Nasel'niki i svyazochki

[Andrew Jameson]

Dear Alex,

You have a good point. Our problem is that most of us have only
English keyboards, some of us with extra stickers on the keys for
Cyrillic. We type quite fast with two fingers in English, but typing
Cyrillic is slow and painful. I would say it takes me more than twice
as long to input an email in Russian as in English.

Keyboards with Latin and Cyrillic on the keys are apparently now
available in Russia, can anyone tell us their experience of these?

By the way, there is an accepted transliteration for Cyrillic into
Roman, which allows most of us to reconstruct the original Russian
word correctly (although it has a few ambiguities).

Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Reviews Editor, Rusistika
Listowner, allnet, cont-ed-lang, russian-teaching
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL   UK
Tel: 01524 32371  (+44 1524 32371)

----------
From: Alex <a_strat at HOTMAIL.COM>
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: Nasel'niki i svyazochki
Date: 05 October 2000 05:55

> Could anyone enlighten me on the meaning and best English equivalent of
> "nasel'nik" and "svyazochka"? So far as I know, "nasel'nik" is
> "inhabitant of a monastery," but how precise is such a rendering? (ANY
> inhabitant?) As far as "svyazochka" is concerned, all I know is that it
> is some form of pointed headgear -- worn by "nasel'niki"? -- but that is
> the extent of my knowledge of this particular usage of the word.

Here you are! I am a native Russian speaker and I've got no idea how to
write "nasel'nik" in cyrillic! I told you before about the ambiguity of this
approach. Some time ago I received this message from my friend in USA:

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