the language

[Richard Robin]

All right, someone's got to take the unrelenting hard line here.

To insist that Russian be quoted in transliteration because some will not be
able to see it on their computer screens is akin to my students' desire to see
Russian lose its case endings so that they will have an easier time learning
it.

Those who have computers in Russia read e-mail in Cyrillic. Handling e-mail in
Cyrillic is part of dealing with the Russian language in cyberspace. And like
the rest of the language, it's hard -- in this case because компьютерщики
(okay, komp'iutershchiki) fight jihads over which Cyrillic encoding system is
TC (technologically correct). That should come as no surprise. Look at
Slavists' handwringing over plain old *transliteration* systems!

The fact that Cyrillic on the computer (and in e-mail especially) is hard just
means that full participation at the crossroads of the computer world and The
Russian's World (apologies to Genevra) means putting in time and effort to
learn how to do it. But for those of us non-native Russian speakers, time and
effort invested in this language should come as nothing new.

So what to do while everyone gets up to speed? My suggestion is, don't keep
your technological possibilities or limitations a secret. Declare them
outright. For example, the signature file below (Can read HTML mail. Читаю
по-русски в любой кодировке. Chitayu po-russki v lyuboi kodirovke.) used to
read "Predpochitayu e-mail v WinCyrillic-1251." If every seelanger had a
similar signature line, lots of wasted exchanges would be avoided. And those
Cyrillic zealots among us would know just how narrow or wide our audience is.
--
Richard Robin - http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~rrobin
German and Slavic Dept.
The George Washington University
WASHINGTON, DC 20052
Can read HTML mail.
Читаю по-русски в любой кодировке.
Chitayu po-russki v lyuboi kodirovke.
(or LC but UGLY: Chitaiu po-russki v liuboi kodirovke.)