Monument to Letter "Yo"

[Earl Sampson]

All this reminds me of a paper I wrote for Joe Van Campen's Slavic Linguistics
course as a graduate student (more years ago than I like to contemplate). The
assignment was to translate and analyze an OCS text (the Metropolitan Klim's
epistle to the Smolensk Presbyter Foma), with particular attention to the use of
the nasal vowels, the reduced vowels, and jat', plus any other features worthy of
attention. I supplied the various sections with epigraphs, either borrowed or of
my own composition, which in all immodesty I would like to share with the List.
For the nasal vowels section: "Two letters made just to annoy:/The one is called
the malyj jus;/The other, like an octopus/In shape, is called the jus bol'shoj."
(by Ezra Ounce)
For the reduced vowels section: "Shpiony podobny bukve yer. Oni nuzhny v nekotoryx
tol'ko sluchajax, no i tut mozhno bez nix obojtit'sja, a oni privykli vsjudu
sovat'sja." (Pushkin)
For the jat' section: "Napishi ty xleb s jatem ili bez jatja, neshto ne vse
ravno?...Bud' ja ministrom, zapretil by ja vashemu bratu jatem ljudej morochit'."
(from Chekhov's "Myslitel'")
For the "Miscellaneous" section: "The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of
many things..."

Earl Sampson

Jules Levin wrote:

> At 10:30 AM 11/15/01 -0600, you wrote:
> >Dear SEELANGers:
> >
> >It's not often that a Russian city puts up a monument to a letter in
> >the alphabet, but Ulyanovsk has done just that.  See
> >
> >http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/10/29/003.html
> >
> This item reminds me of a 16-line poem published in Soglasie, a local (Los
> Angeles) 1st wave emigre publication in the 50's, that I discovered as a
> student (the editor was Yuriy Kanakov--former White artillery officer,
> Turkic languages specialist (trained at a pre-revolutionary officer
> school),  and curator of Invertebrate Paleontology at the LA Co. Museum
> (where I met him as a HS junior scientist...).
> The poem was a tribute to the letter jat'--full of 1st wave Weltschmerz and
> nostalgia--not to mention irony.
> I copied it out by hand, and have been searching my files for it ever
> since.  When I find it--I'm sure I have it somewhere--I'll send it to SEELANGS.
> Jules Levin
>
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--
"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious ... the fundamental
emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science." - Albert
Einstein (1879-1955).

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