"Merry Christmas" in Khanty

[Johanna Laakso]

To comment on Jouni Kortesharju's message:

>as "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." If somebody composes a booklet on
>such useful expressions of SEVERAL Uralic languages, checking the
>information from native speakers, I am willing to pay up to 200 FIM for a
>copy, depending on size and quality.

A very constructive suggestion indeed! I came to think of the pretty little
Russian-Komi-Hungarian-Finnish-German-English "razgovornik" (by Igushev,
Tolstova and Chernyshova) that was published by "Russkij jazyk" in 1985,
obviously for the participants of the CIFU in Syktyvkar. Could it be
possible to use these more or less useful everyday phrases ("Where can I buy
an electric shaver?", "Did you attend the sitting of the working group?"
[sic]), together with whatever may exist or be in preparation in Yoshkar-Ola
(for the CIFU in 2005), or in Izhevsk or Saransk or other places, to create
a list of phrases (why not audio files, too) for the Web? Occasional "Web
tourists" vaguely interested in seeing or hearing what a (certain phrase in
a) certain language looks or sounds like could simply be shown to that site.

To go one step further: what about our Estonian colleagues, who have an
admirable collection of links and materials at www.suri.ee, and native
speakers of many FU languages at their disposal at the Ariste Centre in
Tartu? Could they be persuaded to undertake this task which is, perhaps, not
so important linguistically (although it takes linguistic expertise, too!)
but could give a valuable glimpse of the FU world for many laymen and other
outsiders?

Best,

Johanna

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johanna Laakso
Institut für Finno-Ugristik der Universität Wien
Spitalgasse 2-4, Hof 7, A-1090 Wien
johanna.laakso at univie.ac.at | http://mailbox.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso