etymology/the transliteration issue

[Alina Israeli]

>Picture reading English and French words transliterated into Russian...!
>I think it's particularly hard for native speakers of a given language to
>read their own words transliterated.  ('Gyol' for 'girl' for instance!)

English is harder, to be sure. I don't know about 'gyol', but 'gerlà'
entered the language.

As for French, it's been done for quite some time; how can we forget the
famous "purkua vu tushe, ja ne mogu dormir v potemkax" (and the author's
comment about the speaker's conjugating the Russian verb "tushit'" na
francuzskij maner).

Alina Israeli

**************************************************************
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University                phone:  (202) 885-2387
4400 Mass. Ave., NW                     fax:    (202) 885-1076
Washington, DC 20016

aisrael at american.edu