the language

[Adrian Wanner]

I would like to cast my vote in favor of Patricia Chaput's sensible comment
and against Richard Robin's "unrelenting hard line."  Not all of us have
the time and energy to get involved in jihads over technologically correct
cyrillic encodings.  As long as there is no clear winner in this struggle,
it makes sense to remain tolerant and write one's messages in such a way
that they are accessible to all recipients, whether they are
technologically challenged or not (and that means, for the time being, to
use transliteration).  After all, even cyrillic zealots are perfectly able
to read the Latin alphabet!


>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 À¦Õ-ÿ¿'‰"ðŠÀŠ
>(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. œŠ'¡¿
>-¦-"'""ÀŠ × Ã¿¬¦  À¦ŸŠ"¦×À‰. 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.
>œŠ'¡¿ -¦-"'""ÀŠ × Ã¿¬¦  À¦ŸŠ"¦×À‰.
>Chitayu po-russki v lyuboi kodirovke.
>(or LC but UGLY: Chitaiu po-russki v liuboi kodirovke.)

*********************************************************
Adrian J. Wanner
Associate Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature
Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures
The Pennsylvania State University
315 Burrowes Building
University Park, PA 16802

Tel. (814)  863-8964 (o)  234-1289 (h)
Fax  (814)  863-8882
http://www.la.psu.edu/slavic/wanner.htm