"j" in Russian

[Tom Priestly]

Tsuji wrote:

>  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.

Juraj Kriz^anic', who hailed from what 300 years later would be Yugoslavia,
proposed the "j" grapheme when in Russian in the 1659s and 60s, to be used
(more or less) for the phoneme /j/. His suggestions did not fall on
receptive ears, and I think he finished up somewhere like Tobol'sk, where
these revolutionary (and probably scandalous if not irreligious) ideas
would not have a wide audience. I do not know if anyone echoed them -’ and
in particular this one, which made a lot of sense! - later.
His two books: Ob'jasn'enje vivodno o pisme^ slove^nskom, 1660 and
Gramatichno izkazanje ob ruskom jeziku, 1661 - both using the "j" grapheme
in their titles.

Which is getting a long way from the "two mirs".

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*  Tom Priestly, Professor
*  Slavic & East European Studies
*  Modern Languages and Cultural Studies
*  University of Alberta
*  Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E6
---------------------------------------------------------------

*  telephone:  780 - 469 - 2920
*  fax:               780 - 492 - 9106

*  email:           tom.priestly at ualberta.ca
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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