new Russian orthography?

[Alina Israeli]

>I often come across unnatural Russian spelling these days,
>for example <postindustrial'nyj>. I would have thought
>that had to be either <post"industrial'nyj> or
><postyndustrial'nyj> (where " stands for a hard sign) because
><pred+idushchij> was either <pred"idushchij> or <predydushchij>.

No, "tverdyj znak" can be spelled only after preverbs, and their nominal
formations (s"ezd, for example). "TZ" after ad- as in "Ad"jutant" is a
tribute to education of those who created the rule, and who knew that in
Latin ad- was a prefix.

There should be "Y", by the book. However, this rule was being broken even
25 years ago, when I was a student and our professor, who was one of the
top specialists in graphics and orthography, V.F. Ivanova, kept bringing us
examples such as "bezInteresnyj" where there should have been "Y" in a
Russian language article, that is written by a person who knows the rules,
and certainly edited by a person who knows the rules. But people are
reluctant to break the morphological looks of the word, and keep writing I.
It certainly goes for the new formations. There are other such rules where
"the will of the people" so to speak overtook the grammar books,
capitalization of possessive adj. is another one, for es.

>Or do Russians pronounce t of <post> softly in that case?

No, they don't. But there are many instances where "govorim odno, a pishem
drugoe", and bothers no one. Nobody writes ë, even in the lone mandated
case (vsë) I don't recall seeing the dots in print. Even in children books
(I mean children's, not todler's).

AI

**************************************************************
Alina Israeli
LFS, American University                phone:  (202) 885-2387
4400 Mass. Ave., NW                     fax:    (202) 885-1076
Washington, DC 20016

aisrael at american.edu