hyphenation question

[Anne Lounsbery]

Thanks very much to all who responded to my hyphenation query--

A.L.





-----Original Message-----
From: Slavic & East European Languages and Literature list
[mailto:SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU]On Behalf Of Alina Israeli
Sent: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 8:56 AM
To: SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] hyphenation question


>I guess that in the auditory consideration chus-tvi- is on a par with
>chust-vi-, but better than chu-stvi because "stvi-" is slightly more
>difficult to pronounce than the other syllables in question.

While the syllable is the primary concern, there is also a tendency not to
separate one letter from whatever morphological unit it is, a root, a
prefix, a suffix, and of course, one letter from the whole word, which I've
seen done for English (and sadly for Russian in the early 90's).

Interestingly, my grandmother, who attended a pre-1917 gymnasium and while
checking my spelling periodically sited the rules she was taught, kept
saying in this context "s, t ne razdeljajutsja". Even though that rule did
not exist on the books in my time, that made me well aware that my grammar
school teacher was also reluctant to separate them. Only studying the
history of the language some ten years later I understood the root of that
rule, and why it is still tacitly observed most of the times.

__________________________
 Alina Israeli
 LFS, American University
 4400 Mass. Ave., NW
 Washington, DC 20016

 phone:    (202) 885-2387
 fax:      (202) 885-1076 

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