the two mirs
Elisabeth Ghysels
ElisabethG at YUCOM.BE
Fri Sep 22 21:31:42 UTC 2000
Thank you for your very comprehensive answer. Does all this then mean, that
the Russian language has (had) a word for peace, and a different word for
world, society; and that all nice efforts to find a philosophical reason why
the Russian language has one word, that means peace as well as world, are
meaningless?
Kind regards,
Nikolaus
-----Oorspronkelijk bericht-----
Van: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]Namens Andrij Hornjatkevyc
Verzonden: vrijdag 22 september 2000 16:48
Aan: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Onderwerp: Re: the two mirs
At 01:06 AM 09/22/00 +0200, you wrote:
>The two "mirs" raise several questions for me:
>
>1) when and how did the "i desjaterichnoe" disappear in Russian?
It was abolished in the orthographic reform that had been prepared by the
Imperial Academy of Sciences, but not implemented in 1913 because the
Romanovs were busily celebrating their tricentennial, and then other events
took precedence. The orthographic reform was implemented only after the
October Revolution.
When Peter I introduced the "grazhdanka" for secular texts, he proposed
that "i desjaterichnoe" be used throughout and the "i vos'merichnoe" be
eliminated from the alphabet, but this detail of his decree did not take
hold, and both "i"s continued to be used.
>2) am I right, that it has been retained in Ukrainian?
It is retained in Ukrainian for the /i/ phoneme, while the "i
vos'merichnoe" designates the /y/ phoneme.
>3) How can it be explained, that such an important difference between both
>languages has developed apparently during the Soviet era, of all eras?
While in the pre-reform Russian orthography both 'i's designated the same
phoneme - /i/, in Ukrainian they designate different phonemes, and this
difference in practice antedates Soviet times by at least a century, and
actually much longer.
>4) When did the "i desjaterichnoe" appear in the first place, since it
>didn't seem to exist in old church Slavic?
As a matter of fact, the "i desjaterichnoe" can be found in the oldest
classical Old Church Slavic Cyrillic MSS. Furthermore, even the glagolitic
alphabet had three characters for the /i/ phoneme.
>5) How were "peace" and "world" written before the appearance of the "i
>desjaterichnoe"?
See above.
Dr. Andrij Hornjatkevyc
Associate Professor
Canadian Institute of Modern Languages and
Ukrainian Studies Cultural Studies
352 Athabasca Hall 200 Arts Building
University of Alberta University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E8 Edmonton, AB T6G 2E6
phone (780) 492-3765 phone (780) 492-0733
fax (780) 492-4967 fax (780) 492-9106
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