Russian Keyboards

[Richard Robin]

I used to assume a position of keyboard neutrality for teaching Russian. But
my own students convinced me that I should make stronger pleas for (short of
requiring) use of gosstandart (ЙЦУКЕН). The main argument went like this:
most of them plan to be in Russia sooner or later. Most will end up typing
on other people's computers. As for knowing where the keys are, that's a
matter of either buying keycaps or typing out the alphabet(s) onto envelope
labels, cutting them up and pasting onto the keys.

-Rich Robin

On Tue, Mar 1, 2011 at 8:30 AM, ejp10 <ejp10 at psu.edu> wrote:

> I also have to agree with those that using a QWERTY version of Cyrillic
> makes the most sense for students in the U.S., partly because students here
> will usually  ONLY see the Latin characters when they're typing. That is,
> even when a Russian keyboard utility is activated, the output changes, but
> the physical keys will remain as U.S. Latin.
>
> They wouldn't be able to see where the Cyrillic characters are unless they
> invest in a special plugin keyboard (like the ones used in Russia)
> http://www.russiankeyboardstore.com/index.html
>
> Asking a student to memorize positions of hidden characters seems more
> complicated than necessary. It doesn't sound like that's what happens in
> Russian when students learn Latin QWERTY.
>
> On the other hand, if a student is going abroad to Russia, it would be
> worth introducing them to the Russian layout. However, I am assuming that
> once a student is in Russian and in an Internet cafe or computer lab, the
> position of the Cyrillic characters would be visible. I would also assume
> that the student would be fairly comfortable reading and writing Cyrillic by
> this point.
>
> Elizabeth
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> Elizabeth J. Pyatt, Ph.D.
> Instructional Designer/Lecturer in Linguistics
> Penn State University
> ejp10 at psu.edu
> http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/
>
> Got Unicode Blog
> http://www.personal.psu.edu/ejp10/blogs/gotunicode/index.html
>
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-- 
Richard M. Robin
Director Russian Language Program
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7081




-- 
Richard M. Robin
Director Russian Language Program
The George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
202-994-7081

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