Why no Cyrillic?

[Richard Robin]

*Дорогие SEELANGовцы!*

I'm going to play my broken record over again. Cyrillic could travel well
over e-mail platforms if everyone obeyed the well established rules (the
short version: UTF-8). But there's always a way to use a recalcitrant
institutional e-mail address and still send and receive Cyrillic. See
http://www.gwu.edu/~slavic/gw-cyrillic/cyrilize.htm#cmail<http://www.gwu.edu/%7Eslavic/gw-cyrillic/cyrilize.htm#cmail>.
(It explains the "UTF-8" as well as what to do when you get gibberish.)

I realize that I sing this song a lot. But exchange of information in
written Russian is a part of 21st Century Russian literacy. We don't allow
our first-year students to hand in transliterated homework. We even insist
that they learn Cyrillic script. (I don't know any Russian teacher who buys
the *"I never use script in English!"* excuse.) Computer literacy is
analogous.

That said, I will be the first to admit that I sometimes accompany my
Cyrillic to this list with transliteration (на всякий пожарный случай - na
vsiakii pozharnyi sluchai) when I need to reach the widest audience.

But I would hope that as a profession, we are striving towards overcoming
the technical difficulties of Cyrillic in e-mail, both public and private,
precisely because for those who deal in Russian, it is part of our
communicative sphere.

Sincerely,
Richard Robin

P.S. And I'll be glad to take a look at whatever e-mail from a Russian
company didn't arrive with Cyrillic intact. That should never have happened
and should be fixable. Or else I'm going to end up eating a lot of crow!


> > Hi Everyone,
> >
> > I just subscribed to this list and I've noticed that _most_ people do
> > not use Cyrillic when typing Russian, is there a reason for this?
>

-- 
Richard M. Robin, Ph.D.
Director Russian Language Program
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7081
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Russkiy tekst v UTF-8

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