The introduction of zero to Russia

[Jules Levin]

At 07:56 AM 4/7/2007, you wrote:
>È don't think  " I "  was called "jota" — éîòà, but rather "I
>(desjaterichnoe)" (as opposed to H — èæå/ izhe).
>
>On Apr 7, 2007, at 7:08 AM, Paul Richardson wrote:
>
>>Ëèøü áóêâà éîòà - â îáåèõ ñëàâÿíñêèõ ñèñòåìàõ îáîçíà÷àëà ÷èñëî 10,
>>êàê â ãðå÷åñêîì ïèñüìå.

Dear Alina,
I have nothing to say about "yota", etc., but I 
am writing you in the hope that you
can tell me WHY your message shows up in my 
Eudora with the Cyrillic correct??!!
This is more or less how Paul's Cyrillic appeared in the original message:
Лишь буква йота - в обеиÑ
 славянскиÑ

Virtually everything in Cyrillic is garbled one 
way or another.  As a matter of fact, when I want
to correspond in Russian I have to write a doc in 
MS Word and paste it into an Outlook message,
which I normally do not use.   Do you have any 
explanation why your Cyrillic shows up okay, as the above did?
(When I paste a Cyrillic doc into a Eudora message NOTHING appears!)
Jules

PS.  As long as I am bothering you with this 
little problem, allow me to pester you with something else.
Some time ago I wrote to SEELANGS about a little 
controversy that arose on JEWISHGEN:  Someone said that
there was a law in Czarist times forbidding Jews 
from using biblical names that were part of the Russian Orthodox
Saints' Calendar, for example, Moisey, Isak, 
Iosef, David, etc.   He interpreted Yiddish forms like Moshe, Duvid, as well as
the East Slavic Osip, as Jewish inventions 
designed to get around the law.  Of course his 
explanation is philological idiocy,
but he seems to be a Russian emigre living in 
Canada, and it is impossible to prove a negative--that there was no such law.
Have you ever heard this bobbemaise?  A friend on 
SEELANGS pointed out that the Russians who used the OT names were
likely to be religious dissenters, not Orthodox, 
hardly to be protected from Jewish contamination.  And it recently occurred to
me that the Czarist government would likely have 
welcomed such nomenclature, cf. the choral 
synagogue movement.  I.e., they actually *wanted* 
the Jews to assimilate to Russophone culture.  Any thoughts on this?




>Alina Israeli
>LFS, American University
>4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
>Washington DC. 20016
>(202) 885-2387
>fax (202) 885-1076
>aisrael at american.edu
>
>
>
>
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
>  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
>                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------