the two mirs

[Yoshimasa Tsuji]

Well said.
Just a remark of mine:
  The earlest scriptures seem to have distinguished monothongal I
and the diphthongal II (ii, ei, oi) -- Greek words like apostle's names
(e.g. Philippe) were spelt with the monothongal I while most of the
Slavonic words seem to have been spelt with the diphthongal II.
As far as the Russian language is concerned, the diphthongal II (usually
written with a side bar between them as were so written IA, IE, IO)
was very soon reduced to a monothong, thus lost its difference in sounds
from the original monothongal I.

  The reason why I(H in graphic, 8 as number) survived instead of I(10)
seems to have been the established status of the short I that we
see today. I wonder how Peter the Great wanted to print the short I
without using I(8). (Very likely the graphic J, as in Serbian and
Macedonian, but I've never seen the graphic J in Russian text. Have you?)
The graphic J never existed in Russia when the reform took place in
1913--1918.

Cheers,
Tsuji

------
When the oldest Russian text was found three weeks ago in Novgorod,
the chief of the team said in a newspaper interview that they were
confident of it because they found so many errors in the usage of
jat'. It is interesting that i(10) was not mentioned.

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