Russian keyboards

[FRISON Philippe]

Dear Seelangers,

The discussion with the problem of Russian keyboards comes times and again 
on this list.
For me the fact that Russian has a different alphabet and hence a different 
keyboard layout has much more to do woth the variery of our world.
(I will not touch the problem of having different keaboard layout for Latin languages:
leaving in Alsace and using the French AZERTY layout at home, I come regularly 
in touch with the English / American QWERTY one, but also the German and the 
Swiss ones...).

Tending to reduce the problem to what one si familiar me seems to me to be 
conceptually fraught with the danger of failure. 
Is not it up to such scholar of Russian culture like you to make the Russian 
diversity being felt by the American, or the English-speaking public even through
its keyboard ?

One of this list members puzzled me a couple of years ago, starting writing English in 
cyrillic letters as I had started to do it "to make things simpler", and I realized how 
much typing Russian in Latin characters has something to do with a sort of "colonial" 
approach of the Russian culture...

As for me I started with "a hunt and peck speed" and keyboards with Latin 
and Russian letters carved or sticked on each and every keys to end up with some sort
of blind and a bit slower typing on "standard" (that is Western) keyboards with 
a need afterwards to check thoroughly for typos...

Good luck any way !

Philippe
(Strasbourg, France)

-----Original Message-----
From: SEELANGS: Slavic & East European Languages and Literatures list [mailto:SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu] On Behalf Of Emily Saunders
Sent: dimanche 27 février 2011 09:40
To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian keyboards

I once tried to teach myself to touch type using a standard Russian  
keyboard layout, but with very, very limited success.  With a QWERTY  
layout I can type around to 60 wpm, and it is incredibly frustrating  
for me to go back to a hunt and peck speed.  If I hadn't been taught  
to touch type back in my sophomore year of high school, I might more  
readily agree with your advice.  However, at this point, it is just  
waaaay too ingrained in my muscle memory where the "a" should be and  
trying to do the same with a completely different layout is torture.   
It'd be like mixing up the order of black and white keys on a piano.   
With enough practice you could probably eventually play Moonlight  
Sonata, but is it really worth the effort for those few times you'd  
actually need to (when I travel to Russia, I generally take my laptop  
with me).  And I figure that I get enough familiarity with the Russian  
layout when I send emails in Russian from my iPod touch (where I  
couldn't touch type even if I wanted to).  Personally I don't think  
it's worth worrying about.  Technology is in a state of constant flux  
and everyone's computer (with it's selected preferences and desktop  
layouts) is a personal expression of how they interact with that  
technology.  Being aware that there is another keyboard layout out  
there that is the standard for native speakers is probably really all  
you need to let your students know.

Cheers!

Emily


26.02.2011, в 22:10, David J. Birnbaum написал(а):

> Dear SEELANGers,
>
> "Phonetic" keyboards may be somewhat easier for Americans to learn  
> than the
> authentic Russian layout, but one may wind up paying for that ease  
> when one
> lands in an Internet cafe or someone else's home or office in Russia  
> and
> needs to use the non-phonetic keyboard that real Russians use.  
> That's a
> decision each of us can make individually as far as our own use is
> concerned, but language teachers might want to consider whether  
> they're
> doing their students a favor by encouraging them to come to depend  
> on a
> culturally un-Russian keyboard.
>
> Best,
>
> David
>
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