Russian keyboards

[Nola]

>From a student's point of view, I'd like to add this: Perhaps for those students taking classes designed for preparing for a business trip or other short-term language necessity, it would probably be okay to use the modified keyboard. People who don't plan to eventually learn to read and write in Russian just want to learn to get around easily for a short visit to Russia, read some signs, maybe order food in a restaurant, buy souvenirs, do some sight-seeing, etc., and not accidentally insult anybody. They just need some essential skills to get around safely.

But for students who want to seriously study the language, using the modified keyboard would be useless. They should start out with the true  keyboard and learn it from the beginning. Why waste time and end up having to un-learn the modified one and then learn the proper keyboard?Just do it right from the beginning.

So: if serious about Russian, use the Russian keyboard. If not, then go ahead with the modified one.
Nola


-----Original Message-----
>From: Martin Votruba <votruba+slangs at PITT.EDU>
>Sent: Feb 27, 2011 8:05 AM
>To: SEELANGS at bama.ua.edu
>Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Russian keyboards
>
>> typing Russian in Latin characters has something to do with
>> a sort of "colonial" approach
>
>Not always.  For instance, not all the recipients of the seelangs messages
>have mailers set up to read other than Latin letters.
>
>
>> Tending to reduce the problem to what one si familiar
>
>What you point to, Philippe, is one of the fairly pervasive differences
>between the Anglo-Saxon and Continental-European approaches to learning in
>general, one unlikely to change -- it comes from many educators.
>
>In the "Anglo" world, there's AATSEEL and a number of academics recommending
>the use of "Anglo-like" keyboards for Russian, while for the academics and
>students of foreign languages in Russia (and other countries with non-Latin
>scripts) it goes without saying that everyone learning a foreign language
>learns to type it on its native keyboard, although it surely is no easier
>for a Russian to learn to use a Latin-based keyboard efficiently than the
>other way round.
>
>
>Martin
>
>votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu
> 
>
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