capitalization of holidays in Russian

[Genevra Gerhart]

Dear Christopher,
Yes, there are indeed rules for capitalizing, but they suffer, not only from
human ignorance, but also indolence combined with changes in regime and
therefore nomenclature and its spelling. (I swear the rules for English
capitals are simpler in the first place.) The Russian tendency is capitalize
an initial letter and not the rest in the same title/group/phrase. Thus
Novyy god is technically correct but, if you ask, perfectly well-educated
Russians will say it should be Novyy God. (For any such mechnical system,
change should be considered the plague.)
The old (Soviet) rules for spelling religious holidays etc were a disguised
blessing: even god was lc (lower case). (See the preface to Russian's World,
first edition.)
(The Russian you sent does not come through, but) now, things are different,
titles seem to have reverted to the 1912 usage Tsuji cited. I think you will
find the 1996 second edition, and the 2001 third edition of Russian's World
to be correct. For government holidays, the web site recommended by Igor
Silantev http://hammer.prohosting.com/~info4you/Holiday.html is excellent.
Regards,
Genevra Gerhart

http://www.members.home.net/ggerhart
New email address: ggerhart at home.com
206-329-0053

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