slavic Language.

Firstly, in this day and age of multiculturalism, and understanding ones
own history and roots, many people of Slavic descent could benefit greatly
by learning about about their own culture and language.  Personally, I have
found this to be true, and I find it very rewarding to study my "ridna mova".

Secondly, I have found both Ukrainian and Russian to be very compatable and
complementary to my engineering studies.  The languages have lots of rules
and regularities, especially in the patterns of declension and conjugation,
that I find easy and fun to learn.  I often find myself applying an algorithmic
approach to learning the grammar of these languages, and am satisfied with
the ease and frequency that I am able to do this.

Also I have found that learning Ukrainian and Russian has helped me to
understand *English* grammar a lot better (and my 5 years of German did *not*).
The morphology of Slavic languages (the ones I know) really drives home
concepts of tense, the function of words in a sentence, clauses, phrases,
etc.  I was so happy when I realized that I finally understood what a
participle was.  :-)

  David Powelstock:
  >Incidentally, my Russo-centrism above is not meant to exclude other
  >languages and cultures.  I myself teach Czech literature as well, and our
  >department prides itself on being a *Slavic* department, not just a Russian
  >one.  Nevertheless, we should not forget which side our bread is buttered
  >on: many of our Slavic Departments would not exist if it weren't for
  >Russian.  It is absurd to confuse this with actual historical imperialism
  >in Eurasia.

I disagree.  There is nothing absurd about this at all.  Russia's imperialism
in Eurasia is a major reason for the dominance and centrality of Russia
in Slavic departments today.

But...

  >Studying (and teaching) Russian doesn't make one an oppressor
  >any more than studying Italian or German makes one a Fascist.

I don't think anyone said any such thing.   Nor did they imply it.  All that
was pointed out is that Slavic Language Departments are Russo-centric, and
it was suggested that it is time for them to broaden their faculty and
curricula to be more encompassing of the Slavic languages other than Russian.
I don't recall any characterization of Russian scholars as "oppressors".

-- Stephen Bobick


From CLEMINSO at ceu.hu  Sat Oct 12 15:11:41 1996
From: CLEMINSO at ceu.hu (Ralph Cleminson)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 16:11:41 +100
Subject: Prostorechie
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.161141.100.>

Anyone wishing to follow up Solzhenitsyn's effort to reverse the
degradation of the Russian literary language (as he sees it) by the
incorporation of  non-literary elements should look at Russkiy
slovar' jazykovogo rasshirenija, sostavil A.I.Solzhenitsyn, Moskva,
Nauka, 1990, ISBN 5-02-011076-0.

My previous comments on this topic have so far drawn only the
following rebuke from Danko Sipka:
>
> This is not only wrong, but also offensive to such works of excellence
> as Zaliznjak's Grammaticheskij slovar' russkogo jazyka, Russkij jazyk,
> M., 1987(3), who uses 'prostorech.' as one of the labels.
> In the footnote 3 on the page 9, he explains it:
>
> "Iskljuchenie sostavljajut formy, pomechennye kak prostorechnye. Pometa
> <<prostorech.>> wystupaet v takix sluchajax v roli predupreditel'noj.
> Zaliznjak is anything but "jazykovedcheskoe prostorechie".
>
Now while the last thing that I would want would be to be rude to
Zaliznjak, who is a scholar for whom I have the greatest respect,
this does rather illustrate my point.  Zaliznjak is using the term to
issue a warning (!) in the context of normative grammar (!!), that
certain forms are non-literary.  However, prostorechie does not
embrace the entire spectrum of non-literary Russian.  This is the
point: we all know what it ISN'T, but we don't know what it IS.

More seriously, I'm sorry that no Ukrainian, Belarusian or Bulgarian
linguists have taken up my question about whether the term or its
equivalents correspond to any sort of reality in those languages, or
whether it is just carried over from Russian.  I think this is a
question worth addressing, because I suspect that prostorechie is
essentially Russian.  In the situation of Russian/Church Slavonic
diglossia, prostorechie, which, after all, means "ordinary speech",
would be the "low style".  (Incidentally, does anyone know the first
recorded use of the word?  It isn't in Vasmer, and I'm too busy to
chase it further.)  When by the end of the 18th century a Russian
literary language emerged on the basis of the common ground between
the two, prostorechie was left with "te prezrennye slova, kotorye ni
v kakom shtile ne godjatsja, razve v podlykh komedijakh" (forgive me,
I'm quoting from memory - idezhe krivo ispravl'she ch'tete).  And
that is more or less where we are today.  The history of the other
languages, though, is quite different, particularly Ukrainian, where
the prosta mova had emerged as a language of literature at a much
earlier stage.  Hence my doubts.  Can anyone shed any light?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
R.M.Cleminson, M.A., D.Phil.
Dept of Mediaeval Studies, Central European University
Post: H-1245 Budapest 5, P.O.B.1082
Phone: +361 327 3024   Fax: +361 327 3055
http://www.ceu.hu/medstud/ralph.htm


From d-powelstock at uchicago.edu  Sat Oct 12 21:01:27 1996
From: d-powelstock at uchicago.edu (David Powelstock)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 16:01:27 -0500
Subject: Flogging a Dead Horse: Enrollments
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.160127.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I apologize for letting my irony get away from me when I wrote: "Studying
(and teaching) Russian doesn't make one an oppressor any more than studying
Italian or German makes one a Fascist."  I did not fully realize at the
time that Mr. Bobick is not in academics, and thus not a part of that
particular polemic in the humanities.  In attempting to make sense of his
position and rhetoric, I attributed them to the prevelent academic ideology
they most resemble.   Nevertheless, his comments, however well-meaning,
betray a deep misunderstanding of how universities and colleges work,
especially now, in the era of "downsizing."  Anyone who has had to beg on
his knees to hire a new faculty member to replace two retiring ones, or
stretch one's abililties to teach a course in a new area, will recognize
this in Mr. Bobick's statement that "it is time for [Slavic Departments] to
broaden their faculty and curricula to be more encompassing of the Slavic
languages other than Russian."  It is difficult to broaden and shrink at
the same time.  Just try it!  Something similar can be said about Mr.
Bobick's advice that "*aggregate* enrollments in the Slavic languages shoud
be the number you are seeking to maximize -- even to the possible detriment
of Russian language enrollments."  Actually, the number we are trying to
maximize in many of our departments right now is the RATIO of students in
our classes to number of faculty.  With that variable included, one can see
why so few departments can afford to hire a Bohemist to teach marginally
fewer students.

A few more points:

Although I *do* apologize for excessive irony, I would also defend myself
(I guess this the Athenian sort of apology, _apologia_!) by citing Bobick
(10/10/96): "It is this attitude about the centrality and ultimate
importance of Russian, which I as an outsider to your field find so
offensive and annoying about so-called "Departments of Slavic Languages."
Bobick was responding to Benjamin Rifkin's innocuous statement: "We MUST
stimulate interest in our target culture and we MUST get the word out that
students who study Russian language and culture can use the skills they
learn in our classes to get good jobs in Russia and in the USA."  Was I
imagining Mr. Bobick's overreaction to Rifkin's statement?

In his response to my message, Mr. Bobick draws a parallel between Russian
imperialism and Russo-centrism in Slavic Departments, even as he denies
doing so.  I wrote: "It is absurd to confuse [the importance of Russian to
the existence of Slavic Departments] with actual historical imperialism in
Eurasia."  Bobick (10/11/96): "There is nothing absurd about this at all.
Russia's imperialism in Eurasia is a major reason for the dominance and
centrality of Russia in Slavic Departments today."  I reply: The connection
is obvious: funding for (and interest in) Russian increased dramatically
during the Cold War.  (Know your enemy.)  However, it is during the same
period that funding for other Slavic languages increased as well,
especially as those countries became "fraternal socialist nations."  The
real reason for the centrality of Russian in Slavic Departments is that the
demand is (and probably always will be) greater for a language spoken by a
few hundred million people than for a language spoken by, say, 10 million
(eg, Czech).  Perhaps if the Czech Republic conquered Russia, Czech would
become the "dominant" language in Slavic Departments.  I repeat: no
Russian, no Slavic Department.  This is obviously not to say that the Czech
language or culture requires Russian language or culture to EXIST in any
political sense.  (It is also not to say that the Czech language or people
are intellectually or culturally less valid.)  This is simply the nature of
the academic economy within which we work.  All of this is by way of
pointing out why we in the field frequently refer to Russian enrollments as
a kind of barometer in our field.  I doubt many Ukrainists, Bohemists,
Polonists, etc. IN the field are as offended as Mr. Bobick, who is not.
Russianists can hardly be blamed for discussing Russian language
enrollments on SEELANGS.  The fact remains, as Benjamin Rifkin points out,
that "we MUST work together, all of us, Russianists and non-Russianists, to
increase enrollments in our field."  And doing so is not a zero-sum game,
either: the larger, more thriving *Russian* programs are the ones that have
the resources and flexibility to have other Slavic languages represented,
often in the person of a Russianist who also knows another Slavic language.

One last point.  All Slavic Departments cannot be all things to all people.
 There is an economy of scale.  There are places that have very strong
Ukrainian programs (such as Harvard), and places with strong Czech and
Polish (such as Chicago).  Students with strong interests in specific
fields would do well to find the school that best meets their needs and
interests.  If some departments currently offering only Russian call
themselves Slavic departments, it is probably out of a desire (some day!)
to have other offerings -- and I hope they succeed!

*********************************************************
*David Powelstock       Phone:  (312) 702-0035          *
*Slavic Department      FAX:    (312) 702-7030          *
*University of Chicago  d-powelstock at uchicago.edu       *
*1130 E. 59th Street                                    *
*Chicago, IL 60637                                      *
*********************************************************


From grapp at mail.utexas.edu  Sat Oct 12 22:28:12 1996
From: grapp at mail.utexas.edu (Gil Rappaport)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 17:28:12 -0500
Subject: Polish enrollments
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.172812.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I get a voyeurist pleasure from reading about enrollments at other
institutions, so I'd like to chip in with our Polish situation at the
University of Texas at Austin..

We offer Polish every other year. Since 1984 (with 24), we have had about 16
each time we offered it; '94 was down to 9. This year I was supposed to
offer it, then we were going to cancel it (because I wouldn't be teaching in
the spring). I agreed to offer it as an independent study to a few graduate
students in area studies, and then, without any promotional efforts, calls
came in with inquiries, and I let them add. So, we ended up with 9, despite
the original decision to cancel it.

Czech and Serbo-Croatian also have healthy groups (I don't have the numbers
pod rukoj: 17 and 10 respectively?). First-year Russian is down about 7%
from last year (70 -> 65 in entry-level courses on the official, 12th day).

It is interesting how much correlation there is across institutions.

--Gil Rappaport


From paulkla at mail.pressenter.com  Sat Oct 12 23:02:00 1996
From: paulkla at mail.pressenter.com (Paul A. Klanderud)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 18:02:00 CDT
Subject: Advertising Slavic (jobs)?
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.180200.CDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers:

Perusing recent contributions -- many good ones -- to the discussion of
advertising Slavic, I couldn't help but ask myself (a recent Ph.D. presently
employed in another field, information systems) a rather selfish question:
what about promoting Slavic jobs? The question's more rhetorical than goal
oriented, and stems more from a healthy dose of self-pity at seeming to have
"missed the boat." But it's a question which, I'd guess, has been and will
be asked by many a recent or soon-to-be Ph.D.

What has the field been doing to offset the negative impact of what seems to
be a nationwide trend toward doing away with tenure-track positions, and
relying more and more on "adjunct" faculty? By now most people in my
position have probably seen the hallowed MLA job list. Amazingly, there are
actually some decent positions in Slavic linguistics. As to the general
"lang. and lit" jobs, there are -- nationwide, for an entire year -- roughly
four tenure-track positions, and another one "possible." And of these, at
least two suggest a joint app't with another department. The remaining half
dozen or so positions are the usual one- to three-year take-
what-you-can-get slots. In short, a bit more than a dozen total positions
for an increasingly large, hungry, and worried crop of candidates.

It seems obvious that school administrations have no compelling reason to
offer even the possibility of tenure in Slavics in today's climate, since
there is such a glut of well-qualified candidates, many of whom, having
devoted years to the study of things Russian (or Ukrainian, or whatever,
let's not get started), are willing to continue to sacrifice for the slight
chance that they might be among the fortunate who eventually secure a
position. A question I'd pose is, How much effort have those already in the
field been putting into convincing and cajoling adminstrators not to let
lines -- particularly tenure lines -- disappear? My guess is that the
overwhelming majority of profs have been working overtime to address this
issue; but (being selfish again), what do we have to show for it?  And I
know of one (tenured) prof who, when I've spoken with him/her about the
difficulties and enrollment problems, has responded (half-jokingly but with
a tinge of truth) in this vein: Hey, I've got tenure; why should I create
extra work for myself.

We have a job market that, I'm told, is the worst it has been at least since
Slavic studies got going in the early 60's. The recent enrollment figures
displayed on our list do show us at a historical low -- but not much lower
than in the early '80s, when the market was also tight -- but not this tight.

Perhaps it's simply a cyclical thing; those of us who happened to hit the
market in this period simply didn't have much control over things. As one
might expect, such a thought is small consolation, but it may be a simple
fact. Thus, each year increasingly well-qualified candidates (call me a
snob, but I'm one of 'em) create a "backlog," hanging on for as long as they
can; with time, we go on and find other avenues.

In the long term, this backlog will not continue. I'd guess that many of the
"best and the brightest" undergrads, faced with a choice of work or some
discipline in grad school -- if truthfully informed about the current
situation -- will not choose a profession in which they'll have to compete
with a hundred or so other candidates for the handfull of opportunities to
teach for one year at a school, and then to be shown the door, no matter how
well they do.

It may be too late for me and my generation (although, like Gogol's Manilov,
I still find myself letting my thoughts drift off to what it would really be
like to be back in the field: Then the Tsar, learning of their friendship,
bestowed highest honors upon them....). I know of a number of recent grads
who had -- and still have -- the potential to make stellar contributions to
this field, but who simply were compelled to get out. Real life gets in the
way sometimes. But if current trends continue, and if Slavic studies survive
and even rebound in some manner, how will there still be this horn of
plentiful and bright Ph.D's? Maybe so. The people I knew in grad school were
enormously dedicated; that's their nature. But if the same sort of dedicated
grads are still there five or ten years from now (or however many years it
takes), I hope for their sake that those now in the field will do what it
takes to ensure that they too have a shot at enjoying a reasonable sense of
security while pursuing a lifetime of learning and teaching.

Paul Klanderud


From koropeck at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU  Sun Oct 13 00:56:40 1996
From: koropeck at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU (Roman Koropeckyj)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 17:56:40 -0700
Subject: Polish enrollments
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.175640.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

My two bits about Polish enrollments, in this case at UCLA. First-year
Polish is offered in alternating years, this being one of them. There has
been an increase, from 8 in 1994/95 to 11 this year, hence consistent with
trends at other universities. (I should add that first-year Ukrainian
enrollment has increased from 2 in 1995/96 to 7 [I think] this year.) More
interesting in some respects was the enrollment in second-year (advanced
Polish, also offered in alternating years) in 1995/96, where it averaged
6-7 per quarter, of which the great majority were so-called heritage
speakers; and the number of inquiries I received this year from the latter
about an advanced course. What we are clearly witnessing--or at least what
I am witnessing--is the influx to universities of the children of
emigres/immigrants of the 80s who either want to improve the language they
were born into or are looking for an easy language credit. From this
perspective, I think that enrollments in Polish should remain steady or
even increase over the next few years. This makes it all the more
imperative for "Slavic" departments, which are in some instances fighting
for their raison d'etre, if not their existence, because of the decline in
Russian enrollments, to begin rethinking what in many cases (not, I might
add, at UCLA) has been a Russocentric trajectory and for us as advisors of
graduate students to encourage research that at least combines another
Slavic language or literature with Russian (which, for better or worse,
still remains the most realistic area of occupational opportunity and
probably will so into the forseeable future).

Roman Koropeckyj


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Sun Oct 13 03:10:03 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Sat, 12 Oct 1996 20:10:03 -0700
Subject: Flogging a Dead Horse: Enrollments
Message-ID: <SAT.12.OCT.1996.201003.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Mr. Powelstock:
  >I apologize for letting my irony get away from me when I wrote: "Studying
  >(and teaching) Russian doesn't make one an oppressor any more than studying
  >Italian or German makes one a Fascist."  I did not fully realize at the
  >time that Mr. Bobick is not in academics, and thus not a part of that
  >particular polemic in the humanities.  In attempting to make sense of his
  >position and rhetoric, I attributed them to the prevelent academic ideology
  >they most resemble.   Nevertheless, his comments, however well-meaning,
  >betray a deep misunderstanding of how universities and colleges work,
  >especially now, in the era of "downsizing."  Anyone who has had to beg on
  >his knees to hire a new faculty member to replace two retiring ones, or
  >stretch one's abililties to teach a course in a new area, will recognize
  >this in Mr. Bobick's statement that "it is time for [Slavic Departments] to
  >broaden their faculty and curricula to be more encompassing of the Slavic
  >languages other than Russian."  It is difficult to broaden and shrink at
  >the same time.  Just try it!  Something similar can be said about Mr.
  >Bobick's advice that "*aggregate* enrollments in the Slavic languages shoud
  >be the number you are seeking to maximize -- even to the possible detriment
  >of Russian language enrollments."  Actually, the number we are trying to
  >maximize in many of our departments right now is the RATIO of students in
  >our classes to number of faculty.  With that variable included, one can see
  >why so few departments can afford to hire a Bohemist to teach marginally
  >fewer students.

Somehow I do not think we are understanding eachother here.  All I was
proposing is that by expanding Slavic Language departments to be more
encompassing, and seeking to maximize *aggregate* enrollments, Slavic Language
Departments could become more healthy.  This proposition depends on the
assumption that greater enrollment equals greater funding for a department.
I.e. if your enrollment dropped 45% in 6 years, then yes you are (and should)
be downsized.  If you can get enrollments back up then you should receive
more funding and be able to hire more faculty members.  How best to get the
enrollment up?  Focus just on Russian courses or focus on all your courses?
This is where we disagree (I think).

As for elimination of faculty and downsizing, I guess you'd need to keep
(and hire) faculty with skills in greater than 1 Slavic Language, as well as
look into other options (hiring lecturers, or using graduate students to
teach 1st year courses in Slavic Languages other than Russian).  At UCSD,
we had lecturers for several Computer Science courses: often they did not
have PhD's, and they were not tenure-track.  Also, please note that you are
not in the only profession where downsizing is occuring -- especially with
the accompanying requirements of doing more with less.  :-(

  >A few more points:
  >
  >Although I *do* apologize for excessive irony, I would also defend myself
  >(I guess this the Athenian sort of apology, _apologia_!) by citing Bobick
  >(10/10/96): "It is this attitude about the centrality and ultimate
  >importance of Russian, which I as an outsider to your field find so
  >offensive and annoying about so-called "Departments of Slavic Languages."
  >Bobick was responding to Benjamin Rifkin's innocuous statement: "We MUST
  >stimulate interest in our target culture and we MUST get the word out that
  >students who study Russian language and culture can use the skills they
  >learn in our classes to get good jobs in Russia and in the USA."  Was I
  >imagining Mr. Bobick's overreaction to Rifkin's statement?
  >
  >In his response to my message, Mr. Bobick draws a parallel between Russian
  >imperialism and Russo-centrism in Slavic Departments, even as he denies
  >doing so.

No.  You misunderstood me.  And perhaps I misunderstood you.  I was not
drawing one parallel while at the same time denying that I was doing so.
I was *clarifying* what parallel I was making in response to your comment:

  >"It is absurd to confuse [the importance of Russian to the existence of
  >Slavic Departments] with actual historical imperialism in Eurasia."
  >"Studying (and teaching) Russian doesn't make one an oppressor any more
  >than studying Italian or German makes one a Fascist."

There *is* a tie between Russian imperialism in Eurasia and Russo-centrism in
Slavic Language departments.  Specifically, the history of imperial Russia
and its successor government have made the Russian language an important one
for several reasons.  I never denied this.  What I do deny is the proposition
that the above fact makes Russian educators and scholars *oppressors*, or
*imperialists*.

  >I wrote: "It is absurd to confuse [the importance of Russian to
  >the existence of Slavic Departments] with actual historical imperialism in
  >Eurasia."  Bobick (10/11/96): "There is nothing absurd about this at all.
  >Russia's imperialism in Eurasia is a major reason for the dominance and
  >centrality of Russia in Slavic Departments today."  I reply: The connection
  >is obvious: funding for (and interest in) Russian increased dramatically
  >during the Cold War.  (Know your enemy.)  However, it is during the same
  >period that funding for other Slavic languages increased as well,
  >especially as those countries became "fraternal socialist nations."  The
  >real reason for the centrality of Russian in Slavic Departments is that the
  >demand is (and probably always will be) greater for a language spoken by a
  >few hundred million people than for a language spoken by, say, 10 million
  >(eg, Czech).  Perhaps if the Czech Republic conquered Russia, Czech would
  >become the "dominant" language in Slavic Departments.  I repeat: no
  >Russian, no Slavic Department.  This is obviously not to say that the Czech

I never advocated elimination of Russian *anywhere*.

  >language or culture requires Russian language or culture to EXIST in any
  >political sense.  (It is also not to say that the Czech language or people
  >are intellectually or culturally less valid.)  This is simply the nature of
  >the academic economy within which we work.  All of this is by way of
  >pointing out why we in the field frequently refer to Russian enrollments as
  >a kind of barometer in our field.  I doubt many Ukrainists, Bohemists,
  >Polonists, etc. IN the field are as offended as Mr. Bobick, who is not.
  >Russianists can hardly be blamed for discussing Russian language
  >enrollments on SEELANGS.  The fact remains, as Benjamin Rifkin points out,
  >that "we MUST work together, all of us, Russianists and non-Russianists, to
  >increase enrollments in our field."  And doing so is not a zero-sum game,
  >either: the larger, more thriving *Russian* programs are the ones that have
  >the resources and flexibility to have other Slavic languages represented,
  >often in the person of a Russianist who also knows another Slavic language.
  >
  >One last point.  All Slavic Departments cannot be all things to all people.
  > There is an economy of scale.  There are places that have very strong
  >Ukrainian programs (such as Harvard), and places with strong Czech and
  >Polish (such as Chicago).  Students with strong interests in specific
  >fields would do well to find the school that best meets their needs and
  >interests.

But does there exist even *one* Slavic Language Department in the US which has
a program in any Slavic language, X, that has a quality that is equal to or
greater than the quality of its Russian program?

  >If some departments currently offering only Russian call
  >themselves Slavic departments, it is probably out of a desire (some day!)
  >to have other offerings -- and I hope they succeed!

-- Stephen Bobick


From djbpitt+ at pitt.edu  Sun Oct 13 18:12:57 1996
From: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu (David J Birnbaum)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 14:12:57 -0400
Subject: AATSEEL Preliminary Program
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.141257.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers,

The preliminary program for the AATSEEL annual meeting will be published
in the October AATSEEL Newsletter, which you should be receiving shortly.
Meanwhile, the program, along with conference hotel and airline
information, is already available on the World Wide Web at:

        http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/aatseel.html

Because the Newsletter program went to press a week ago and some
corrections have arrived since then, the Web version of the program is
more complete, correct, and up-to-date than the one in the Newsletter.
Furthermore, the Web version will continue to be updated in response to
corrections until the final program goes to press.

Please check your entries and make sure that the information provided for
you is correct and up to date, and send all corrections to me at your
earliest convenience (djbpitt+ at pitt.edu or djb at clover.slavic.pitt.edu).
The final conference program will probably go to press around the middle
of November, which means that only corrections received by then can be
included in the printed program.

Cheers,

David J. Birnbaum
Chair, AATSEEL Program Committee
________________________________________________________________________

Professor David J. Birnbaum     email: djbpitt+ at pitt.edu
Department of Slavic Languages  url:   http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/
1417 Cathedral of Learning      voice: 1-412-624-5712
University of Pittsburgh        fax:   1-412-624-9714
Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA


From mitrege at mail.auburn.edu  Sun Oct 13 21:23:19 1996
From: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu (George Mitrevski)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 16:23:19 -0500
Subject: Golosa exercises
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.162319.0500.>

For those of you using Golosa 1, I just posted several new exercises for
Lessons 1 and 2. They can be accessed and used with Netscape 3.0 ONLY!
You will need a KOI-8 font and keyboard driver.

Exercises are available at:

http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/RWT/Golosa1/index.html

***************************************************************
Dr. George Mitrevski            office: 334-844-6376
Foreign Languages                  fax: 334-844-6378
6030 Haley Center               e-mail: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5204

List of my WWW pages: http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/index.html
***************************************************************


From d-powelstock at uchicago.edu  Sun Oct 13 22:34:52 1996
From: d-powelstock at uchicago.edu (David Powelstock)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 17:34:52 -0500
Subject: Flogging a Dead Horse: Enrollments
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.173452.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I promise that this is my last "contribution" to this "thread."

Bobick:
> Somehow I do not think we are understanding eachother here.  All I was
> proposing is that by expanding Slavic Language departments to be more
> encompassing, and seeking to maximize *aggregate* enrollments, Slavic
Language
> Departments could become more healthy.  This proposition depends on the
> assumption that greater enrollment equals greater funding for a
department.
> I.e. if your enrollment dropped 45% in 6 years, then yes you are (and
should)
> be downsized.  If you can get enrollments back up then you should receive
> more funding and be able to hire more faculty members.  How best to get
the
> enrollment up?  Focus just on Russian courses or focus on all your
courses?
> This is where we disagree (I think).

This *is* where we disagree, and is also where Mr. Bobick's lack of
knowledge of our field is revealed.  "All your courses" is right: the
courses that can be offered without resorting to hiring new faculty.  You
cannot convince a dean to hire someone to each entirely new subjects merely
by promising that the students will come.  (Which they probably won't for
(e.g.) Ukrainian, unless you have an ENTIRE Ukrainian program that rivals,
say, Harvard's.  That requires SEVERAL faculty members, probably prominent
ones, across multiple departments.)  Once (and only once) you have the
enrollments up in existing courses, you have an argument for expansion that
an administration can understand.  You build on your strengths.

Bobick:
> As for elimination of faculty and downsizing, I guess you'd need to keep
> (and hire) faculty with skills in greater than 1 Slavic Language, as well
as
> look into other options (hiring lecturers, or using graduate students to
> teach 1st year courses in Slavic Languages other than Russian).

Almost every department with a grad program uses grad students to teach
1st-year language (including Russian).  But they, too, must be paid.  And a
first-year language course does not help much when there is no one to teach
more advanced and intriguing courses in literature, history, and culture.
To do this on a regular basis requires several full-time faculty members.
(To keep hiring visitors to maintain a program ends up being more, not less
expensive than full-time faculty, who can be expected to fulfill other
functions.)   And there are not many of them available in the less
frequently taught Slavic languages.  (I know.  I've been on search
committees for three years.)  Another basic misunderstanding is that you
are imagining a much greater student demand than actually exists.  Even
hiring a grad student to teach a language to a handful of students does not
work out financially.  Students who want to study, say, Ukrainian, have to
find their way to the places that offer it.  To sum up: there are very few
students chasing very few qualified teachers, whom there is very little
money to pay.  In a tight economy, specialization, not diversification is
the way to survive.  I doubt there is a Slavist out there who wouldn't love
to see his/her department teach all the Slavic languages.  The point is, it
can't happen.  At least not now, or in the near future.

Bobick:
At UCSD,
> we had lecturers for several Computer Science courses: often they did not
> have PhD's...

That's fine in a field like C.S., where training can be acquired outside of
the academy (eg in industry), but not feasible in Slavic Departments.
Sure, we can find people to teach first-, maybe second-year language, but
that's not a program.  The student might as well go to Berlitz.  Or better
yet, to one of the centers where the there is a critical mass of the
relatively few students and scholars specializing in that language and
culture.

Bobick:
> I never advocated elimination of Russian *anywhere*.

Nor did I mean to imply that you had.  My point was that Russian has the
greatest demand, and the health of other Slavic curricula in the US depends
to a large degree on the health of Russian programs.  Thus you will find
Slavists on SEELANGS discussing Russian enrollments with great interest.
You will also find Slavists discussing enrollments in other Slavic courses.
 What you will find most of all, however, are Slavists discussing the best
ways to maintain and improve their programs.  These are professionals who
are aware of the constraints they face, even if they do not always make
them explicit enough for an outsider to understand.  What you will probably
never find is a Russianist who would not like to see his/her program to be
broadened to include other Slavic languages and cultures.  But you can't
get blood from a stone.  On this Perot-esque note, I retire from the
calling of cyber-knight-errantry.


From jdingley at YorkU.CA  Mon Oct 14 00:49:10 1996
From: jdingley at YorkU.CA (John Dingley)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 20:49:10 -0400
Subject: Rakousko
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.204910.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

If you are interested in the etymology of the Czech/Slovak name for
Austria, to wit: Rakousko, you might like to visit this web page:
HTTP://www.waldviertel.at/raabs.htm

John Dingley

---------------
http://momiji.arts-dlll.yorku.ca/jding.html


From ewb2 at cornell.edu  Mon Oct 14 01:47:55 1996
From: ewb2 at cornell.edu (E. Wayles Browne)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 21:47:55 -0400
Subject: Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian in schools?
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.214755.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear colleagues,
Are there any elementary, junior high or high schools in the U.S.
which offer courses in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Serbo-Croatian?
If so, where are they and what enrollments do they have? I would
also be curious about the textbooks they use.
Yours,

Wayles Browne, Assoc. Prof. of Linguistics
Morrill Hall, Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853, U.S.A.
tel. 607-255-0712 (o), 607-273-3009 (h)
e-mail ewb2 at cornell.edu (1989 to 1993 was: jn5j at cornella.bitnet //
jn5j at cornella.cit.cornell.edu)


From bobick at olympus.darwin.com  Mon Oct 14 02:08:40 1996
From: bobick at olympus.darwin.com (Stephen Bobick)
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 19:08:40 -0700
Subject: Flogging a Dead Horse: Enrollments
Message-ID: <SUN.13.OCT.1996.190840.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

  Mr. Powelstock:
  >I promise that this is my last "contribution" to this "thread."

Why the double-quoted phrases?  :-)

Anyway, I could continue this discussion a bit more, but I'll let it go.
I think it was productive, and hope there are no hard feelings.

Vs'oho najkrashchoho/Vsego khoroshego,

-- Stephen Bobick


From dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu  Mon Oct 14 14:39:11 1996
From: dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu (Devin P Browne)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:39:11 -0400
Subject: Internship Opportunity (fwd)
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.103911.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 11 Oct 96 19:02:14 EDT
From: dlindeman at crdf.org
Reply-To: civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list <civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu>
Subject: Internship Opportunity

INTERNSHIP OPPORTUNITY

The U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) seeks an
intern to start as soon as possible.  CRDF is a Washington-based
non-profit organization supporting civilian research and development in
the former Soviet Union (FSU).  Intern will assist staff in the
management of several grant programs.  Duties will include maintaining
application files, corresponding with grant applicants, some phone
coverage, and providing general office support.

Applicants should be proficient with MS Windows applications and possess
excellent phone skills.  Prior office experience and/or familiarity with
the FSU is preferred.  Internship will be paid.

This is an excellent opportunity for students interested in the FSU
and/or working in grant administration.

Please fax cover letter and resume to: CRDF, Attn: Internship
Coordinator, (703) 526 9721.


From dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu  Mon Oct 14 14:45:08 1996
From: dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu (Devin P Browne)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 10:45:08 -0400
Subject: Language Study Shifts (fwd)
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.104508.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

FYI


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 11:59:17 -0400
From: peter brown <brownp at matrix.newpaltz.edu>
Reply-To: Foreign Language Teaching Forum <FLTEACH at UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list FLTEACH <FLTEACH at UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU>
Subject: Language Study Shifts (fwd)

The New York Times ran a major article last Thursday titled Language Study
Shifts Again: Chinese Is Up, Russian Down" (October 10).



The article presents extensive data with tables and graphs to chart the
development s in two- and four-year colleges around the U.S.

Citing a new study by the MLA, the article mentions the steep decine from
1990-1995 in enrollments in Russian (-45%), German (-28%), French (-25%), as
well as lesser declines in Italian, Latin and Japanese enrollments.

I thought the Times article missed the main story that these numbers are
telling us, namely that the scope of foreign language studies has become
dangerously narrow. My response, slated to appear in tomorrow's paper
(Oct.14), appears below.
Forwarded message:
> From brownp Thu Oct 10 22:34 EDT 1996
> From: peter brown <brownp>
> Message-Id: <199610110233.WAA03529 at matrix.newpaltz.edu>
> Subject: Language Study Shifts
> To: letters at nytimes.com
> Date: Thu, 10 Oct 1996 22:33:58 -0400 (EDT)
> Cc: brownp (peter brown)
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> Content-Length: 1421
>
>       Your piece on "Language Study Shifts Again: Chinese Is Up, Russian
> is Down" (Oct.10) missed the main story that these numbers are telling us.
>
>       The major trend in the U.S. is not toward Chinese or Arabic, which
> gained by only a thousand students nationwide, but toward Spanish, which
> gained 72 times as many students during the same five-year period.
>
>       Contrary to the article's assertion that Spanish accounts for
> "nearly half of the nation's language enrollment of 1.1 million," the
> 606,286 studying Spanish actually comprise more than 55% of the total.
>
>       The situation in New York State is even more lopsided. In the
> state's public schools (K-12), with a substantial Chinese and Arab
> population, the 1995 combined total enrollments for Chinese and Arabic
> amount to less than one percent of what they are for Spanish
>
>       Without making a conscious decision to do so or even realizing it,
> we have allowed years of public neglect and continuing budgetary pressures to
> transform the nation's study of foreign languages into an increasingly
> monolingual pursuit of Spanish.
>
>       Such an over-concentration on one language can only have severely
> negative consequences as we seek to understand, influence, trade and compete
> with countries across the globe whose citizens speak a wide variety of the
> world's major languages.
>
> Peter D.G. Brown
> Professor of German
> State University of New York
> New Paltz. NY 12561
> 914-257-3480
>


From HALLAR at novell1.bham.ac.uk  Mon Oct 14 14:00:33 1996
From: HALLAR at novell1.bham.ac.uk (TONY HALL)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 14:00:33 BST
Subject: <Way to go!> Explanation
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.140033.BST.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

This has nothing to do with Russian (or Slavic), but I hope my North
American colleagues will help me out and others will bear with me. I'm
interested to know 2 things:

1.  What PRECISELY does the expression <Way to go!> mean? It
    seems to me to mean something like <Well done!> <Good for
    you!>, or similar. Examples of its use would be helpful.

2.  What is its derivation/history?

I hope you can be of help.

Many thanks.

Tony Hall.

**********************************************************************
***     Tony Hall
***     Department of Russian Language
***     University of Birmingham
***     Edgbaston                       Tel:    +44 (0)121 414 3227
***     Birmingham B15  2TT             Fax:    +44 (0)121 414 7280
***     United Kingdom                  Email:  A.R.Hall at bham.ac.uk
**********************************************************************


From rbeard at bucknell.edu  Mon Oct 14 15:30:45 1996
From: rbeard at bucknell.edu (Robert Beard)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 11:30:45 -0400
Subject: <Way to go!> Explanation
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.113045.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

The expression is a degradation of 'That's the way to go', meaning
'You're doing it the right way'.  I think I was the first to use the
term back in 1953--but I may have picked it up from someone else.


>1.  What PRECISELY does the expression <Way to go!> mean? It
>    seems to me to mean something like <Well done!> <Good for
>    you!>, or similar. Examples of its use would be helpful.
>
>2.  What is its derivation/history?
>
>I hope you can be of help.
>
>Many thanks.
>
>Tony Hall.
>
>**********************************************************************
>***     Tony Hall
>***     Department of Russian Language
>***     University of Birmingham
>***     Edgbaston                       Tel:    +44 (0)121 414 3227
>***     Birmingham B15  2TT             Fax:    +44 (0)121 414 7280
>***     United Kingdom                  Email:  A.R.Hall at bham.ac.uk
>**********************************************************************
>
>

-----------------------------------------------------------
Robert Beard                            Bucknell University
Russian & Linguistics Programs          Lewisburg, PA 17837
rbeard at bucknell.edu                            717-524-1336
Russian Program http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian
Morphology on Internet      http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard
-----------------------------------------------------------


From romanov at spot.Colorado.EDU  Mon Oct 14 15:43:05 1996
From: romanov at spot.Colorado.EDU (Romanov Artemi)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 09:43:05 -0600
Subject: Prostorechie (fwd)
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.094305.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 10:50:19 -0600 (MDT)
From: Romanov Artemi <romanov at spot.Colorado.EDU>
To: Ralph Cleminson <CLEMINSO at ceu.hu>
Cc: Multiple recipients of list SEELANGS <SEELANGS at CUNYVM>
Subject: Re: Prostorechie


As a term in lexicography "prostorechie" was used for the first time in a
dictionary compiled
by Nordstet in 1782.

Since then it has been used in all major Russian dictionaries, but Ralph
is absolutely right when he says that the boundaries of prostorechie
are not clearly marked.

Some Russian scholars defined prostorechie as "formy osobogo literaturnogo
stilia, otlichaiushegosia neprinuzhdennostiu, oproshchennostiu,
emotsional'no-otsenochnymi elementami" (Vinokur, Rahmanova), others
believed that it is "osobyi tip rechi, ... stoiachshii za predelami
literaturnogo iazyka" (Barannikova), and yet others feel it is a mixture
of "literaturnoi normy i vedushih osobennostei mestnoi dialektnoi sistemy"
(Kolesov).

These different approaches are reflected in practical lexicography. For
instance, "rabotiaga" is defined by some dictionaries as "prostorechie" by
others as "razgovornoe".

However a more recent tendency in Russian lexigraphy is to reserve
"prostorechie" for non-normative words and expressions, and use
"razgovornoe" or "expressivno-razgovornoe" for words like "rabotiaga" ( I rely
on the opinion of Galina Skliarevskaya, the head of the
Department of Lexicography, Institut Iazykoznaniia, Russian Academy of
Science - she published a couple of articles on this issue).

Artemi Romanov

Assistant professor
Department of Germanic & Slavic
University of Colorado at Boulder


From vtumanov at julian.uwo.ca  Mon Oct 14 22:25:34 1996
From: vtumanov at julian.uwo.ca (v. tumanov)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 18:25:34 EDT
Subject: 1st year Russian (fwd)
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.182534.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Colleague:
        I wonder if you can answer a few questions on teaching 1st-year
Russian.  Thanks in advance.

1.  What textbook do you use in 1st-year Russian?

2. How many contact hours per week are involved?

3.  Is there a lab (mandatory or optional for the students)?

4.  If there is a lab, what materials are used there?

5.  How many students do you have enrolled now and how many of those do
you think you will keep (based on previous experience) all the way to the
end?

6.  How many students do you have in the other years?


Best regards, Vlad Tumanov, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
vtumanov at JULIAN.UWO.CA


From heyer at siu.edu  Tue Oct 15 03:58:24 1996
From: heyer at siu.edu (Sarah Heyer)
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 22:58:24 -0500
Subject: enrollments
Message-ID: <MON.14.OCT.1996.225824.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I hesitate to offer any examples from our school,
lest I jinx you with enrollments like ours,
but I had a couple of points to offer.

Ben Rifkin noticed that time of day turned out more important than other
factors,
but other enrollment efforts are continuing because our jobs are on the line.

David Kaiser asked if these figures were spiked.

Barry Scherr's figures indicated a two-spiked history of Russian language
enrollments since 1960, with highs in 1968 and 1990.

John Kieselhorst interpreted this as a situation basically beyond our
control, since international events seem much more potent.  Russia's lousy
showing in the international economy may turn off some students, but John
thought that other students might be attracted if we could impress them with
how cool Russian is.

Two comments:  After 1968, the curricula implemented the consensus of the 60s
that courses should be relevant, and foreign language requirements were slashed.
This probably accounts for the decline in foreign languages in the 70s and
early 80s.

The second comment relates to fluctuation with experience from one foreign
language department. (I mentioned this at the AATSEEL meeting in Chicago.)
As I tried to research our Russian Section's repeated battles for survival,
I discovered an amazing and sick cycle:  every time foreign language
(department-wide) enrollments hit a new low, and these figures get published
and read by higher administrators, the board of higher ed. takes it into
their mind to prune their tree of small branches which don't look
prosperous.  The word comes down over the course of a year.  Letters get
sent and re-sent from one level to the next, down and up the hierarchy.  By
the time they finally get around to taking the ax, the department has
mobilized, gotten letters from all the area school superintendents who say
that there are (now) jobs for foreign language teachers and that the
department is an asset to the area.  By this time the enrollment figures are
on the increase and the department feigns shock that the board should think
that there had been a problem with enrollments (thus playing into their
hands for the next time the numbers drop).
There's always some excuse that we can offer (lousy economy in Russia; local
personnel problems) and some changes on the horizon (new jobs opening up;
new faculty hired), but there are better alternatives:
Recognition that the numbers will fluctuate and that boards need to take a
longer view;
or, even better,
Stronger foreign language requirements so that as a society we put our money
where our mouth is about educating for cultural literacy.

The numbers Ben Rifkin sent in from the NY Times show that
the number of students leaving German, French and Russian (together)
is the number of students added to Spanish.
Spanish is basically the second language of this country and
it should be the second language of the majority of Americans
who are taking a second language.
Ideally, they would go on to take a third language,
and then they would be well prepared to deal with the complexities of Russian.
Unfortunately, with fewer language requirements in high school and college,
students get to university with little or no language study,
and it makes sense that they should take Spanish as their first foreign
language.

Here's some good news.  In my first year class, there are two students who
have met Russians and thereafter traveled to Russia with a high school group.
They were so impressed with the Russians they met and their efforts to speak
English,
they want to learn Russian so that next time they can speak Russian
to their new friends.  Another student is learning Russian because he used
to have a Russian girlfriend.  Think about it.  As opportunities for more people
to travel to Russia increase, that personal experience which clinches the
attraction to things Russian will be more commonplace.  As more Russians
(students, immigrants, etc.) come to the U.S., more Americans will make the
acquaintance of Russians and be aware of Russian as a foreign language and
culture worthy of future study.  That may be the source of our next rise in
enrollments.

Sarah Heyer

What follows are the contributions (abridged) which inspired my comments.
 Nothing new after here if you want to skip ahead.

Ben Rifkin's:

 but when asked, students in that
>section said that chose it because the time of day was attractive to them.
>The other 4-day section had very poor enrollment.  When all students in
>first-semester Russian were polled about the 4-day sections, the
>overwhelming majority (95%!) said that they would not sign up for that kind
>of section for second semester unless the time the section met was the best
>time of the day for them or all the other sections were closed.
>Accordingly, we dropped the 4-day plan like a hot potato.  This year we
>tried marking one of our first-semester sections in the timetable as
>specifically for students with an interest in business, and scheduled the
>class to meet in the Business School's building.  The section had robust
>enrollment, but only 5 of the 19 students indicated any interest in
>business.  The others signed up because they decided that that was the best
>time for them to take Russian.  In total, our enrollments are slightly down
>from last year at this time (65 this year, 70 last year in first-semester)
>and we are still looking for ways to get students in the door.  We will
>continue to offer "Read Russian in an Hour" in the spring semester (a week
>before registration for the following fall) and we will continue to conduct
>"Russia Day" for high school students from across Wisconsin and Northern
>Illinois in the hope of attracting students to our first-semester course.
>We also send faculty and students to area studies courses to publicize
>language offerings and distribute flyers.  (If you like Russian history,
>why not try learning Russian?  It's FUN!)  Any other ideas out there?
>. . .
>
>Whatever the case, if the trend for declining enrollments continues, our
>profession and our mission will suffer greatly.  We MUST focus on
>enrollments and we must focus our attention on strategies for success in
>enrollment building.
>

The numbers Ben Rifkin sent in from the NY Times :
>
>I apologize for misquoting the NY Times article to which Genevra Gerhardt
>referred.  In fact, "other languages" experienced a whopping 42% increase
>in enrollments, from 17,544 in 1990 to 24,918 in 1995, compared to a 36%
>increase for Chinese, a 28% increase for Arabic, a 14% increase for
>Spanish, a 5% increase for Portuguese, a 1% increase for Hebrew and
>decreases in Ancient Greek (1%), Japanese (2%), Latin (8%), Italian (12%),
>French (25%), German (28%) and Russian (45%).  According to these
>enrollment figures, the most popular languages and their enrollments in
>1995 are:
>
>Spanish                  606,286
>French                    205,351
>German                   96,263
>Japanese                  44,723
>Italian                      43,760
>Chinese                   26,471
>Latin                        25,897
>Russian                   24,729 (down from 44,626 in 1990)
>Ancient Greek      16,272
>Hebrew                  13,127
>Portuguese             6,531
>Arabic                      4,444
>
>Other languages registered enrollments of 17,544 in 1990 and 24,918 in 1995.
>
>In 1990, Russian was the 6th most popular foreign language (after Spanish,
>French, German, Italian and Japanese, in that order).  In 1995, Russian was
>the 8th most popular foreign language.  Chinese passed Russian and Russian
>fell behind Latin (which also experienced a decline in enrollment, but a
>relatively slight one.)
>
>The article is on p. B8 of the NY Times for 10/9/96 and the data are from
>the MLA's survey of foreign language enrollments in 1990 in 2,772 two- and
>four-year colleges in the US.
>

David Kaiser asked if these figures were spiked:

>Regarding the NYT article in which a 45% drop in enrollment was mentioned,
>how does enrollment look compared to historical trends? Specifically, did
>we get a "spike" in the late 80s due to the heady days of glasnost, only
>to return to historically normal levels in the 90s? Or is this a true
>decline in enrollment and not a correction (to use the economists' term
>for such things)?
>
>
Barry Scherr's figures:

>In response to David Kaiser's inquiry, here are some MLA figures, rounded to
>the nearest 1000,  from earlier surveys:
>
>1960:   31k
>1968:   41k
>1970:    36k
>1974:   33k
>1977:   28k
>1980:   24k
>1983:   30k
>1986:   34k
>1990:   45k
>1995:   25k
>
>Russian enrollments in 1995 were still slightly above their historic low in
>1980, but the recent decline over just five years is much steeper than the
>12-year decline from 1968-1980. Also, the 1995 enrollments are well below the
>average over the last 35 years, when they were most often in the low to
>mid-30's.
>

John Kieselhorst's:

>Date:    Thu, 10 Oct 1996 12:26:43 -0600
>From:    john kieselhorst <jak209 at lulu.acns.nwu.edu>
>Subject: Enrollment alarm?
>
>        The recent article in the NY Times (Oct 9, p.B8) indicating a 45%
>decline in Russian enrollments (1990 vs. 1995) has caused "Alarm" on the
>SEELANGS lines.  For my part, I wonder that we academics sometimes fail to
>understand that our own efforts are often only an exceedingly small part of
>the larger world in which we live.
>
>        The Times article  shows Russian to have suffered the greatest
>enrollment decline of all foreign languages.  We do well to ask ourselves
>if there is anything that we can do to raise enrollments.  However, I think
>we really need to take MLA executive director Phyllis Franklin's comments
>in that article seriously.  "The foreign languages chosen for study by
>students have always fluctuated, and they have always reflected
>international developments."  I would suggest that certain national trends
>here at home have also contributed to the decline. The following are some
>random thoughts on the why the figures are what they are, and some
>suggestions about what to do about it.
>
>        1) I do not have statistics at hand, but I would be willing to bet
>my graduate student stipend that the 1990 Russian enrollments (the base
>used in the Times comparison) were unusually high by comparison with
>previous years. As we all know, rapid changes in the (then) Soviet Union
>and East bloc countries led to increased ease of travel, wild political
>speculation, and excitement about newly-opened markets in a population of
>over 260 million.  Enrollments were bound to increase dramatically in the
>wake of such developments. However, Russia's disappointing political and
>economic progress in recent years, I would venture, has soured the
>enthusiasm of many potential new students.
>
>        2) Perhaps more notable than the decline in specifically Russian
>enrollment was the decline in all European languages other than Spanish and
>Portuguese.  This is notable, though not surprising. The klichka
>"eurocentric" has become as damning on our campuses today as the brand
>"counter-revolutionary" was during the Russian Civil War. Whether or not we
>accept Russia as "European" really matters little; in the perception of our
>potential new students, this is merely another language spoken by the "dead
>white males" society.  Few outside of our field are familiar with Russian
>literature beyond Tolstoevsky, perhaps Chekhov, and the film version of
>Pasternak; Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Ginsburg, Gippius, and others, have yet to
>become common coin with the American reading public.
>
>        Having identified some sources of our enrollment woes, the question
>remains, "chto delat'?"  On the international, front, we should emphasize
>that the opportunity to travel to Russia still remains.  While successful
>markets continue to be a thing of the future, the excitement of visiting a
>nation in the process of nation building (or perhaps reconstruction is more
>appropriate) is worth emphasizing to prospective students. In the main,
>however, we should perhaps recognize our own powerlessness over
>international events that cause fluctuations in our student populations,
>and stop wasting energy trying to address issues that lie beyond our
>control.
>
>        It seems to me a more productive approach would focus on the home
>front. Slavists are generally less inclined to the kind of europe-bashing
>that floats enrollments in English, French and comparative literature
>courses (these always find a way to invite students into their European
>tents under the rubric of "colonialism"). We need to look for positive
>solutions.

 . . . . [go back in your trash and read the rest of it; it was good,
but I'll save space here]



Sarah Heyer  <heyer at siu.edu>
Dept. of Foreign Languages
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL 62901-4521
U.S.A.


From BERRYMJ at css.bham.ac.uk  Tue Oct 15 09:05:42 1996
From: BERRYMJ at css.bham.ac.uk (Mike Berry)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:05:42 GMT
Subject: Russian wordlists
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.090542.GMT.>

For a recent publication in this field see Nicholas J.Brown, Russian
Learners' Dictionary: 10,000 words in frequency order, Routledge,
1996. This is based on a number of published wordlists, and includes
a translation and relevant grammatical information on the word where
appropriate.
The compiler writes in the preface "...the academic validity of
frequency dictionaries can easily be questioned. The very fuzziness
of the notion of frequency, and the significant differences between
any two frequency lists compiled by different people or different
methods, make the compilation of the 'correct' or 'ultimate'
frequency dictionary of modern Russian an impossibility. The
justification for producing a new frequency dictionary of this size
is not that I claim to have found some definitive way of determining
word frequency for the Russian language as a whole, but that such a
wordlist is useful. Students are stimulated to increase their active
and passive vocabularies in an organized, efficient way, the increase
in their vocabulary can be easily measured by testing from the list,
and one more straightforward criterion of learner competence is added
to such traditional critieria as number of grammatical errors, accent
and speed of delivery. To put it briefly, the idea may have some
theoretical flaws, but in practice it works."


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Berry
Centre for Russian and              Tel: 0121-414-6355
East European Studies,              Fax: 0121-414-3423
University of Birmingham,           email: m.j.berry.rus at bham.ac.uk
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

                   ***** Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat' *****
----------------------------------------------------------------------


From jamison at owlnet.rice.edu  Tue Oct 15 19:36:25 1996
From: jamison at owlnet.rice.edu (John J. Ronald)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 14:36:25 -0500
Subject: Slavic Phrasebooks?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD.3.95.961014070912.443A-100000@panther.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.143625.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I own a pharsebook entitled _Just Enough Scandinavian_, which
has standard phrases for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all
under one cover.  I was wondering if there is a similar type
of phrasebook with several slavic languages together (Polish,
Czech & Slovak, for example) available for not too much money?

Thanks...

--John R.

e-mail: jamison at owlnet.rice.edu


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Tue Oct 15 19:29:00 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:29:00 -0600
Subject: Slavic Phrasebooks?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961015143320.19210A-100000
 @great-horned.owlnet.rice.edu>
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.132900.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John J. Ronald wrote:

> I own a pharsebook entitled _Just Enough Scandinavian_, which
> has standard phrases for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all
> under one cover.  I was wondering if there is a similar type
> of phrasebook with several slavic languages together (Polish,
> Czech & Slovak, for example) available for not too much money?

The closest I've ever seen is a (Berlitz?) European Phrase Book.
It covers, besides French, German, etc., Polish,Czech (and
Slovak?),Russian,Serbo-Croation. For sure no Ukrainian or
Belorus'ian. The copy I have is several years old (13 at least)
and I can't say I've seen it around much since then. But I
imagine it (or something similar) is still available. Cost?
Whatever the going rate is for Berlitz style pocket phrase
books.

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From mohandas at U.Arizona.EDU  Tue Oct 15 20:45:19 1996
From: mohandas at U.Arizona.EDU (Mohandas K Vemulapalli)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:45:19 -0700
Subject: Slavic Phrasebooks?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.NXT.3.91.961015132553.4440f-100000@probe>
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.134519.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Michael Burianyk wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John J. Ronald wrote:
>
> > I own a pharsebook entitled _Just Enough Scandinavian_, which
> > has standard phrases for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all
> > under one cover.  I was wondering if there is a similar type
> > of phrasebook with several slavic languages together (Polish,
> > Czech & Slovak, for example) available for not too much money?
>
>
There are several such books put out Lonely Planet publishers. There
phrasebooks concentrate on geographical area and not linguistic grouping.
Thus some languages may befound in several phrasebooks  but Bulgarian and
Macedonian are not in the same volume.  As far as I can remember the
books arepriced between 6 and 9 US$. I have  found them useful, but
quality varies by language and the selection of vocabulary items is
limited. I have seen many of these books at stores such as Barnes and
Noble and Borders so they are available. If you need further clarification
please mailme and I will checkmy library for exact titles and author
names.

Mohan Vemulapalli
Mohandas at research.u.arizona.edu


From MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu  Tue Oct 15 22:13:54 1996
From: MLLEMILY at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu (Emily Tall)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 17:13:54 -0500
Subject: Ukrainian
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.171354.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

From:   IN%"dickson at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU"  "Jean Dickson" 15-OCT-1996 16:42:11.21
To:     IN%"mllemily at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu"  "Emily Tall"
CC:
Subj:   Ukrainian specialists, please help!!! (fwd)

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Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 16:42:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: Jean Dickson <dickson at ACSU.Buffalo.EDU>
Subject: Ukrainian specialists, please help!!! (fwd)
To: Emily Tall <mllemily at ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
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Emily, perhaps you can refer this very nice librarian to one of the people
on the list you mentioned to me the day we went to the Bolshoi and had
dinner at your place??    If not, please just ignore this!    --Jean

Jean Dickson
Associate Librarian, Lockwood Library
SUNY at Buffalo
dickson at acsu.buffalo.edu

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 15:52:03 -0700
From: Allan Urbanic <aurbanic at library.berkeley.edu>
Reply-To: slavlibs at library.berkeley.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list <slavlibs at library.berkeley.edu>
Subject: Ukrainian specialists, please help!!!

Hello all,

I'm stumped.  A graduate student is seeking a document in which the
Ukrainian government or one of its agencies declared that Ukraine, in
English, was supposed to appear without the article "the" in official
documents.  There are other grammatical issues involved as well.

I tried locating such a proclamation or even a reference to it and came
up with nothing.  I don't see mention of it in any LC authority record
that I could find (though I admit I might not have been searching them
correctly), but I suspect such a statement would have crossed the desk of
Slavic catalogers at some point.

Anyone heard of such a proclamation or have suggestions how one would go
about finding it?

Thanks, Allan


From mikulska at astro.Princeton.EDU  Wed Oct 16 05:37:26 1996
From: mikulska at astro.Princeton.EDU (Margaret Mikulska)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 01:37:26 -0400
Subject: Slavic phrasebook
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.013726.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

> Date:    Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:29:00 -0600
> From:    Michael Burianyk <buri at phys.ualberta.ca>
> Subject: Re: Slavic Phrasebooks?
>
> On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, John J. Ronald wrote:
>
> > I own a pharsebook entitled _Just Enough Scandinavian_, which
> > has standard phrases for Danish, Norwegian and Swedish all
> > under one cover.  I was wondering if there is a similar type
> > of phrasebook with several slavic languages together (Polish,
> > Czech & Slovak, for example) available for not too much money?
>
> The closest I've ever seen is a (Berlitz?) European Phrase Book.
> It covers, besides French, German, etc., Polish,Czech (and
> Slovak?),Russian,Serbo-Croation. For sure no Ukrainian or
> Belorus'ian. The copy I have is several years old (13 at least)
> and I can't say I've seen it around much since then. But I
> imagine it (or something similar) is still available. Cost?
> Whatever the going rate is for Berlitz style pocket phrase
> books.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date:    Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:45:19 -0700
> From:    Mohandas K Vemulapalli <mohandas at U.Arizona.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Slavic Phrasebooks?
>
> There are several such books put out Lonely Planet publishers. There
> phrasebooks concentrate on geographical area and not linguistic grouping.
> [...]
> ------------------------------

I have the Berlitz "European Phrase Book" and while it has Polish,
Russian, and Serbo-Croatian, it most certainly does not have Czech or
Slovak.  The (C) date is 1985, 1974, and my copy is a 1990 reprint.
I have a vague impression of having seen an Eastern European phrasebook
from Berlitz, too, but I'm not sure.  You can always call information
and ask for their toll-free number, if they have one.

As for the Lonely Planet publications, they have such phrasebooks as:

        "Eastern Europe", covering Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish,
        Romanian, and Slovak, and

        "Central Europe", covering Czech, French, German, Hungarian,
        Italian, and Slovak.

        "Mediterranean Europe", covering Albanian, Greek, Italian,
        Macedonian, Maltese, Serbian & Croatian, and Slovene.

        "Russian" - self-explanatory

        "Ukrainian" - forthcoming (as of 1995).

These are all I know of that include Slavic languages.

I can't comment on any of them, as I don't have them, but judging from
their "Baltic States" phrasebook (Lith, Latv, Est), which I do have, they
contain a bare minimum of vocabulary and expressions, and practically
no grammar.  The Baltic one is US $5.95.  You can contact "Lonely Planet
Publications" at (510) 893-8555, 155 Filbert St, Suite 251, Oakland, CA
94607.

-Margaret Mikulska
mikulska at princeton.edu


From h.stoffel at auckland.ac.nz  Wed Oct 16 18:53:03 1996
From: h.stoffel at auckland.ac.nz (- Hnas-Peter Stoffel)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 18:53:03 GMT+1200
Subject: Slavic phrasebook
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.185303.GMT1200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Slavic phrasebooks : LONELY PLANET  Publishers, Melbourne Australia,
have published a series of relatively cheap and useful phrasebooks,
including volumes on Mediterranean languages (includes Slavic languages)
and Central and Eastern Central Europe.I can recommend them.  For full
address check Internet.

Hans-Peter Stoffel, Auckland (New Zealand)


From brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu  Tue Oct 15 14:58:52 1996
From: brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu (Benjamin Rifkin)
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:58:52 -0500
Subject: yet more about enrollments
Message-ID: <TUE.15.OCT.1996.095852.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I think we should also consider the following possibility.  Many states,
Wisconsin included, are mandating the implementation of foreign language
instruction at the middle and/or elementary school levels.  School
districts, faced with decreased funding from state and federal levels and
local distress at increased property taxes, often must fulfill these
mandates in the least expensive way possible.  That means hiring a single
foreign language teacher, most often a teacher of Spanish, or a couple of
teachers, most often Spanish  and French and, if possible, German.  As
early as first or second grade, some students start to study Spanish,
French or German; in high school, where they may have more choices, they
are most likely to continue the language they have already begun to study.
In college, they are most likely to continue to study that language ...
whether by going back to first semester for an "easy A" or trying to get
college credit for their high school studies by taking a more advanced
course, thus speeding up the time to degree (if there is a foreign language
requirement) or freeing up time for other courses in other areas of
instruction (i.e., not foreign language studies.)  In Wisconsin there has
been a significant decrease in instruction in all languages except Spanish
on the pre-college level, and this may be one of the causes.  A recent
article in the journal **The Voice of WAFLT [Wisconsin Association of
Foreign Language Teachers, the WI affiliate of ACTFL]** discussed factors
for students to consider in selecting one or another language, mostly
focusing on difficulties in various areas (pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, etc.), but presenting the choice as a closed one among French,
German and Spanish.  Reading the article, one might feel that there is no
reason to study anything other than Spanish, let alone consider anything
beyond the three most commonly taught languages.

I think we ought to consider trying harder to connect to our colleagues in
the schools and school boards about encouraging the expansion of foreign
language programs.  At the very least, we should encourage the
implementation of foreign language exploratory classes in which students
could learn a little bit about a broad range of cultures and languages,
expanding their horizons beyond French, German and Spanish, learning
something about the cultures of Asia, Africa and, dare I say it, Central
and Eastern Europe.  This might be enough of an enticement for some
students to remember Russian language and culture as an option for study,
at least at the college level, if there is nothing possible before that
time.

Ben Rifkin


**********************************
Benjamin Rifkin
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Drive, Madison, WI  53706
(608) 262-1623; fax (608) 265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu


From BERRYMJ at css.bham.ac.uk  Wed Oct 16 09:59:13 1996
From: BERRYMJ at css.bham.ac.uk (Mike Berry)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 09:59:13 GMT
Subject: semeinyi kodeks
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.095913.GMT.>

I am trying at short notice to track down some materials in English
or Russian on the fate of the Russian "Semeinyi kodeks". I gather
from one source it was passed by the Duma on December 8 1995, but was
vetoed by the President. Can anyone suggest any possible
sources? Thanks.
Mike Berry


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Berry
Centre for Russian and              Tel: 0121-414-6355
East European Studies,              Fax: 0121-414-3423
University of Birmingham,           email: m.j.berry.rus at bham.ac.uk
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

                   ***** Umom Rossiyu ne ponyat' *****
----------------------------------------------------------------------


From anelson at brynmawr.edu  Wed Oct 16 15:14:25 1996
From: anelson at brynmawr.edu (Andrea Nelson)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 11:14:25 -0400
Subject: Alarm
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.111425.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

One suggestion:  Put respect and passion and energy and expertise into your
first and second year Russian programs, both the people who teach them and
the people who take them.  Also, communicate to your students in everything
you do that the language is more than just the sum of its grammatical and
lexical parts and is more than just a conduit for information:  it is used
to argue, to insult, to love and is spoken by millions of fascinating
people, bearers of a deep and interesting culture.


From s_mccart at COLBY.EDU  Wed Oct 16 17:03:09 1996
From: s_mccart at COLBY.EDU (Sheila M. McCarthy)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:03:09 -0500
Subject: 1st year Russian (fwd)
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.120309.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>Dear Colleague:
>        I wonder if you can answer a few questions on teaching 1st-year
>Russian.  Thanks in advance.
>
>1.  What textbook do you use in 1st-year Russian?
>Russian Alive
>2. How many contact hours per week are involved?
>5
>3.  Is there a lab (mandatory or optional for the students)?
>some mandatory, some optional
>4.  If there is a lab, what materials are used there?
>materials which accompany the text; other departmental materials
>5.  How many students do you have enrolled now and how many of those do
>you think you will keep (based on previous experience) all the way to the
>end? 9 in first year Russian; attrition has been very low since
>enrollments have decreased.  We might expect that 5-6 of these students
>will take 4th year Russian.
>
>6.  How many students do you have in the other years?
> 10 in 2nd year, 6 in 3rd year; 6 in 4th year.
>
>Best regards, Vlad Tumanov, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada
>vtumanov at JULIAN.UWO.CA


From dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu  Wed Oct 16 22:10:30 1996
From: dpbrowne+ at pitt.edu (Devin P Browne)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 18:10:30 -0400
Subject: Paid Internship at SCI (fwd)
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.181030.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 15 Oct 96 12:19:29 EDT
From: Center for Civil Society International <ccsi at u.washington.edu>
Reply-To: civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu
To: Multiple recipients of list <civilsoc at solar.rtd.utk.edu>
Subject: Paid Internship at SCI

>From: Aaron La Mar <alamar at sister-cities.org>


          Paid internship at Sister Cities International

Sister Cities International (SCI), an Alexandria, Virginia based
not-for-profit corporation which coordinates citizen based diplomacy
between Sister City associations in the US and their foreign counterparts
is currently accepting applications for a paid internship position in the
Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe Department.

The position available is that of Program Assistant for two grant programs:
the SCI Russian-American Partnerships for Independent Newspapers (PIN)
Program; and the SCI Bosnia Media Development Program (MDP). The SCI PIN
Program is a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
funded project which links US newspapers with independent newspapers in
their Russian Sister Cities for management level exchanges and training.
The SCI Bosnia MDP is a United States Information Agency (USIA) funded
project which links US media with independent newspapers, radio stations,
and television stations in Bosnia for management level exchanges and
training.

Required skills:

o  personal commitment to the goals and mission of SCI
o  excellent communication and interpersonal skills
o  strong organizational skills
o  ability to take direction and meet deadlines
o  basic knowledge of word processors, spreadsheets and
   ability to quickly learn computer applications

Salary: $12,000

Filing Date: Open until filled

To apply, send a cover letter and resume to:

Aaron La Mar
Senior Program Officer, CIS & Eastern Europe Department
Affiliations Division, Sister Cities International
  Fax: 703.836.4815
eMail: alamar at sister-cities.org

For more information on SCI or either of the programs listed above, connect
to the SCI World Wide Web homepage at http://www.sister-cities.org

---------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron La Mar, Program Manager        <alamar at sister-cities.org>
Russian-American Partnerships for Indepedent Newspapers Program
    Senior Program Officer, CIS and Eastern Europe Division
Sister Cities International      <http://www.sister-cities.org>


From beyer at panther.middlebury.edu  Thu Oct 17 00:16:51 1996
From: beyer at panther.middlebury.edu (Thomas R. Jr. Beyer)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 20:16:51 EDT
Subject: 1st year Russian (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD.3.95.961014070912.443A-100000@panther.uwo.ca>
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.201651.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

At Middlebury we are using Russian now! from Barron's. It comes with a
text, workbook, three cassettes and a separate grammar booklet.
There are six contact hours per week. Students are expected to spend one
half to one hour per night reviewing, listening to cassettes and writing.
Since each student must purchase the cassettes there is no lab as such.
There are twenty five students in first year Russian and we hope to retain
20-22 thru teh winter and spring.
In second year there are nine students, and similar numbers in third and
fourth year, i.e. less than ten.
Tom Beyer
Middlebury


From aisrael at american.edu  Wed Oct 16 23:29:32 1996
From: aisrael at american.edu (Alina Israeli)
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 19:29:32 -0400
Subject: Language requirements (was: Advertising Slavic Languages)
Message-ID: <WED.16.OCT.1996.192932.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Hello (to those who are still on this subject)!

Michael Burianyk wrote:

>is there any possibility that Universities might start requiring more
>rigorous language study?
>
>This would help all language departments, and the slavic languages would
>get their share.
>
>Anyone have any ideas on how to convince University/College administrations
>that this is a good idea?

I am not so sure that this is a good idea. Our *department* (not the
administration) consistently voted it down, because nobody wants to have
students who do not want to be there.

Compare to the GenEd courses. Most people hate teaching them. The math
professors who have a lot of required courses hate them with passion.

I certainly have nothing against everybody's knowing a language or two,
except I do not believe that it can be achieved by implementing college
language requirements. Imagine if ten years ago colleges implemented a
policy of a 100% computer literacy with very few computers available (and
the ratio of language instructors/college population is certainly
inadequate), with massive computer phobia (just try to remember the TV adds
of the time). Yet, now it has been achieved: it starts early, every middle
school or even grammar school has computers and computer classes, and
certainly all parents think it is a worth-while activity.

So, if it is to be done, it has to start early, and have a family support,
and consequently a motivated customer.

Alina


From buri at phys.ualberta.ca  Thu Oct 17 15:21:54 1996
From: buri at phys.ualberta.ca (Michael Burianyk)
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 09:21:54 -0600
Subject: Language requirements (was: Advertising Slavic Languages)
In-Reply-To: <v01540b02ae8ae916dcbd@[147.9.119.31]>
Message-ID: <THU.17.OCT.1996.092154.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Alina Israeli wrote:

> Hello (to those who are still on this subject)!

Very few it seems :-(

> I am not so sure that this is a good idea. Our *department* (not the
> administration) consistently voted it down, because nobody wants to have
> students who do not want to be there.

Why wouldn't they want to be there? I can understand this position to a
certain degree, but I don't fully buy it. They would *have* to take a
language, yes, but they do have a chance to pick the one they find
most interesting. After all, they are required to take other courses
as well.

--
Michael Burianyk               Office: P534B Avahd-Bhatia Physics Lab
Seismology Laboratory          Phone : (403) 492 4128
Department of Physics          Fax   : (403) 492 0714
University of Alberta
Edmonton, CANADA T6G 2J1       e-mail: buri at phys.ualberta.ca


From 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM  Thu Oct 17 16:00:51 1996
From: 76703.2063 at CompuServe.COM (Jerry Ervin)
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 12:00:51 EDT
Subject: AATSEEL conference registration (UPDATE)
Message-ID: <THU.17.OCT.1996.120051.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Here is updated information on AATSEEL membership, subscription, and conference
registration.

Much of this same information is in the October AATSEEL Newsletter.  It has been
mailed, but as it is traveling bulk mail, it may not reach mailboxes for another
week yet.

Meanwhile, those who want to renew their AATSEEL memberships or preregister for
the conference will find all they need to know in what follows.  Please help
disseminate this information both physically and electronically.

Thanks for your support of, and interest in, AATSEEL.

--Jerry Ervin

*****

MEMBERSHIP:
        Membership renewals:  For many of us, it is not too early to make
membership payments for 1997.  Membership and subscriptions cover the calendar
year (January-December).  SEEJ and Newsletter address labels show the year
through which one is paid; all memberships and subscriptions expire in December
of the year indicated.  Early renewals are encouraged, and will extend the
paid-up period through the following December.  (Multiple year renewals are also
accepted.)
        New and reinstated memberships:  Unless otherwise directed, new and
reinstated memberships and subscriptions are credited to the year in which
received; in these cases, back issues of SEEJ and the Newsletter for that year
will be sent.

MEMBERSHIP RATES FOR INDIVIDUALS
Benefactor (BEN) - $500
Special Friend (SPF) - $200
Friend (FRN) - $100
Sustaining Members (SUS) - $55
Joint Members (1 set of publications to 1 address) (JOI) - $45
Administrators, Full & Associate Professors (AFA) - $40
Non-Academic Members (NAM) - $40
Assistant Professors, Instructors and Lecturers (AIL) - $30
Secondary School Teachers (SST) - $25
Emeritus (EME) - $20
Students & Unemployed (S&U) - $20
Affiliate (Newsletter only) (NLO) - $20

SUBSCRIPTION RATES FOR INSTITUTIONS (all prices include shipping)
        Like memberships, subscription rates cover a calendar year
(January-December).  Address labels on SEEJ and the Newsletter show the year of
expiration.  New and reinstated subscriptions will be credited to the year in
which received, and back issues for that year will be sent.
Domestic, SEEJ and NL - $55
International, SEEJ & NL - $65
Newsletter only, domestic - $30
Newsletter only, international - $35

BACK ISSUES OF SEEJ (all prices include shipping)
Domestic - $15/issue
International - $17/issue

CONFERENCE REGISTRATION - $25/$50/$60
        All attendees must be current members (see rates above) and must also
register for the conference.  Registration for graduate students is $25.  For
others, preregistration at $50 and on-site registration at $60 are available
(with preregistration encouraged).   Preregistration by November 15 is essential
for presenters (panel chairs, secretaries, panelists) who wish to have their
names appear in the official, printed conference program.  For AATSEEL '96
(Washington, D.C.), the following information may be helpful:
Dates - 27-30 December, 1996
Location - Capital Hilton
Rooms rates - $82 single/double; call 1-800-HILTONS; mention AATSEEL
Transportation - American Airlines is offering special rates.  Call
1-800-433-1790; mention Star File #88D6AB.

PROCEDURES
        You don't need a form to register for the conference or send in a
membership, subscription, or back issue order--a letter will do.  Just be sure
to include all relevant information, such as the following:
        1.  WHAT you are requesting (e.g., conference preregistration only?
Membership--in what category?  Both conference preregistration and membership?
Back issues--if so, which volume and number?  Etc.).
        2.  Current MAILING ADDRESS (AATSEEL must pay for publications returned
by the Postal Service).
        3.  CONTACT information (such as phone, fax, or email--for office
follow-up, if needed).
        4.  AFFILIATION as you would like to have it appear on your conference
registration.
        5.  A CHECK for the correct amount.  Please make all checks payable to
AATSEEL, Inc., in US dollars.  Send orders, payments, or other inquiries to:
Gerard L. Ervin
Executive Director, AATSEEL
1933 N. Fountain Park Dr.
Tucson, AZ 85715 USA
phone/fax:  520/885-2663
email:  76703.2063 at compuserve.com

Finally, please keep us apprised of your mailing address.  Every publication
that is returned to AATSEEL costs your association money, and results in delays
and inconvenience to you.  (In this connection, please note my own new street
address.  Phone/fax and email addresses remain unchanged.)

Cordially,



Gerard L. Ervin

(Revised 15 October 1996)


From nobum at gol.com  Thu Oct 17 23:43:35 1996
From: nobum at gol.com (Nobukatsu Minoura)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 08:43:35 +0900
Subject: We Need Your HELP!!!
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.084335.0900.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Seelangers,

I'm not sure if it is real or a scam, but anyways, I received this on Sign
Language Linguistics List (SLLING-L).  Kak Vy dumaete?/Jak vy myslite?

Nobu

> Lines: 28
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Date:         Wed, 16 Oct 1996 19:20:11 +0400
> Reply-To: Sign Language Linguistics List <SLLING-L at yalevm.ycc.yale.edu>
> Sender: Sign Language Linguistics List <SLLING-L at yalevm.ycc.yale.edu>
> From: "Michael A. Sniggin" <Specle at SPECLE.CHEL.SU>
> Organization: OOO Yguralspecavtomatick
> Subject:      We Need Your HELP!!!
> X-To:         SLEDDOG at CSN.ORG
> To: Multiple recipients of list SLLING-L<SLLING-L at yalevm.ycc.yale.edu>
>
> Gentlemen!
>
> Please, read this message over - this is not an ads or something like that.
> We are living in the South Urals, Russia and we are trying to connect our
> society, our people to the Internet by new technologies - just to have
> normal conditions to work with this Great Net. What we have now is just a
> mockery - sometimes 25 bytes/sec (!!!). But new equipment is very expensive.
> So we are trying to collect  the sum we need by donations of persons holding
> the same views. If you  sympathise our ideas and consider it  possible
> to send us some money - it would be accepted with warm gratitude.
>
> We would be also very grateful to all advises too,
> our mail - specle at specle.chel.su
>
> Thank you for reading this message over,
> and  -  forgive us for taking your time.
>
>         Yours virtually, Yang businessmen.
>
> Please transfer ANY sum to the:
>
> BENEFICIARY: Lazarev Yuri Ivanovich, Russia
> ACCOUNT # 008100072 With Savings Bank Of Russian Federation (SBERBANK)
> C.H.I.P.S. Number 3212333
> SWIFT Code - SABRRUMM
> Kurchatovskoe Branch 8053
> In Favour Account       # 7207001394/001 (for USD)
>                         # 7207000088/048 (for DM)
>


From mfrfd at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu  Fri Oct 18 15:58:19 1996
From: mfrfd at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Robert F. Druien)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 10:58:19 -0500
Subject: Software sources
In-Reply-To: <199610172345.IAA20516@gol1.gol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.105819.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

We have received funding to purchase up to $5000. in CD-ROM and other
software in our language department (F,G,R,S).  Our share would be over
$1200 and as I search available catalogs I find nothing of value for our
students.  Would anyone have a source for useful materials (addresses
for firms: email, fax, tel) that could be privately emailed to me?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bob Druien                                          tel. 309/298-1558
Western Illinois University                         fax. 309/298-2585
Foreign Language Department              email. mfrfd at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
Macomb IL 61455


From mitrege at mail.auburn.edu  Fri Oct 18 16:14:42 1996
From: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu (George Mitrevski)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 11:14:42 -0500
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.111442.0500.>

Robert F. Druien wrote:
>
> Would anyone have a source for useful materials (addresses
> for firms: email, fax, tel) that could be privately emailed to me?

University of Minnesota has a database of available software. Contact
Elaine Randolph. Sorry, don't know her e-mail!

George
***************************************************************
Dr. George Mitrevski            office: 334-844-6376
Foreign Languages                  fax: 334-844-6378
6030 Haley Center               e-mail: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5204

List of my WWW pages: http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/index.html
***************************************************************


From edraitse at shiva.Hunter.CUNY.EDU  Fri Oct 18 17:53:39 1996
From: edraitse at shiva.Hunter.CUNY.EDU (Emil Draitser)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 13:53:39 -0400
Subject: Software sources
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9610181045.A12446-0100000@ecom7.ecn.bgu.edu>
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.135339.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I could highly recommend (because of their excellent technical support)
Smart Link Corporation:
        Tel: 1-800-256-4814
        FAX (714)552-1699
        Internet HTTP://www.smartrlinkcorp.com

Emil Draitser,
Hunter College


On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, Robert F. Druien wrote:

> We have received funding to purchase up to $5000. in CD-ROM and other
> software in our language department (F,G,R,S).  Our share would be over
> $1200 and as I search available catalogs I find nothing of value for our
> students.  Would anyone have a source for useful materials (addresses
> for firms: email, fax, tel) that could be privately emailed to me?
>
> Any help would be appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bob Druien                                          tel. 309/298-1558
> Western Illinois University                         fax. 309/298-2585
> Foreign Language Department              email. mfrfd at uxa.ecn.bgu.edu
> Macomb IL 61455
>


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Fri Oct 18 23:06:53 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 16:06:53 -0700
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.160653.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Lists of software sources, and other kinds of sources should also be
part of the AATSEEL web page/site.  This is exactly the kind of thing
that would be helpful.
gg
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From jkautz at u.washington.edu  Fri Oct 18 23:19:15 1996
From: jkautz at u.washington.edu (Joseph Kautz)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 16:19:15 -0700
Subject: Software sources
In-Reply-To: <32680D8D.2C23@wolfenet.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.161915.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

The AATSEEL web site does include some downloadable software resources,
including my freeware HyperClock stack which drills telling time in
Russian.  A more comprehensive list would be helpful.  AATSEEL is always
looking for volunteers to help with the web site.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Kautz
(206)759-7663 email: jkautz at u.washington.edu
http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jkautz/Russian.Sign.Project.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

> Lists of software sources, and other kinds of sources should also be
> part of the AATSEEL web page/site.  This is exactly the kind of thing
> that would be helpful.
> gg
> --
> Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/
>
> 2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
> Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com
>


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Sat Oct 19 01:26:53 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 18:26:53 -0700
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.182653.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Joe!  Right on!
But it's gotta be a nerdy volunteer.
gg


--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From paulkla at mail.pressenter.com  Sat Oct 19 01:53:00 1996
From: paulkla at mail.pressenter.com (Paul A. Klanderud)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 20:53:00 CDT
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.205300.CDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

>Joe!  Right on!
>But it's gotta be a nerdy volunteer.
>gg

With coke-bottle horn-rimmed glasses, tie askew, and a pocket protector.

Paul K.

>
>
>--
>Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/
>
>2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
>Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com
>
>


From ggerhart at wolfenet.com  Sat Oct 19 02:32:16 1996
From: ggerhart at wolfenet.com (Genevra Gerhart)
Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 19:32:16 -0700
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <FRI.18.OCT.1996.193216.0700.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

No, no, dear,
It's not what he/she/it looks like, it's what (they) can do, that
matters.
gg
--
Genevra Gerhart                         http://www.wolfe.net/~ggerhart/

2134 E. Interlaken  Bl.                 Tel. 206/329-0053
Seattle, WA  98112                      ggerhart at wolfenet.com


From mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu  Sat Oct 19 15:06:01 1996
From: mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (Barbara Mozdzierz)
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 11:06:01 -0400
Subject: US contacts internat. law
Message-ID: <SAT.19.OCT.1996.110601.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGers:
I am forwarding the following message to those of you who work in the area
of comparative international law or know of someone who does.  Milena
Minkova, a Bulgarian national, currently pursues her research in that area
and would like to establish contacts in the U.S.

If you can help her out, please contact Milena directly (she does not
subscribe to SEELANGS) at lpmin18 at ceu.hu

Barbara

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbara M. Mozdzierz, Ph.D.                     tel. (202) 994-0930
Dept. of German & Slavic                        fax  (202) 994-0171
George Washington University                    mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
2130 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 10:58:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Barbara Mozdzierz <mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>
To: Milena Minkova <lpmin18 at ceu.hu>
Subject: Re: your mail

Dear Ms. Minkova,

Thank you very much for your email.
Before suggesting a strategy or two, please allow me to ask you some
questions.  Who refered you to me?  And have we met before?
If we have met before, please forgive me for not remembering at the very
moment.

A fair part of my research in Slavic linguistics is dedicated to Bulgarian
linguistic issues.  I have been to Bulgaria repeatedly (most recently in
May/June of this year) and can honestly say that I love the country and
especially its people.

Your interests are in the legal area.  I am afraid I am not the right
person to help you in finding colleagues  in the field of comparative
international law.  But I will post your request on the listserv called
SEELANGS which connects professionals of various disciplines dealing with
Eastern European issues.  Maybe you will receive responses from people in
your field that way.  (SEELANGS subscribers are not only from the U.S.,
but from all over the world.)

Good luck!

Vsichko najxubavo!
Barbara Mozdzierz








On Sat, 19 Oct 1996, Milena Minkova wrote:

> Dear Prof. Barbara Mozdzierz,
>
> I 've taken the liberty of writing to you as to express my
> professional interest in establishing closer contact with scholars
> interested in Bulgarian business laws.
> My name is Milena Minkova and I am a S.J.D student at the Central
> European University- Budapest ( B.L- Sofia, LL.M- New York ). I do
> work in the field of comparative international competition law, where
> my specific field of research is competition rules in Hungary, Poland
> and Bulgaria in the light of the Europe Agreements. I am deeply
> interested in the matter and would be very happy to find    brothers in
> arms' within the United States. I am looking also for periodicals,
> for which the subject matter of my research could be of some
> interest.
> I do keep great memories from Washington D.C., which was the first
> American city I've had the chance to visit as an young diplomat some
> years ago, now I have the pleasure to talk to you.
> Thanks a lot for being with me and hope to hear from you soon.
>
>                   Best regards,    Milena Minkova.
>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbara M. Mozdzierz, Ph.D.                     tel. (202) 994-0930
Dept. of German & Slavic                        fax  (202) 994-0171
George Washington University                    mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
2130 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052


From Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk  Sun Oct 20 13:42:25 1996
From: Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk (Mogens Jensen)
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 15:42:25 +0200
Subject: Software sources
Message-ID: <SUN.20.OCT.1996.154225.0200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Seelangers - if anyone interested I have published a software list
on my homepage:
                http://home1.inet.tele.dk/mojensen/

- it is in danish and KOI8

Best regards, Mogens Jensen


From Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk  Sun Oct 20 13:53:50 1996
From: Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk (Mogens Jensen)
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 15:53:50 +0200
Subject: Quiery: Alexey Ivanovich
Message-ID: <SUN.20.OCT.1996.155350.0200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear Seelangers: The royal Library, Copenhagen has received a latin
psalter from prox. 1400 with the comment that it has belonged to a
"former Russian minister of education", Alexey Ivanovich. Who could
that be? - I should be very grateful for a hint, kindly Mogens Jensen.


From roman at admin.ut.ee  Mon Oct 21 11:39:52 1996
From: roman at admin.ut.ee (r_l)
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 14:39:52 +0300
Subject: Quiery: Alexey Ivanovich
Message-ID: <MON.21.OCT.1996.143952.0300.>

> Dear Seelangers: The royal Library, Copenhagen has received a latin
> psalter from prox. 1400 with the comment that it has belonged to a
> "former Russian minister of education", Alexey Ivanovich. Who could
> that be? - I should be very grateful for a hint, kindly Mogens Jensen.
Is this comment in Russian/Danish or other language? Is it possible
to establish the time it has been done (approximately at least)?
There was not any Aleksei Ivanovich between russian ministers of
education ("Narodnogo Prosveshchenija" in fact) in XIXth cent.
R_L


From howsol at falcon.cc.ukans.edu  Tue Oct 22 12:06:23 1996
From: howsol at falcon.cc.ukans.edu (SOLOMON HOWARD TODD)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 07:06:23 -0500
Subject: Teaching English in Yakutia
Message-ID: <TUE.22.OCT.1996.070623.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

This may be of interest to the adventurous.

H.S.

=================================================
       Opportunities to teach English in Yakutia
        (contact person: Cordelia Bowlus)
=================================================
     The Russian Republic of Yakutia (also known as the Sacha Republic)
is desperately seeking interested native speakers to teach English in exchange
for a small salary and paid living expenses. They cannot afford to pay the cost
of the visitor's flight to and from the United States, they will pay for the
flights from Khabarovsk to Yakutsk and other necessary flights within the
Republic of Yakutia. The only thing that they ask is that the visitor be
willing to work 10 to 18 hours a week and stay for at least 2 months.

    Having spent several months on two different occasions in the area
myself, I can vouch for the tremendous kindness and integrity of the people
with whom I worked. At all times, they were amenable and eager to make sure
I was getting the most out of my trip. I was there chiefly to improve my
Russian, English and found a Russian teacher to tutor me. They also arranged for
 me to
spend time working in various regions, maximizing my experience.

     For those not interested in teaching English per se, I know that
there is a great deal of interest in having visitors speak on a wide variety
of topics, from computer programming to social problems in the United States.
One just has to establish contacts and make ones own arrangements. Believe me
it's the cheapest way to really experience Russia and improve fluency in the
language.. The key is to start planning early.

         Feel free to contact me, Cordelia Bowlus, at any time at
CordieAnne at aol.com.

Addresses in Yakutia include:

Vera Semenova
The Institute of Teacher Education
36 Kurashov Str.
Yakutsk
677000 Sacha Republic
Russia
tel. 011-7-411-22-4-32-90

M.A. Alekseyev
Verkneviluisk Republic High School
43 Hero Vasilyev Str.
Verkhneviluisk
678230 Sacha Republic
Russia
tel. 011-7-411-33-2-15-66 or 2-10-49 or 2-18-59
fax. 011-7-411-33-2-16-44


From feszczak at sas.upenn.edu  Tue Oct 22 15:32:27 1996
From: feszczak at sas.upenn.edu (Zenon M. Feszczak)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 11:32:27 -0400
Subject: Stanford: POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN SOVIET UKRAINE IN THE 1930'S
Message-ID: <TUE.22.OCT.1996.113227.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

(forwarded from soc.culture.ukrainian)

*****************************************************************
   CREES (Center for Russian & East European Studies) Seminars
*****************************************************************

                        Valerii Vasil'ev
                      Pedagogical Institute
                       Vinnytsia, Ukraine

     "POLITICS AND SOCIETY IN SOVIET UKRAINE IN THE 1930'S:
                   A View from Local Archives"

                   Wednesday, October 23, 1996
                           12:00 noon

           Littlefield Center Conference Room, Level G
                       Stanford University

                               ***


From alterego at ic.redline.ru  Tue Oct 22 17:59:32 1996
From: alterego at ic.redline.ru (IIRLC-Professional Programs)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 20:59:32 +0300
Subject: WINTER OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS OF RUSSIAN
Message-ID: <TUE.22.OCT.1996.205932.0300.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear list members,



I thought this might be of interest to you and your students.

The full program description may be requested from the address
at the end of the text.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Attached text:

RUSSIAN WINTER: VACATION AND FREE ACADEMIC
PROGRAM

January 6 - February 17, 1997

THE SECOND ANNUAL WINTER SCHOOL
FOR APPLIED RUSSIAN STUDIES IN TVER

The International Institute of Russian Language and Culture and Tver
State University, under the auspices of the Tver InterContact Group, an
independent educational and consulting organization, announce the
opening of enrollment for the Second Annual Winter School for Applied
Russian Studies in Tver.

The Winter School offers an opportunity for the intensive study of
Russian language and area studies in the heart of Central Russia, during
Russia's most romantic season -- Winter. International students will
spend 2-6 weeks interacting with their peers, studying Russian and
enjoying the culture of Russia's friendliest town -- Tver, the capital of the
Tver region, conveniently located on the main route between Moscow (2
hours) and St. Petersburg (5 hours).

The winter offers unique attractions -- deep white snow, sunny skies, and
fantastic vistas of the mighty Volga river covered with ice thick enough
upon which to walk. Many Russian traditions are connected with
wintertime. In fact, Winter School students will have the opportunity to
join in the celebrations of our most popular holidays: Rozhdestvo
(Russian Orthodox Christmas, January 7), Svyatki, "Stariy" Noviy God
(the "Old" New Year, January 14), Kreschenye and Maslenitza.

Students of all ages and abilities are invited to apply. Our instructors
tailor the curriculum of each program to the unique abilities, needs and
interests of the participants.

The Program includes:
      * 24 hours of instruction per week
            * 16 hours of Russian language classes
            * 8 hours of area study seminars (literature, history, politics,
 etc.)
      * 1 local and 1 out of town excursion per week
      * 3 workshops per week
      * Skiing, skating, picnicking and horseback riding -- on weekends.

All programs include weekend tours within Tver, to local artists'
workshops, area monasteries, churches and museums, and special
excursions to nearby cities such as Moscow, towns in the Tver region and
St. Petersburg.

Due to support from the Tver InterContact Group and Tver State
University, the tuition and education material costs have been waived for
the Winter School '97. Students will only pay for accommodation, board,
cultural enrichment programs and excursions.

For a complete information packet, please contact:

Dr. Marina Oborina
Director of Academic Programs
International Institute of Russian Language and Culture
PO Box 0565
Central Post Office
170000 Tver, Russia

e-mail:  IIRLC at ic.redline.ru
Phone:   +7 0822 425 419 or 425 439
Fax:     +7 0822 426 210


From rbeard at bucknell.edu  Tue Oct 22 17:50:54 1996
From: rbeard at bucknell.edu (Robert Beard)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 13:50:54 -0400
Subject: On-line Interactive Russian Reference Grammar
Message-ID: <TUE.22.OCT.1996.135054.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

I have been working on a major project, a Web resource, for about a year now
and I think that it has reached a stage where it might be of interest to
others.  I've been using it in an advanced grammar course as a review and it
seems to work for the few students I have. It is an interactive Reference
Grammar based on the simplest form of the rules of grammar and written in a
light-hearted style intended for non-specialists.  It contains built-in
self-testing mechanisms at the ends of most sections for review.  I would be
happy for in-put from others in the field, particularly the linguists.  The
URL is:

http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian/language/

It requires KOI8-R fonts, of course, and a Cyrillic keyboard.  The PC
versions of the fonts used in building the site may be downloaded by
clicking the main graphic or the word 'KOI8' above it.  Instructions for
setting up a keyboard may also be found on the same page.

--Bob

-----------------------------------------------------------
Robert Beard                            Bucknell University
Russian & Linguistics Programs          Lewisburg, PA 17837
rbeard at bucknell.edu                            717-524-1336
Russian Program http://www.bucknell.edu/departments/russian
Morphology on Internet      http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard
-----------------------------------------------------------


From Bohdan at panix.com  Wed Oct 23 00:38:06 1996
From: Bohdan at panix.com (Bohdan Peter Rekshynskyj)
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 20:38:06 EDT
Subject: Ukrainian
Message-ID: <TUE.22.OCT.1996.203806.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Greetings,

   This information is available on the main Ukrainian web site
I run.  It is known as the Ukraine FAQ Plus Project and is located at
http://www.std.com/sabre/UKRAINE.html

Please click on the "About Ukraine" section.
You will see an article about transliteration.  This is from
the government newspaper, "Governmental Courier (Uriadovyi Kur'yer)".
I hope you can read Ukrainian (it is the language of Ukraine and all
governmental publications are published in this state/official
language).
Anyway, you'll find this in the section "Rozyasnennya" - article
2.

                        Regards,

                                Bohdan Petro Rekshyns'kyi


>
> Emily, perhaps you can refer this very nice librarian to one of the people
> on the list you mentioned to me the day we went to the Bolshoi and had
> dinner at your place??    If not, please just ignore this!    --Jean
>
> Jean Dickson
> Associate Librarian, Lockwood Library
> SUNY at Buffalo
> dickson at acsu.buffalo.edu
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Mon, 14 Oct 1996 15:52:03 -0700
> From: Allan Urbanic <aurbanic at library.berkeley.edu>
> Reply-To: slavlibs at library.berkeley.edu
> To: Multiple recipients of list <slavlibs at library.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: Ukrainian specialists, please help!!!
>
> Hello all,
>
> I'm stumped.  A graduate student is seeking a document in which the
> Ukrainian government or one of its agencies declared that Ukraine, in
> English, was supposed to appear without the article "the" in official
> documents.  There are other grammatical issues involved as well.
>
> I tried locating such a proclamation or even a reference to it and came
> up with nothing.  I don't see mention of it in any LC authority record
> that I could find (though I admit I might not have been searching them
> correctly), but I suspect such a statement would have crossed the desk of
> Slavic catalogers at some point.
>
> Anyone heard of such a proclamation or have suggestions how one would go
> about finding it?
>
> Thanks, Allan
>


From asingleton at holycross.edu  Wed Oct 23 16:48:55 1996
From: asingleton at holycross.edu (Amy Singleton)
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 12:48:55 EDT
Subject: Inquiry about Brodsky
Message-ID: <WED.23.OCT.1996.124855.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Does anyone know of any special commemorative events being held on the
one year anniversary of Brodsky's death (January 1997) either in North
America and/or Russia? Thank you for your responses.
Amy Singleton
asinglet at holycross.edu


From serapion at umich.edu  Thu Oct 24 12:55:00 1996
From: serapion at umich.edu (Leslie J. Dorfman)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:55:00 -0400
Subject: Inquiry about Brodsky
In-Reply-To: <s26e0dc2.084@holycross.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.OCT.1996.085500.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

There will be a memorial conference on Joseph Brodsky at the University
of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, where he taught for several years on his
arrival in the U.S.  Conference dates are Nov. 8-9.

For more information, call the department at (313)764-4475.


Leslie Dorfman


From serapion at umich.edu  Thu Oct 24 13:06:10 1996
From: serapion at umich.edu (Leslie J. Dorfman)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 09:06:10 -0400
Subject: Inquiry about Brodsky - Correction
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.95.961024085228.2197B-100000@battlezone.rs.itd.umich.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.24.OCT.1996.090610.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

The department number to call about the Brodsky Conference at University
of Michigan is (313)764-5355 - Sorry!


Leslie Dorfman


From krm6r at virginia.edu  Thu Oct 24 17:25:47 1996
From: krm6r at virginia.edu (Karen Rice McDowell)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 13:25:47 EDT
Subject: Inquiry about Brodsky
Message-ID: <THU.24.OCT.1996.132547.EDT.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

There is a Joseph Brodsky commemorative conference November 7-9, 1996 at U
Michigan, Ann Arbor.  Karen McDowell


From vtumanov at julian.uwo.ca  Thu Oct 24 19:15:20 1996
From: vtumanov at julian.uwo.ca (Vlad Tumanov)
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 15:15:20 -0400
Subject: 1st-year Russian
Message-ID: <THU.24.OCT.1996.151520.0400.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Survey of Universities Regarding 1st-year Russian:
Textbook used, # of contact hrs./wk., lab, # of students enrolled in 1st
year, # of students expected to complete 1st yr.

*U of Manitoba: Troika, 4 hrs/wk.
*U of Toronto: Nachalo, 5hrs/wk, no lab, 25 students in 1st year
*Texas Tech: Golosa, 5 hrs/wk, lab every other Friday during scheduled
class hour, 24 students in 1st year (expect to keep 20)
*Seattle: Nachalo, 5 class hours, lab 20 min/day, 87 students in 1st year
(expect to keep 50-60)
*An unidentified community college in US: Golosa,14 students initially in
1st year (9 left in Oct.), 5 hours/wk + 1 hr. lab
*SUNY in Albany: Nachalo, 4 hrs/wk, optional lab, 32 students in 1st year
(hope to keep 20)
*Rouhier-WIloughby: Golosa, 4hrs/wk, 19 students in 1st year (will keep 10-15)
*Texas A & M: Ben Clark's Russian 3d ed.; 4 hrs classroom & 1 hr. lab
(mandatory)
*Western Illinois U.: Nachalo, 4 hrs/wk + optional lab, 11 students in 1st
year (expect to keep 5-7)
*Queen's U. in Kingston Canada: Ben Clark's Russian
*US Military Academy: Nachalo, 2.5 hrs./wk, lab (mandatory), 120 students
(expect to keep 115)
*Colby College: Russian Alive, 5 hrs./wk, lab (some mandatory and some
optional?), 9 students in 1st year
*Middlebury: Russian Now (Barron's), 6 hrs./wk, no lab, 25 students in 1st
year (hope to keep 20-22)
*George Washington U.: Golosa, 4 hrs/wk (with an intensive 8 hr./wk track),
mandatory but unmonitored lab, 38 students in 1st year in 3 sections + 10
in the intensive section
*Southern Illinois U.: Golosa; 4 contact hrs.; no lab; 16 students in 1st yr.

Vladimir Tumanov, Associate Professor
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
University College 115, University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7
Telephone: w. (519) 661-3196, h. (519) 471-3429
Fax: (519) 661-4093
Electronic Mail: vtumanov at julian.uwo.ca


From KER4 at PSUVM.PSU.EDU  Mon Oct 28 21:03:00 1996
From: KER4 at PSUVM.PSU.EDU (Karen E. Robblee)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 16:03:00 EST
Subject: No subject
Message-ID: <MON.28.OCT.1996.160300.EST.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Please note that I am posting this for someone else.  For replies, use
the email address below.

***************************************************************** Hi.
I'm a Fulbright lecturer from Romania (Dept.  of English/Univ.  of
Bucharest)now teaching at the Dept.  of Slavic & E European
Languages/Penn State.  I will be attending the AAASS Conference and the
miniconference on Romania on Nov. 13.  I'm looking to share a hotel room
for the duration of the conference.  I'm 35 and easy-going.  Please
reply at bxs36 at psu.edu   Thanks, Bogdan Stefanescu


From SRogosin at aol.com  Mon Oct 28 21:44:49 1996
From: SRogosin at aol.com (Serge Rogosin)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 16:44:49 -0500
Subject: Ukr. poet Makarovsky
Message-ID: <MON.28.OCT.1996.164449.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

For some time now I've been trying to track down a copy of Makarovsky's poema
"Natalia abo dvy doly razom," but other than a copy in the NYPL that has
disappeared in the years since it was donated to the library by the
lexicographer Hrinchenko in 1899, I could not find it in RLIN, OCLC or the
Slavic Union Catalog.  The New York Public Library card lists it as being
published in Kharkiv in 1848.

Mikhail(o) Makarovsky (1783-1846) was prominent enough to have an article
written about him in the Brokhauz i Efron encyclopedia.  It describes
"Natalya" as being his best work and as "bogaty bytovymi podrobnostiami."

Does anyone know where to find a copy of this poem or know anything else
about it or its author?  I would be extremely grateful for any information.

Serge Rogosin
srogosin at aol.com

93-49 222 Street
Queens Village, NY 11428


From mrldorf at KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU  Mon Oct 28 22:35:34 1996
From: mrldorf at KUHUB.CC.UKANS.EDU (Mark R. Lauersdorf)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 16:35:34 -0600
Subject: *2nd-year* Polish/Czech instructors
Message-ID: <MON.28.OCT.1996.163534.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear SEELANGS Readers,

   I am looking for teachers of *2nd-year* Polish and Czech at U.S.
institutions of higher education who would be willing to participate,
with their 2nd-year classes, in a survey project, the results of which
will be presented on the panel "Textbooks and Methods for Teaching
Central and East European Languages" at the annual meeting of the
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
(AATSEEL) in December 1996 in Washington, DC.

   The student portion of the survey is designed to gather information on
the language background, needs, desires and goals of students currently
studying Polish and Czech at the 2nd-year level at institutions of higher
education in the United States.  The instructor portion is designed to
give information on the size and type of programs available to students
for studying these languages at the institutions participating in the
project.  The student questionnaire should not take more than 10-15
minutes to complete.  The instructor questionnaire will take longer, the
length of time depending upon the availability of certain information
requested.

   I would like to include at least 15 instructors/classes in the survey,
but will gladly accept more, if there is a large response to this request.

   For reasons of confidentiality in carrying out this survey, it is
absolutely essential that any instructor of 2nd-year Polish or Czech who
is interested in participating respond to me privately at:

                       m-lauersdorf at ukans.edu

You may also respond to me at any of the other addresses listed at the
bottom of this message.  Please *DO NOT* respond to me on the SEELANGS
discussion list, since this will disqualify you from participating.

   If you are interested in participating in this survey, please respond
as quickly as possible, and I will initiate the process for including you
and your students in the project.  I realize that there has been a
plethora of surveys recently, brought on by concerns over the health of
the profession.  However, this survey is not about the facts and figures
of the profession, rather it is about our methods and our students.
Therefore, I strongly encourage you to participate one more time.  An
accurate assessment of ourselves, our students and our methods can help
not only to maintain our programs, but also to ensure that they are
maintained with the highest possible quality.

   Thank you for your consideration of my request, and I look forward to
working with you.
                                              Sincerely,

                                                 Mark Lauersdorf

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Mark R. Lauersdorf                     Dept. of Germanic Langs. and Lits.
mrldorf at kuhub.cc.ukans.edu                 2080 Wescoe Hall
m-lauersdorf at ukans.edu                     University of Kansas
phone: 913-864-4803                        Lawrence, KS 66045-2127
fax: 913-864-4298                          U.S.A.


From jslindst at cc.helsinki.fi  Wed Oct 30 15:22:47 1996
From: jslindst at cc.helsinki.fi (Jouko Lindstedt)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 17:22:47 +0200
Subject: Cracow fax
Message-ID: <WED.30.OCT.1996.172247.0200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Does anybody have the fax number of the organizers of the International
Congress of Slavists -- I mean the number in Cracow, not in Warsaw. (And
has any national committee received a confirmation that the participants
proposed have been accepted?)

Jouko Lindstedt
Slavonic and Baltic Department, University of Helsinki
e-mail: Jouko.Lindstedt at Helsinki.Fi or jslindst at cc.helsinki.fi
http://www.helsinki.fi/~jslindst/


From Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk  Wed Oct 30 20:15:56 1996
From: Mogens_Jensen at fc.sdbs.dk (Mogens Jensen)
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 22:15:56 +0200
Subject: Russian tv
Message-ID: <WED.30.OCT.1996.221556.0200.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Does anyone know of new possibilities for receiving russian tv -eg- in
Denmark via satellite? - I know of the old one, broadcasting in 4 Gb -
but has there come up a new 11 Gb star? Thank you, Mogens Jensen.


From roborr at aix1.uottawa.ca  Thu Oct 31 06:00:12 1996
From: roborr at aix1.uottawa.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 01:00:12 -0500
Subject: declension of "sto" (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.010012.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 00:49:52 -0500 (EST)
From: roborr at aix1.uottawa.ca
To: SEELANGS at CUNYVM.BITNET
Subject: declension of "sto"

Dear Seelangovcy,
                  I have three native speakers of Russian, all
young, well-educated fairly recent immigrants, in my course on the
Structure of Russian.  A day or two ago we were discussing "sto" (100)
and I was told, by two out of the three (one from Moscow, and the other
from Petersburg), that the declension sto (nom/acc)/sta(rest of
declension) (which they found odd) has been replaced by  stam (dat),
stami (instr) stax (prep).  On questioning, they seemed to be unsure of
the actual usage; they admitted that "so sta rubljami" and "so stami
rubljami" were both possible; also, however, when the number "100" stands
on its own, without an accompanying noun (phrase), " so stami" could be
used instaed of "s sotnej".

Comments?


Thanks in advance,  Robert Orr


From serapion at umich.edu  Thu Oct 31 16:02:53 1996
From: serapion at umich.edu (Leslie J. Dorfman)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 11:02:53 -0500
Subject: Brodsky Conference (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.110253.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Commemorative Conference to Honor Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996)

On November 7- 9, 1996, the University of Michigan Department of Slavic
Languages and Literatures will host an international conference to honor the
late Joseph Brodsky (1940 - 1996) in collaboration with the Special Collections
Library, Hatcher Library.

All scheduled events are open to the public.

Joseph Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, and was later
appointed Poet Laureate of the United States (1991-1992).  He was the only
foreign-born poet to serve in that capacity.

Joseph Brodsky had a long and loyal association with Michigan.  He came
directly to the University of Michigan following his exile from the Soviet
Union in 1972 and served as Poet-in-Residence until 1981.  Widely regarded
as the greatest Russian poet of his generation and one of the outstanding
Russian poets of the twentieth century, he was also remarkable for his
successful transition to English, both in poetry and prose, after settling in
America.

Thursday, November 7 will mark the formal opening of an exhibition of the
extensive collection of Brodsky's published works, manuscripts and other
materials assembled by Irwin T. Holtzman in the Special Collections Library
(seventh floor, Hatcher).

A round-table discussion will take place on Friday, November 8 in the same
room.  Various aspects of Brodsky's life and work will be discussed by a panel
of internationally acclaimed scholars.  The morning session will begin at
10:00 a.m. and the afternoon session at 2:00 p.m.

On Saturday, November 9 the venue shifts to the West Conference Room, fourth
floor, Rackham for a scholarly symposium exploring specific features of
Brodsky's poetry and prose, with sessions from 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. and
1:00 - 5:00 p.m.  Participants reading papers will include:

        David Bethea, University of Wisconsin
        Deming Brown, University of Michigan
        Assya Humesky, University of Michigan
        Boris Katz, St. Petersburg
        George Kline, Bryn Mawr College
        Lev Loseff, Dartmouth College
        David MacFadyen, Dalhousie University
        Michael Makin, University of Michigan
        Mikhail Meilakh, St. Petersburg
        Valentina Polukhina, Keele University
        Ronald Vroon, University of California at Los Angeles

THE CONFERENCE CONCLUDES ON SATURDAY EVENING, NOVEMBER 9, WITH A POETRY READING
BEGINNING AT 7:00 P.M. IN THE ASSEMBLY HALL, FOURTH FLOOR, RACKHAM BUILDING,
915 E. WASHINGTON, ANN ARBOR.

The public is cordially invited to attend all scheduled events.

For more information contact the Slavic Department at (313) 763-4496.
<http://www.knc.lib.umich.edu/fellows/fall96/brodsky/brodconf.htm>

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1996: Special Collections Library, Seventh Floor,
Hatcher Library

3:30 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. Formal opening of exhibition

Friday, November 8, 1996: Special Collections Library, Seventh Floor,
Hatcher Library

Round-table Discussion and Exhibition of Brodsky's Published Works and Other
Materials Collected by Irwin T. Holtzman

Moderator:                              Irwin T. Holtzman

10:00 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. Opening and tour of exhibition
10:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Audio and video tapes of Joseph Brodsky
11:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon Round-table Discussion
                        "Brodsky: The Life"
        Chair: Benjamin Stolz   Ann-Ellen Akeley        Deming Brown
        Assya Humesky           Mikhail Meilakh         Valentina Polukhina

12 noon - 1:00 p.m.:            Lunch Break

1:00 p.m. - 1:50 p.m.           Round-table Discussion
                                "Brodsky: The Work"
        Chair: I.T.Holtzman     Galina Sokolovskaya     Tom Bigelow
        George Kline

2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.:          Round-table Discussion
                                "Brodsky: Criticism"
        Chair: David Bethea     Boris Katz              David MacFadyen
        Lev Loseff              Ronald Vroon

3:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.:          Round-table Discussion
                                "Brodsky: Collection and Study"
        Chair: I.T. Holtzman    Alan Pollard            Tom Bigelow
        James Fox

3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.:          Galina Sokolovskaya introduces a film of
Joseph Brodsky reading at Russia House

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1996:
Conference Papers: West Conference Room, Fourth Floor, Rackham

Session I:  9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Chair: Rosamund Bartlett

 9:30 a.m. -   9:50 a.m.DAVID BETHEA, University of Wisconsin
                        "Brodsky and Pushkin: Some Epochal Reflections"
 9:50 a.m. - 10:10 a.m. DEMING BROWN, University of Michigan
                        "Brodsky's Essays"
10:10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. EUGENIA GRESTA, University of Michigan
                        "Joseph Brodsky: Language as Tragic Substance"
10:30 a.m. - 10:50 a.m. BORIS KATZ, St. Petersburg Mussorgsky Musical College
                        "Prostaya gamma v poezii Iosifa Brodskogo"

Discussion: 10:50 a.m. - 11:10 a.m.

Lunch Break: 11:10 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Session II: 1:30 p.m. - 2:50 p.m.
Chair: Benjamin Stolz

1:00 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.   GEORGE KLINE, Bryn Mawr College
                        "Translating Brodsky"
1:20 p.m. - 1:40 p.m.   LEV LOSEFF, Dartmouth College
                        "A Shadow of a Poem: Brodsky's 'Letter to Oasis'"
1:40 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.   DAVID W. MACFADYEN, Dalhousie University
                        "Relativity as a Response to Exile in the Work of
                        Joseph Brodsky"
2:00 p.m. - 2:20 p.m.   MICHAEL MAKIN, University of Michigan
                        "Strangers in a Strange Language: Reflections on
                        Joseph Brodsky and Marina Tsvetaeva"

Coffee Break: 2:50 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1996:

Conference Papers: West Conference Room, Fourth Floor, Rackham

Session III: 3:10 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Chair: Assya Humesky

3:10 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.   MIKHAIL MEILAKH, European University, St. Petersburg
                        "An Encyclopedia of Soviet Reality: Brodsky's 'Show'
                         (Predstavlenie)"
3:30 p.m. - 3:50 p.m.   VALENTINA POLUKHINA, Keele University
                        "Brodsky's Prose: A Continuation of Poetry by Other
                        Means"
3:50 p.m. - 4:10 p.m.   RONALD VROON, University of California at Los Angeles
                        "Brodsky and Hopkins: Some Notes on the Metaphysics
                        of Flight"

Discussion: 4:10 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

7:00 p.m. Poetry Reading: Assembly Hall, Rackham

        Lev Loseff and others read Brodsky's poetry in Russian and in English.

9:00 p.m. Reception: Assembly Hall, Rackham


From mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu  Thu Oct 31 18:20:45 1996
From: mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu (Barbara Mozdzierz)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 13:20:45 -0500
Subject: Roommate AAASS
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.132045.0500.MOZDZIER@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>

Dear SEELANGers:

I am looking for a female, non-smoking roommate to share a double
(one room, two individual beds) with me during the upcoming AAASS
Convention.  The cost is half of $126 plus applicable taxes (cf. a single
costs $95.00). I currently hold a reservation for Thursday, Nov. 14-16
(i.e., check-up on Sat., Nov. 16).

If anyone is interested, please contact me off-list at
mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu.

FYI: The Annual AAASS Convention will take place in Boston from Nov.
14-17.

Barbara

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Barbara M. Mozdzierz, Ph.D.                     tel. (202) 994-0930
Dept. of German & Slavic                        fax  (202) 994-0171
George Washington University                    mozdzier at gwis2.circ.gwu.edu
2130 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052


From edraitse at shiva.Hunter.CUNY.EDU  Thu Oct 31 18:40:47 1996
From: edraitse at shiva.Hunter.CUNY.EDU (Emil Draitser)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 13:40:47 -0500
Subject: looking to share a room at AAASS convention
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.134047.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Is there anyone who currently holds a reservation for a double (one room,
two beds) at Boston Plaza Hotel during the forthcoming AAASS convention
and is willing to split the cost with another non-smoking male?

Please respond to my e-address directly.


From katsaros at AC.GRIN.EDU  Thu Oct 31 19:10:23 1996
From: katsaros at AC.GRIN.EDU (Elena Katsaros)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 13:10:23 -0600
Subject: declension of "sto" (fwd)
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.131023.0600.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Robert,

Neither 'stami', nor 'stax' are used in the spoken Russian any more. They
have vanished, like many other forms. I don't think your friends would use
them. Nor do the 'diktory' on the television, which is the main reflection
of the changing "literaturnaya norma".
As for 'sotnya', it is functioning like a noun, and can be used both
independantly or not. When speaking about money, 'sotnya' can also be
substituted by 'stol'nik': 'U menya segodnya dve sotni, a vchera byl tol'ko
stol'nik'. Of course, the numbers in the example do not reflect the
inflation nowadays.

Elena Katsaros

Russian Department
Grinnell College
Katsaros at ac.grin.edu


From mitrege at mail.auburn.edu  Thu Oct 31 18:48:35 1996
From: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu (George Mitrevski)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 13:48:35 -0500
Subject: Student needs info on Russian major!
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.134835.0500.>

I have a young student with a military background who has studied
Russian for one year. He is interested in working on a double major in
Russian and International Business. If you are from a university that
has a strong Russian business program, and would be interested in
getting one more major, he'd love to hear from you. Send your messages
to me and I'll pass them on to him.

Cordially,

George.
***************************************************************
Dr. George Mitrevski            office: 334-844-6376
Foreign Languages                  fax: 334-844-6378
6030 Haley Center               e-mail: mitrege at mail.auburn.edu
Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849-5204

List of my WWW pages: http://www.auburn.edu/~mitrege/index.html
***************************************************************


From jflevin at ucrac1.ucr.edu  Thu Oct 31 20:34:15 1996
From: jflevin at ucrac1.ucr.edu (Jules Levin)
Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 15:34:15 -0500
Subject: 2 queries
Message-ID: <THU.31.OCT.1996.153415.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Dear colleagues:
I would appreciate help re these questions:

1)I am about to get Windows 95 for PC, and my department is urging me to
switch from WP5.1 to M.Word.  I'm willing to do it (only my 5th or 6th
wordprocessing system since PCs began), but what about Russian?    Right now
I have a Russian for WP5.1 software which is not perfect but does the job.
What will replace it?  Does Microsoft offer something?  Perhaps I should try
to get it when I purchase Office Professional...  Or are there separate
better softwares out there for W'95...?

2) Several years ago I attended a lecture on  stikhi by Pushkin that was
indiscrete enough (the poem, not the lecture) to not be included in the
polnoe sobranie.  It was a romantic poem addressed to a Jewess, and ends
with Pushkin offering, in return for her favors, "that which distinguishes a
faithful "pravoslavnyj" from a Jew.  I will leave it to your imaginations
what he was referring to.  Anyway, the speaker (my apologies for forgetting
your name if you are reading this) distributed copies of the poem, and I
cherished mine for many years.  But now it is lost, and I would like another
copy.  If you have a copy, the FAX number is 909-787 2160.    Otherwise, any
info on getting it would be appreciated.

Jules Levin
jflevin at ucrac1.ucr.edu
>>
>>
>
>


From pyz at panix.com  Mon Oct 28 17:20:25 1996
From: pyz at panix.com (Max Pyziur)
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 12:20:25 -0500
Subject: Ukrainian Macintosh Interface
Message-ID: <MON.28.OCT.1996.122025.0500.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.BITNET>

Greetings

Would someone have/know where to locate/be so kind as to send me the
Ukrainian language menu structure found on the Ukrainian Mac OS.

This would be similar to say in Windows Program Manager you have:
File/New.../Open/Move/Copy.../Delete/Properties...
Options
Window/Cascade/Tile/etc.
Help/Contents/Search ../etc.


Or in Windows File Manager:
File/ etc.
Disk/ etc.
Tree/ etc.
View/ etc.
Options/ etc.
Window/New Window/Cascade/Tile/Refresh/ etc.

Hope that makes sense.


Max
pyz at panix.com


From stgeorge at cityline.ru  Tue Oct 29 17:16:42 1996
From: stgeorge at cityline.ru (Sergey Streltsov)
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 20:16:42 +0300
Subject: Job Announcement
Message-ID: <TUE.29.OCT.1996.201642.0300.SEELANGS@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>

Dear Richard Sylvester !

Excuse me please- for our misprinted name in my previous letter.
'Reachard'- It was awful error- and only one there as spellchecker has told